Asclepius

Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: A mastery of medicine and surgery so complete that he could pull the dead back across the threshold into life.
Role in Mythos: The mortal-born healer who rose to become the Greek god of medicine, worshipped at sanctuaries where the sick slept in hope of a curing dream.
Relation to Humans: Asclepius was a benefactor of humanity who cured disease and injury and, at the height of his power, reversed death itself, drawing the desperate to his temples from across the Greek world. Worshippers came to him through incubation, sleeping in his sanctuaries to receive a cure or instruction in their dreams.

In the dormitories at Epidaurus the lamps were left to burn down to a low amber glow, and the sick lay on pallets of stone and straw and waited for a dream. Somewhere in the dark, dry scales whispered across the floor. The snakes were not an accident and not a danger. They were the point. A worshipper might wake to the cool weight of one sliding past an ankle and understand that the god had come near. By morning people would swear that fevers had broken in the night, that clouded eyes had cleared, that a wound had closed while they slept. They left their crutches and carved stone tablets of healed limbs behind as thanks, and the walls of the sanctuary filled with the evidence of what he could do.

He was born out of betrayal and fire. Apollo loved the Thessalian princess Coronis, and Coronis, already carrying the god’s child, took a mortal lover named Ischys. When Apollo learned of it, his anger ran ahead of his mercy. In most versions his sister Artemis shot Coronis down, and only as the body lay burning on the pyre did Apollo think of the infant inside her. He cut the child from the womb amid the smoke and the smell of scorched flesh and named him Asclepius. Other tellings make his mother Arsinoe, and a few quietly insist he had no mother at all, only the god. The stories disagree on this point, as they often do at the beginning of a great life.

The boy was given to Chiron, the centaur who tutored heroes in a cave on Mount Pelion. From him Asclepius learned the use of the knife and the splint, the properties of roots and herbs, the incantations that steadied a frightened patient, and the drugs that dulled pain. He surpassed his teacher. There is a story that explains the serpent he carries: imprisoned and brooding over how to revive a dead boy named Glaucus, staff in hand, he watched a snake creep toward him and killed it with repeated blows. Then a second snake came, carrying a herb in its mouth, and laid the leaf upon the dead one’s head, and the first snake rose and slid away alive. Asclepius took the same herb and used it on Glaucus, and Glaucus breathed again. The animal that renews itself by shedding its own skin became his sign.

Another tradition gives the secret a darker source. Athena, it was said, gathered the blood that ran from the severed Gorgon. The blood from the left side of Medusa was a poison that killed; the blood from her right side was a cure that could raise the dead. She gave it to Asclepius, and he used it. Death was supposed to be permanent. He treated it as a condition.

He brought back Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, torn apart by his own panicked horses. Some say he revived Glaucus, others the Spartan king Tyndareus, others men whose names are half remembered. Each resurrection was a small theft from the underworld, and Hades took notice. The lord of the dead went to his brother and complained that his kingdom was emptying, that a physician’s hands were unmaking the order of the cosmos. Zeus agreed. A man who could cancel death would, in time, make men the equals of gods. He answered with a thunderbolt, and Asclepius died in an instant of light and noise, struck down for being too good at the one thing he was made to do.

That was not quite the end. Apollo, enraged at the killing of his son, slew the Cyclopes who forged the thunderbolt, and Zeus, perhaps recognizing the injustice, set Asclepius among the stars as Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder. In death the healer became a god in earnest. His worship spread from Epidaurus across the Greek world and into Rome, where, during a plague, his sacred snake was carried by ship to the island in the Tiber and the dying began to recover. He married Epione and fathered a household of healing: Hygieia, whose name survives in the word hygiene, Panacea, the all-healing, and the warrior-physicians Machaon and Podalirius, who tended the wounded at Troy.

His powers were the powers of a doctor raised to the divine. He could close wounds, drive out sickness, soothe pain with herb and song, appear in a sleeper’s dream and name the cure, and at the furthest edge of his art, return breath to a corpse. His limits were the limits of his birth. He was the child of a god and a mortal woman, and for all his skill he could be killed, and was. The very gift that made him beloved made him a threat, and the line he kept crossing, the one between healing the living and reclaiming the dead, was the only thing his father could not teach him to leave alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Asclepius?

Asclepius is the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing. Born a mortal son of the god Apollo, he became so skilled at medicine that he was worshipped across the Greek world and was eventually raised to the status of a god after his death.

How did Asclepius die?

Asclepius was killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt. He had used his healing skill to raise the dead, which threatened the natural order and angered Hades, lord of the underworld, so Zeus struck him down to stop mortals from becoming immortal.

Why is Asclepius associated with a snake and a staff?

Asclepius is shown leaning on a wooden staff with a single serpent coiled around it, an image that became the Rod of Asclepius still used as a symbol of medicine. In one myth he learned the secret of revival by watching a snake use a herb to bring a dead snake back to life, and the serpent’s ability to renew itself by shedding its skin tied it to healing.

Did Asclepius really raise the dead?

Yes, in Greek myth Asclepius raised several people from the dead, including Hippolytus, the son of Theseus. According to one tradition the goddess Athena gave him blood from the right side of the Gorgon Medusa, which could cure death, and his repeated resurrections of mortals led directly to Zeus killing him.

Who taught Asclepius medicine?

Asclepius was taught the art of healing by Chiron, the wise centaur who raised and tutored many Greek heroes. From Chiron he learned surgery, the use of drugs and herbs, and healing incantations, eventually becoming more skilled than his teacher.