that in the one, the power of vision was not destroyed, but would return if the obstacles were removed; that in the other, the diseased joints might be restored, if a healing power were applied; that it was, perhaps, agreeable to the gods to do this; that the emperor was elected by divine assistance; lastly, that the credit of the success would be the emperor’s, the ridicule of the disappointment would fall upon the patients.  Vespasian believing that everything was in the power of his fortune, and that nothing was any longer incredible, whilst the multitude which stood by eagerly expected the event, with a countenance expressive of joy, executed what he was desired to do.  Immediately the hand was restored to its use, and light returned to the blind man.  They who were present relate both these cures, even at this time, when there is nothing to be gained by lying.” (Tacit.  Hist. lib. iv.)

Now, though Tacitus wrote this account twenty-seven years after the miracle is said to have been performed, and wrote at Rome of what passed at Alexandria, and wrote also from report; and although it does not appear that he had examined the story or that he believed it, (but rather the contrary,) yet I think his testimony sufficient to prove that such a transaction took place:  by which I mean, that the two men in question did apply to Vespasian; that Vespasian did touch the diseased in the manner related; and that a cure was reported to have followed the operation.  But the affair labours under a strong and just suspicion, that the whole of it was a concerted imposture brought about by collusion between the patients, the physician, and the emperor.  This solution is probable, because there was everything to suggest, and everything to facilitate such a scheme.  The miracle was calculated to confer honour upon the emperor, and upon the god Serapis.  It was achieved in the midst of the emperor’s flatterers and followers; in a city and amongst a populace before-hand devoted to his interest, and to the worship of the god:  where it would have been treason and blasphemy together to have contradicted the fame of the cure, or even to have questioned it.  And what is very observable in the account is, that the report of the physicians is just such a report as would have been made of a case in which no external marks of the disease existed, and which, consequently, was capable of being easily counterfeited; viz. that in the first of the patients the organs of vision were not destroyed, that the weakness of the second was in his joints.  The strongest circumstance in Tacitus’s narration is, that the first patient was “notus tabe oculorum,” remarked or notorious for the disease in his eyes.  But this was a circumstance which might have found its way into the story in its progress from a distant country, and during an interval of thirty years; or it might be true that the malady of the eyes was notorious, yet that the nature and degree of the disease had