Chapter 5.—Of Apis King of Argos, Whom the Egyptians Called Serapis, and Worshipped with Divine Honors.
In these times Apis king of Argos
crossed over into Egypt in ships, and, on dying there, was made
Serapis, the chief god of all the Egyptians. Now Varro gives this
very ready reason why, after his death, he was called, not Apis, but Serapis. The ark in which he was placed when dead, which every one now calls a sarcophagus, was then called in Greek σορὸς, and they began to worship him when buried in it before his temple was built; and
from Soros and Apis he was called first [Sorosapis, or]
Sorapis, and then Serapis, by changing a letter, as easily
happens. It was decreed regarding him also, that whoever should
say he had been a man should be capitally punished. And since in
every temple where Isis and Serapis were worshipped there was also
an image which, with finger pressed on the lips, seemed to warn men
to keep silence, Varro thinks this signifies that it should be kept
secret that they had been human. But that bull which, with
wonderful folly, deluded Egypt nourished with abundant delicacies
in honor of him, was not called Serapis, but Apis, because they
worshipped him alive without a sarcophagus. On the death of that
bull, when they sought and found a calf of the same color,—that
is, similarly marked with certain white spots,—they believed it
was something miraculous, and divinely provided for them. Yet it
was no great thing for the demons, in order to deceive them, to
show to a cow when she was conceiving and pregnant the image of
such a bull, which she alone could see, and by it attract the
breeding passion of the mother, so that it might appear in a bodily
shape in her young, just as Jacob so managed with the spotted rods
that the sheep and goats were born spotted. For what men can do
with real colors and substances, the demons can very easily do by
showing unreal forms to breeding animals.