Note 337:8 — Chapter XXXII

"Serapis does not appear to be one of the native gods, or monsters, who sprung from the fruitful soil of Egypt. The first of the Ptolemies had been commanded, by a dream, to import the mysterious stranger from the coast of Pontus, where he had been long adored by the inhabitants of Sinope; but his attributes and his reign were so imperfectly understood, that it became a subject of dispute, whether he represented the bright orb of day, or the gloomy monarch of the subterraneous regions." (Gibbon's Rome, vol. iii. p. 143.)