The Life of Severus

Asklepiodotos of Alexandria, who concerned himself with enchantments, performed demonic invocations, and who had won thereby the admiration of the pagans for his philosophy, had convinced his namesake (Asklepiodotos) original: Asklepiodotos of Aphrodisias, who at that time gloried in the honors and dignities with which the king showered him and held the first rank in the senate of Aphrodisias, to give him his daughter in marriage. He lived for a long time with his wife in Caria and desired to have children. But his desire was not fulfilled, as God inflicted upon him, as a punishment because he occupied himself with the evil practices of magic, the deprivation of children and the sterility of his wife. As his father-in-law was afflicted that his daughter did not have children, our philosopher imagined an oracle (or rather he was deceived by the demon represented by Isis), according to which the goddess promised him children if he went with his wife into the temple that this goddess formerly had in Menouthis, a village fourteen miles from Alexandria, and near the locality called Canopus. He persuaded his father-in-law to allow him to take his wife and to go with her to that place. After promising to return to him with his wife and the child she would have, Asklepiodotos left for Alexandria, having deceived his namesake.