Introduction
Asclepius is the god of medicine and healing, son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis, rescued from his dying mother's funeral pyre and raised and trained in the medical arts by the wise centaur Chiron. His skill grew so extraordinary that it disturbed the natural order of the cosmos itself.
Family
- Father: Apollo
- Mother: Coronis
Training and growing skill
Chiron taught Asclepius the arts of healing to such a degree that he eventually surpassed his teacher, becoming capable not merely of curing illness but, in several versions, of actually reviving the dead, using either his own skill or blood from the Gorgon Medusa given to him by Athena (one vial that killed, one that healed).
Death by thunderbolt
Hades complained to Zeus that Asclepius's revivals were emptying the underworld and disrupting the fundamental boundary between life and death. Zeus, agreeing that this overstepped what even a healer should do, struck Asclepius down with a thunderbolt. In compensation, and because of his benefit to humankind, Asclepius was afterward placed among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus, "the serpent-bearer", and, in most later tradition, was granted a form of divinity and continued to be worshipped as a healing god in his own right.
Cult and legacy
Asclepius became the object of a major healing cult across the Greek and Roman world, with temples (Asclepieia), most famously at Epidaurus, functioning as centres of medical treatment where patients would sleep in hope of receiving a healing dream or vision from the god. His symbol, a single serpent coiled around a staff (the Rod of Asclepius), remains in use today as a symbol of medicine, notably by the World Health Organization, and is frequently, though technically incorrectly, confused with the unrelated double-serpent Caduceus of Hermes.