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And uttered such words with a calm heart:
“Shed your fear! I shall come and leave my image behind.
Now this serpent, which encircles my staff,
Look on it and mark it with your sight, so that you might recognize it!
I shall change to this: but I shall be larger and seem as great
As the celestial bodies ought be when changing. 182
Ovid’s account encapsulates both types of Aesculapius’ iconography, the form taken by statues
of the god and his appearance in an epiphany; it is a clear formulation of the belief that the god
could take the form of a snake. 183 Livy echoes this sentiment in his summary.
When the state was oppressed by a plague, legates were sent to bring from
Epidauros to Rome the image of Aesculapius, namely, a snake which had crawled
aboard their ship, and in which it was believed the god had embodied himself.
The temple of Aesculapius was built on Tiber Island at that very place where it
had disembarked. 184
This belief was strong enough to attract the attention of Christian apologists such as Arnobius,
who derided the belief that Aesculapius would deign to take the form of such a lowly, ground-
dwelling animal. 185
Furthermore, in Ovid’s dramatization of the event, the serpent acts with human
awareness, and it is the serpent, not the Romans, which chooses the location of its temple on the
Tiber Island. 186 The agency of the snake in choosing a location for the cult is echoed in other
literary accounts that record foundations of Aesculapius’ cult. Another transfer in which a
182 Ov. Met. XV.653-62. Latin Text taken from Ovid Metamorphoses Books IX-XV, Loeb Classical Library,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, p. 410. (Translation by Author.)
…cum deus in somnis opifer consistere visus / ante tuum, Romane, torum, sed qualis in aede / esse solet,
baculumque tenens agreste sinistra / caesariem longae dextra deducere barbae / et placido tales emittere pectore
voces: / “pone metus! veniam simulacraque nostra relinquam. / hunc modo serpentem, baculum qui nexibus ambit, /
perspice et usque nota visu, ut cognoscere possis! / vertar in hunc: sed maior ero tantusque videbor, / in quantum
verti caelestia corpora debent.”
183 Epiphanies of the god in snake form: Marinus’ Vita Procli Cp. 30 (Edelstein 1945, 256)
Epiphanies of the god with snakes: Hippocrates, Epistulae 15 (Edelstein 1945, 258-9)
184 Liv. Per. XI. Latin Text taken from Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, edited by EJ
and L Edelstein, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945, p. 431. (Translation by Author.)
Cum pestilentia civitas laboraret, missi legati, ut Aesculapi signum Romam ab Epidauro transferrent, anguem, qui se
in navem eorum contulerat, in quo ipsum numen esse constabat, deportaverunt; eoque in insulam Tiberis egresso
eodem loco aedis Aesculapio constituta est.
185 Arn. Adv. Nat. VII, 44-48. We must keep in mind that the Romans were obviously not adverse to accepting gods
in non-anthropomorphic form. Cybele, the Magna Mater, came to Rome as a sacred black stone, possibly a
meteorite, in the form of a betyl, also under the directive of the Sibylline Books.
186 Interestingly enough, the serpent chooses a location sacred to other liminal, hybrid deities, the gods Faunus and
Vediovis.
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