Asclepius

Asclepius, the Roman Aesculapius, is the god of medicine and healing, son of Apollo, who learned the healing art so well that he could raise the dead — for which Zeus, fearing the overthrow of the natural order, struck him down with a thunderbolt and then set him among the gods. His emblem, a serpent coiled about a staff, remains the sign of medicine to this day.

His healing shrines, above all at Epidaurus, drew the sick from across the Greek world, who slept in the sacred precinct hoping for a curing dream from the god — the rite of 'incubation'. With his daughter Hygeia, goddess of health, he presided over the whole art of restoring the body's harmony. (Socrates's last words asked that a cock be offered to Asclepius — a debt, it has long been thought, for the healing of life itself.)

Epithets

• Soter Σωτήρ — the savior
• Paean Παιάν — the healer
• Aesculapius Lat. — his Roman name