Placed before him was a book in which futurity was written out. […] Sometimes rams were offered before the corn was ripe; and sometimes, garlands of ears of corn. […] Nox and Somnus fly before her. […]  2. — The Ægis represents allegorically the Eye of Omnipresence, before which the guilty flee. […] He was king of Memphis, and brother to the first Mercury, and lived two centuries before the deluge, which period was more than one thousand years before the Greek Æsculapius flourished.