Esculape

Esculape is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Asclépios.

Wire of Apollo and Coronis, only daughter of Phlégias, king of Béotie, Esculape were born on the Mont Titthion, on the side of Épidaure, in the Peloponnese. He is the father of Télesphore. Like the word κορώνη / korốnê in Greek means crow , one said that Esculape had been born from an egg of this bird, under the figure of a Serpent. It is added that Phlégyas, irritated against Apollon who had returned his daughter mother of Esculape, put fire at the temple of Delphes and which it is eternally punished by it in the Tartar where a large rock, suspended above its head, at every moment threatens to crush it in its fall.

According to others, Coronis was killed by Diane, or Apollon in an access of jealousy, and its body was already placed on the funeral Bûcher, when Mercure or Apollo himself put Esculape at the day. The child, initially entrusted to a named nurse Trygone, passed soon to the school Centaure Chiron where it made fast progress in the knowledge of simple and in the composition of the remedies; he practiced with such an amount of skill and success art to cure the wounds and the diseases which he was regarded as the god of the surgery and the Médecine.

He accompanied Hercules and Jason in forwarding by the Colchide and rendered great services to the Argonautes. Not very glad to cure the patients, it ressuscita even deaths. One saw, in the fable of Apollo, how this temerity was punished. Esculape seeming to usurp the rights of the supreme, main divinity thus of the life of the men, Jupiter exterminated it of a love at first sight. But, after his death, one did not leave return the divine honors to him.

Certain authors claimed that it formed in the sky the constellation which one called the Serpentaire. According to Pausanias, its descendants reigned in part of the Messénie, and it was from there that Machaon and Podalire, its two sons, left for the Trojan War.

All is only wonder in this fable. If, for example, Apollon bored his arrows the mother of Esculape, it is that the corbel had wrongfully accused Coronis to have other loves. Soon, the god reproached himself for having lent the ear to this calumny, and was avenged for the corbel by changing into black his white plumage hitherto.

Its worship

Its worship was established initially in Épidaure, place of its birth; from there, it spread soon in all the Greece. One honoured it in Épidaure in the form with a snake.

An ivory and gold statue, works Trasymède of Paros, represented it under the figure of a man sitting on a throne, having a stick of a hand, and pressing the other on the head of a snake, with a dog lying close to him.

The cock, the snake and the tortoise, symbols of vigilance and prudence necessary to the Doctor S, were especially devoted to him. One nourished Couleuvre S deprived in the temple of Épidaure, and one even claimed that it was under this figure that it was let see; at least, the Romains believed that it had come on their premises in this form, when they sent an embassy to Épidaure to beseech the protection of the god against the plague which afflicted their city.

Athens and Rome solemnly celebrated the festivals called Épidauries or Esculapies in the honor of this god. In the shape of statues, Esculape is generally represented under the features of a man serious, bearded, and carrying a crown of bay-tree; it holds with a hand a Patère, other a twisted stick of a snake.

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