Asclepius

Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing, the son of Apollo and Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas. Raised by the centaur Chiron, he became so skilled a physician that he could even raise the dead, and Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt for it. His main sanctuary was at Epidaurus, and his sons Machaon and Podalirius were healers in the Trojan War.

Birth

Apollo loved Coronis, and she was with child by him when she took up with a mortal, Ischys the son of Elatus, who came from Arcadia (Pindar, Pythian 3.8–46). In Pindar’s account Apollo, who was at Pytho, knew of it himself and sent his sister Artemis to Lacereia, where Coronis died by her arrows, and many of her neighbours with her. In Apollodorus (3.10.3) and Ovid (Metamorphoses 2.542–632) a raven brought Apollo the news; the god turned the bird, until then white, black for its pains, and killed Coronis himself. In both versions, as her body burned on the pyre, Apollo snatched the baby from the flames and carried him to the centaur Chiron. Apollodorus himself prefers another mother, Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus of Messenia, and gives Coronis as the version of others; Pausanias (2.26.7) sides with Coronis on the authority of a Delphic oracle.

The people of Epidaurus told the story differently: Coronis, they said, gave birth in their land and exposed the child on the mountain later called Titthion (“Nipple”), where a goat suckled him and the herd’s dog guarded him until the herdsman Aresthanas found him (Pausanias 2.26.3–4).

Chiron and the Art of Healing

Chiron brought up the boy and taught him the arts of healing and hunting (Apollodorus 3.10.3). Pindar calls Asclepius the “craftsman of new health for weary limbs”, and describes how people with all kinds of wounds and illnesses came to him and were cured with soothing songs, healing drinks, remedies bound about the limbs, or the knife (Pythian 3.45–53). Apollodorus adds that he received from Athena blood from the veins of the Gorgon: the blood from her left side he used to kill, that from her right side to save, and with it he raised the dead (3.10.3).

His Death

Apollodorus (3.10.3) says that Asclepius not only prevented some from dying but even raised the dead, among them Capaneus, Lycurgus, Tyndareus, Hymenaeus, Glaucus the son of Minos and Hippolytus. Zeus, afraid that men might learn the art from him and help one another, struck him with a thunderbolt. Pindar (Pythian 3.54–58) says that gold in his hand tempted him to bring back from death a man already taken, and that Zeus hurled his bolt through both of them. In his anger Apollo killed the Cyclopes who had forged the thunderbolt, and Zeus would have thrown him into Tartarus had Leto not pleaded for him; instead Apollo was made to serve a mortal, Admetus of Pherae, for a year (Apollodorus 3.10.4). Later writers placed Asclepius among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-holder (Hyginus, Astronomica 2.14). Hyginus there explains the serpent: shut in a secret room and ordered to heal Glaucus, Asclepius killed a snake that crept towards his staff; a second snake came carrying a herb in its mouth and laid it on the dead one, which revived, and with the same herb Asclepius restored Glaucus – which is why, Hyginus says, physicians use snakes. Euripides opens his Alcestis with Apollo recalling the same chain of events: Zeus killed his son Asclepius, Apollo killed the Cyclopes, and was made to serve Admetus (Alcestis 1–7).

Family

Pausanias (2.29.1) reports that at Epidaurus Epione was said to be the wife of Asclepius. The goddesses of health and healing worshipped with him are treated as his daughters: Pausanias calls Hygeia (Health) “daughter of Asclepius” in legend (1.23.4) and names Panacea (All-heal), Iaso and Health together on the altar of Amphiaraus at Oropus (1.34.3), and Aristophanes makes Iaso and Panacea daughters of the god in the Wealth (701–702). Aegle and Aceso are added in a hymn to Asclepius inscribed at Erythrae and in later lexica.

Machaon and Podalirius

In the Iliad (2.729–733) Machaon and Podalirius, the sons of Asclepius, lead the contingent from Tricca, Ithome and Oechalia against Troy. Machaon is the doctor who draws the arrow from the wounded Menelaus and dresses the wound (Iliad 4.193–219), and is himself wounded by Paris (11.505–507). Apollodorus (Epitome 5.1) says that Machaon was killed by the Amazon Penthesilea, whom Achilles in turn killed; Pausanias (3.26.9), who saw Machaon’s tomb and healing sanctuary at Gerenia, reports that the epic Little Iliad made Eurypylus, son of Telephus, his killer.

Epidaurus

Pausanias describes Epidaurus in the Argolid as the chief place of worship of Asclepius (2.26–27). Its gold and ivory statue, the work of Thrasymedes, showed the god seated with a staff, one hand held over the head of a serpent, and a dog lying beside him (2.27.2); the serpent and staff became his emblem, and the tame yellowish snakes of the region were held sacred to him (2.28.1). Opposite the temple was the place where suppliants of the god slept hoping for a cure, and stone slabs within the enclosure, six of which survived in Pausanias’ day, recorded the names of men and women the god had healed and how (2.27.2–3). In 293 BC, during a plague, the Romans sent to Epidaurus and brought the god to Rome in the form of a serpent, which chose the island in the Tiber for its temple (Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.622–744; Livy 10.47); there he was called Aesculapius.

See Also: Apollo, Chiron, Zeus, Hygeia, Trojan War, Menelaus, Achilles, Amazons