511b-515b.
ASKLEPIOS
No god made with hands, to use the scriptural phrase, had a more
successful "run" than Asklepios--for more than a thousand years the
consoler and healer of the sons of men. Shorn of his divine attributes
he remains our patron saint, our emblematic God of Healing, whose figure
with the serpents appears in our seals and charters. He was originally a
Thessalian chieftain, whose sons, Machaon and Podalirius, became famous
physicians and fought in the Trojan War. Nestor, you may remember,
carried off the former, declaring, in the oft-quoted phrase, that a
doctor was better worth saving than many warriors unskilled in the
treatment of wounds. Later genealogies trace his origin to Apollo,(10)
as whose son he is usually regarded. "In the wake of northern tribes
this god Aesculapius--a more majestic figure than the blameless leech
of Homer's song--came by land to Epidaurus and was carried by sea to
the east-ward island of Cos.... Aesculapius grew in importance with the
growth of Greece, but may not have attained his greatest power until
Greece and Rome were one."(11)
(10) W. H. Roscher: Lexikon der griechischen und romischen
Mythologie, Leipzig, 1886, I, p. 624.
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