Note 158 — Chapter VIII · THE ÆSCULAPIAN STAFF AND SERPENT.

Of course, it is possible enough that Æsculapius carried a staff at times. The Greeks, however, were not so much given to the practice as some other peoples, as the Egyptians (see Rawlinson’s Egypt and Babylon, p. 240. New York, 1885), or the Babylonians, of whom Herodotus (i, 195) says that “every one carries a walking-stick carved at the top into the form of an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, or something similar.”