Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
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serpent chooses both the time and place of healing the sick as well a place to found a new branch<br />
of the cult is documented in an inscription testifying to the god’s healing powers.<br />
Thersandrus of Halieis with consumption. He, when in his [Asclepius’] temple<br />
sleep saw no vision, was carried back to Halieis on a wagon; one of the sacred<br />
serpents, however, was sitting on the wagon and remained for the greater part of<br />
the journey coiled around the axle. When they came to Halieis and Thersandrus<br />
was resting on his bed at home, the serpent descended from the wagon and cured<br />
Thersandrus. When the city of Halieis made an inquiry as to what had happened<br />
and was at a loss regarding the serpent, whether to return it to Epidauros or to<br />
leave it in their territory, the city resolved to send to Delphi for an oracle as to<br />
what they should do. The god decided they should leave the serpent there and put<br />
up a sanctuary of Asclepius, make an image of him, and set it up in the temple.<br />
When the oracle was announced the city of Halieis erected the sanctuary of<br />
Asclepius and followed the rest of the god’s commands. 187<br />
An ordinary snake would not be represented with such awareness. In the case of Rome, Kerényi<br />
notes that the choice of the Tiber Island as a residence was odd for the god of healing. This<br />
island must have been chosen more because of religious significance than its character as a<br />
healthful place, something which it certainly was not. 188 Kerényi states, “Here, side by side with<br />
Faunus, the snake of Asklepios was to glitter in a wolflike nocturnal world and yet with its cold<br />
body symbolize as it were the warm light of life…” 189 This Greek god had been ritually adopted,<br />
“en toto,” by the increasingly powerful settlement on the Tiber River. 190<br />
As a god of healing, who could predict the outcome of a patient’s life, Aesculapius was<br />
also considered a god of prophecy (Fig. II.12). 191 Kerényi identifies Fig. II.12 as a “synthesis of<br />
187<br />
IG IV.1. nos. 122.XXXII. Greek Text taken from Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies,<br />
edited by EJ and L Edelstein, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945, p. 227, 235-6. (Translation by Edelstein<br />
and Edelstein.)<br />
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188<br />
Kerényi 1959, 16.<br />
189<br />
Kerényi 1959, 17.<br />
190<br />
Altheim (1938, 283, 286) stresses the importance of Aesculapius as a representative of a new infusion of Greek<br />
culture at a critical point in Rome’s history.<br />
191 Kerényi 1959, 66.<br />
42