Note 110 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Elsewhere also we find proof that in those times the power of effecting miraculous cures, especially of blindness, was commonly ascribed to men who were regarded as favourites of the Deity. Thus Tacitus, Hist. iv. 81, and Suetonius, Vespas. vii. tell us, that in Alexandria a blind man applied to Vespasian, shortly after he was made emperor, alleging that he did so by the direction of the god Serapis, with the entreaty that he would cure him of his blindness by wetting his eyes with his spittle. Vespasian complied, and the result was that the blind man immediately had his sight restored. As Tacitus attests the truth of this story in a remarkable manner, Paulus is probably not wrong in regarding the affair as the contrivance of adulatory priests, who to procure for the emperor the fame of a miracle-worker, and by this means to secure his favour on behalf of their god, by whose counsel the event was occasioned, hired a man to simulate blindness. Ex. Handb. 2, s. 56 f. However this may be, we see from the narrative what was expected, even beyond the limits of Palestine, of a man who, as Tacitus here expresses himself concerning Vespasian, enjoyed favor e cœlis and an inclinatio numinum. ↑