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ASCLEPIUS AND HIS ATTRIBUTES

Asclepius takes an important place in the pantheon of ancient Greek gods and goddesses. During his human life he was already a man of heroic stature. He is one of the few people who have been deified during their lifetime. He is recognised by two distinct attributes: a serpent and a staff. During a tour of Greece I often encountered the healing god, often with one of his daughters. That is why I decided to deepen my knowledge of him, which I would like to tell you about.

First Asclepius himself
Asclepius was worshipped throughout the whole Greek world and he had sanctuaries at more
than one place: in Athens, Pergamum, Kos, Delphi, Rome and, obviously, especially in Epidaurus. At the latter place it had become established quite early on. At the end of the fifth century BC the sacred sanctuary of Asclepius in Epidaurus became very popular. From here, his cult spread like wildfire over wide areas.

In 420 BC Asclepius was brought to Athens in the shape of a snake. His sanctuary was in a shelter on the southern slope of the Acropolis, close to a source that even today would still be famous for healing properties.

Ultimately, his worship became prevalent in the Roman Empire, but a special cause was needed for that. From 295 to 293 BC Rome was hit by a terrible epidemic – the plague. The Roman poet Ovid tells in detail in his famous Metamorphoses (XV, 622 ff) how Asclepius in the shape of a giant snake with a high golden crest on its head, finally came to Rome to fight the plague. The Romans came up with the idea for this special treatment when they heard from the Delphic Sibyl that they had to seek refuge in Asclepius. Asclepius visited one of the Roman envoys in his dream and gave instructions on how the emigration from Epidaurus to Rome should be done. Once there, he made an end to the plague. How he succeeded, Ovid unfortunately did not mention.

No wonder Asclepius has become so popular in Rome. But there is another clarification to be made about that popularity. The Romans resorted to the gods for both sickness and healing. There was a specific, healing deity for every disease. You could compare it to certain diseases for which Christians call saints, for example John the Baptist for headaches, although it is a very cynical disease to fight by a saint (Claes et al 2005, 81). In addition, they profoundly distrusted scientific medicine (Jackson 1988, 138). The cult of Asclepius became popular because his therapy mostly consisted of reciting hymns and prayers, purification rituals and folk medical drugs.

It is not widely known that the Vatican, which currently is the focal point of Catholicism - how ironic, had once been the center of ophiolatry (snake worship). But ‘vatis’ really means ‘prophecy’ and ‘can’ means ‘snake’ in numerous languages and cultures. Think of Kukulcan, the feathered serpent of the Maya people!

Asclepius and his totem animal are inextricably linked. He became the healing god thanks to the snake, the animal that is known as a destroyer, but is also seen as a savior. We find the combination of salvation and destruction, light and darkness, good and evil in the rod of Asclepius.

Attributes
Asclepius has got quite a lot of attributes, but the most famous of them is by far the snake - always entwined around his staff. In antiquity the status of the snake cannot be overestimated. She was a chthonic creature and maintained contacts between hell and earth. The explanation is not that difficult. Snakes like using caves and caverns to hide or to spend there the winter; they crawl out of them suddenly and silently, and could thus develop into creatures that maintain contact between the upper and underworld. In the past people used to think that an animal so closely connected with the earth must also possess the powers of the earth. Among other known snakes are: the ‘house snake’ (Luven Köln, 2001; Zimniok 1984, 75) that was present in every house in order to protect it (in Egypt these could even be cobras!), and the ‘death snake’, which is common to find on funerary art (Van der Voort 2004).

Back to the snake as a chthonic creature. She was an animal with knowledge of the forces of the earth. She had knowledge of the mystery of life. She could give patients the right medicine. To the ancients the snake was not the symbol of medicine, but the healer itself. Because Asclepius was the ruler of the underworld, it is assumed that he eventually developed from the snake being the chthonic deity to the healing god.

