Philemon and visiting Jupiter

Meaning

II.2.9 casts the author as Philemon and a distinguished visitor as Jupiter. The classical hospitality comparison elevates the encounter and presents the visitor as a witness to the work. It does not mean that a god literally appeared or that the prince's presence proves the theory.

The surrounding account is unusually important because it records failure: a coloured fusion did not achieve the hoped-for metallic metamorphosis. The author nevertheless reports sweating and other medical effects and criticizes an opposing physician in the same narrative. Those are his claims, not independently verified cures or grounds to repeat the accusation as established fact. The mythic host-and-guest image belongs to the presentation of this mixed result, not to a success story of completed transmutation.