Asclepius

The child taken from the pyre

Coronis, a mortal woman and daughter of Phlegyas, is carrying the child of the god Apollo. She has a relationship with the mortal Ischys, and Apollo learns of the betrayal through his divine foreknowledge. She is punished with death. In the poet Pindar, the goddess Artemis kills her. Apollodorus, whose Library retells the Greek myths, gives other details.

Coronis lies on her funeral fire, still carrying the child. At the last moment Apollo refuses to let the unborn baby die. He draws Asclepius from the flames and gives him to the centaur Chiron. The violence around the rescue remains Apollo’s doing. The child survives because Apollo separates his own future son from the mother he has condemned.

Chiron raises the child and teaches him medicine. With this training, Asclepius can stop death through skill. In time the pupil goes further. He stops healing only the living and starts to bring back those who have already died.

Raising the dead

Apollodorus names several people Asclepius brings back to life, including Capaneus, Hippolytus, Tyndareus and Glaucus. Pindar narrows the offence to one case. He says payment tempts the healer to restore a dead man. The two accounts differ on how often it happened and why.

In both, the god Zeus answers with a thunderbolt and kills Asclepius. Apollodorus explains that Zeus, the king, fears mortals will learn the art and save one another from death. The danger is a method that others could learn. If it spread, the boundary of Hades, the realm of the dead, could no longer be kept.

Apollo strikes back by killing the Cyclopes, who forged the weapon of Zeus. Zeus is ready to throw Apollo into Tartarus as punishment until the goddess Leto steps in. So the death of Asclepius spreads conflict through three generations: the healer, his father and his grandfather. Each uses power to answer a loss that another has caused.

Who his mother was

The Homeric Hymn, Pindar and the usual handbook version of the myth all name Coronis as his mother and place the birth story in Thessaly. Apollodorus also records a claim from the region of Messenia that his mother was Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus.

This disagreement comes from rival local family trees. It is not a hidden story involving both women. Coronis carries the dramatic story of the pyre, and Arsinoe gives Messenia its own claim on the healer. Most tellings follow Coronis.

The Iliad, the early epic poem of Homer, knows none of this life story. A list in the poem names Podalirius and Machaon as sons of Asclepius skilled in healing. The poem already knows their father as a healer, but it does not explain his birth or death.

The dead healer becomes a god

The short Homeric Hymn to Asclepius, a poem of praise, calls him a divine lord. Later, people sought cures at his sanctuaries, holy places of worship. In myth his mortal body is struck down by Zeus. In worship he is a healer who can hear prayers and restore health.

The serpent became one sign that the god was present. The Roman poet Ovid tells how a plague drove Rome to consult Delphi. There the oracle of Apollo, a shrine where the god answered questions, sent the envoys to his son at Epidaurus. Asclepius appeared in a dream and promised to travel. Then he rose from his shrine as a gold-crested serpent in front of the whole city.

The serpent boards the ship, reaches Italy and settles on the island where the river Tiber divides, and the plague ends. Ovid’s poem tells how the worship of Asclepius moved to Rome. It is not evidence for the earliest Greek story of his life.

This story reverses the scene at the pyre. Once, Apollo carried a child in danger away from the fire. At Epidaurus, the god Asclepius leaves his own sanctuary to save a city. Zeus stopped him from teaching mortals to defeat death entirely. Worship instead asks him to restore particular people to health.