Whereas they were dwarfish and misshapen, he was a youth of most beautiful appearance, truly worthy of admiration.
Like Adonis, he was fond of hunting in the woods that clothe the flanks of Lebanon, and there he was seen by Astronoe, the Phoenician goddess, the mother of the gods (in whom we cannot fail to recognise Astarte), who persecuted him with her attentions to such an extent that to escape her he was driven to the desperate resource of self-emasculation.

Upon this the goddess, greatly grieved, called him Paean, and by means of quickening warmth brought him back to life, and changed him from a man into a god, which he thenceforth remained.

The Phoenicians called him Esmun, "the eighth," but the Greeks worshipped him as Asclepius, the god of healing, who gave life and health to mankind.

Some of the later Phoenicians regarded him as identical with the atmosphere, which, they said, was the chief source of health to man.[1172] But it is not altogether clear that the earlier Phoenicians attached to him any healing character.[1173] The seven other Cabeiri, or "Great Ones," equally with Esmun the sons of Sydyk, were dwarfish gods who presided over navigation,[1174] and were the patrons of sailors and ships.

The special seat of their worship in Phoenicia Proper was Berytus, but they were recognised also in several of the Phoenician settlements, as especially in Lemnos, Imbrus, and Samothrace.[1175] Ships were regarded as their invention,[1176] and a sculptured image of some one or other of them was always placed on every Phoenician war-galley, either at the stern or stem of the vessel.[1177] They were also viewed as presiding over metals and metallurgy,[1178] having thus some points of resemblance to the Greek Hephaestus and the Latin Vulcan.