The staff of Asclepius is his second most famous attribute. An obvious explanation for this is that it is nothing but a Greek travel staff. Asclepius indeed led a difficult life as an itinerant physician. The explanation of the staff as a synecdoche of the whole plant world, the primal force of the earth within it, is more sophisticated. This gave the staff the allure of a magic wand. The snake and the staff were initially shown separately in images of Asclepius, but were eventually united into one attribute, symbol, at the same time with a double sign of the living earth. Remember the Christian equivalent in the form of the brass serpent of Moses! Just watching the snake on the staff healed everyone who was bitten, ‘when he looked upon shall live’ (Numbers 21:8)! In Egypt the snake could even transform into a staff and the staff into a snake, as we could understand from the vicissitudes of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 4: 3-4, 7:9-12, Van der Voort 1995).

How Asclepius healed
Those who wanted to make profit from the surgery of Asclepius and his mantic (foretelling, prophetic) qualities, went to a temple dedicated to him. There were many of them in ancient Greece. The sick performed there certain ceremonies, brought an offering to the deity, purified themselves and went to sleep to receive healing in their dreams. The patients met Asclepius during the incubation, where he healed them or gave medical information. Travel, atmosphere, preoccupation, many successful cures testified by numerous inscriptions in the sanctuary, as well as many other factors, resulted in favorable conditions to actually have healing dreams or visions. The patients were cured of various ailments, like paralysis, deformity, blindness, dropsy and infertility.

Healing animals like snakes and dogs appeared not only in dreams, these animals also licked the bodies of patients in reality. Regarding snakes, there is still something interesting to mention. In one issue of the influential journal The Lancet from 1994, Italian researchers reported about a study of the saliva of the four-lined snake, a snake that not only occurs in Italy, but also in Greece. There appears to be a protein in the saliva of these animals – in the one of other animals too – which boosts growth of skin cells and thereby closing up of wounds. Literally licking injured spots on a body could then also have a healing effect (Van der Vlugt 1994).

Conclusion
Asclepius with snake-and-staff has in the meantime been transformed into a picture behind the windshield of a car without Asclepius himself. During the tenth meeting of the World Medical Association in 1956 in Havana, Cuba, the snake with one bend to the right of the staff and two to the left was declared a medical symbol that implies certain privileges to those who show the rod of Asclepius. Depending on the colour in which the sign on a white background is shown: red, blue, black and green, we are dealing with, respectively, doctors, midwives, dentists and veterinarians (Schouten nd (1963), 11).

Translation into English: Sander van Tongeren.
English corrections: Mark Wootten.

Literature
Claes, J., A, Claes, K, Vincke, Geneesheiligen in de Lage Landen. Leuven, 2005.
Jackson, R., Doctors and diseases in the Roman Empire. London, 1988.
Luven, Y., Der Kult der Hausschlange. Köln, 2001.
Meerloo, J., ‘Aesculapius: geneeskunde en de slang.’In: Asklepiaden. Verzamelde essays. Wassenaar, 1973. Pag. 1-6.
Ovidius, Metamorphoses. Vertaald door M. d’Hane-Scheltema. Amsterdam, 1994.
Schoenmakers, T., J. Jas, Slang, Esculaap en Gaper. Medisch-farmaceutische symbolen. A.S. Watson Health & Beauty Continental Europe, 2003.
Schouten, J., De slangestaf van Asklepios. Symbool der geneeskunde. Amsterdam, z.j. [1963].
Sytsema, W.Y., Asklepios in Epidaurus.Over symboliek, heilige geneestempels, bronnen en slangen. Delden, 2002.
Vlugt, R. van der, ‘Heilige slangen die genezen’. In: Litteratura Serpentium 14, 105.
Voort, M. van der, ‘Herpetologische sprokkelingen 3: Een vraag voor fysiologen’. In: Litteratura Serpentium 15, 18-21.
Voort, M. van der, ‘Slangen en de dood’. In: Litteratura Serpentium 24, 102-103.

First published in Litteratura Serpentium 31 (2011), 208-214.