The Asclepion
Prof. Nancy Demand, Indiana University
- Bloomington
Temple Cures*
Asklepios
(right), like other immortals, regarded death as contamination,
so that no one was permitted to die in a sacred place. If the
god of medicine avoided association with death, so in their way
did human practitioners, as may be seen from Hippokrates' summary
definition of the art of medicine (De arte iii): "the deliverance
of the sick from pain, the reduction of diseases' violence, and
the refusal to treat those overpowered by their diseases, with
the knowledge that medical art is unavailing in these cases."
Indeed perhaps it was often the case that
where human skill had been of no avail the patient turned to
the god. The orator Aischines testifies to something such in
these verses (Palatine Anthology vi.330):
Despairing of human
skill but with all hope in the divine,
Leaving Athens, blessed in her sons,
and coming to your grove,
Asklepios, I was cured in three months
of a wound
In the head that had lasted for a whole
year.
Corinth's Asklepieion is only one of a
great many temples to the Divine Physician. Although Corinth
has anatomical dedications not found in equal numbers elsewhere
and a clear ground plan of both shrine and neighboring fountain
the fullest picture of Asklepios' activities requires the importation
of literary and epigraphical material from Athens, of inscribed
testimonials to the god's power from Asklepieia in Epidauros
and Lebena, Crete, and of reliefs from Athens and Piraeus.
[PLAN OF LERNA AND ASKLEPIEION]
For an ailing worshipper in pursuit of
a cure, a bath in the sea served as the outward symbol of the
inner state prescribed at Epidauros (Porphyrius, De abstinentia
ii.19): "Going into the fragrant temple, one must be pure;
purity is thinking holy thoughts." Then came the offering
of honey cakes at the altar. At Corinth the arrangements suggest
that in addition to a sea bath the patient made token ablutions
at the eastern water basin, proceeded to both altar and temple
and then to the lustral area for proper cleansing before entering
the main hall of the abaton or inner sanctum. There the patient
lay down on a pallet on the floor, and presently an attendant
put out the lights and urged sleep and silence. Then in the patient's
dream the god came with an attendant carrying mortar, pestle
and medicine chest, mixing a potion, applying a plaster, using
the knife or summoning a sacred serpent to lick the afflicted
part. If the dream was suggested by an actual priest making his
rounds, the cure to which the patient attested on waking was
still a thing worthy of wonder and thankfulness. It is from
such expressions of thankfulness that there has come down to
us the most vivid evidence of the treatment undergone and the
cures effected. Corinthian terracotta models of...anatomical
bits and pieces that were healed...illustrate the "case
histories" recorded at Epidauros and elsewhere. The accumulated
mass of life size votive limbs and organs found in the Asklepieion
precinct amounted to some ten cubic meters and included examples
of almost all parts of the body: legs, feet, arms, hands, ears
and eyes, torsos, heads, female breasts and reproductive organs,
and male genitalia.
Votives
were found of two complete heads of women and four fragmentary
heads of men. As with most other pieces, there is no indication
of the particular ailment, since it is likely that shops sold
them ready made, but headaches would in any case have been difficult
to depict. One such sufferer was treated at Epidauros (I.G.,
IV2, 1.122):
"Hagestratos: headache. He being oppressed
by insomnia because of headache, when he was in the abaton, slept
and saw a dream. The god seemed, after curing the pain in his
head and standing him up naked, to teach him the attack used
in the pancration. When day came he went out well and not much
later won the pancration at Nemea."
Even more raculous is the case of Heraieus
of Mytilene:
"He did not have hair on his head,
but a great deal on his chin. Being ashamed because he was laughed
at by others, he slept in the shrine. And the god, anointing
his head with a drug, made him grow hair" (I.G., IV2, 1.121).
Only three eyes were found in this large
collection of votives. This scarcity is surprising in view of the
Epidauros cure records, where blindness or other eye disease
is most often attested. These are typical examples.
"There came as a suppliant to the
god a man who was so one eyed that the other had only lids in
which there was nothing, but they were completely empty. Certain
people in the temple laughed at his simplicity in thinking that
he would see with an eye that was not there. Then a vision appeared
to him as he slept; the god seemed to boil some medicine and,
drawing apart the lids, to pour it in. When day came, he went
out seeing with both eyes" (I.G., IV2, 1.121).
"Ambrosia from Athens, blind of one
eye. She came as a suppliant to the god. Going around the shrine
she mocked at some of the cures as incredible and impossible,
if the lame and blind became whole by having a dream. But when
she slept in the shrine the god, standing over her, seemed to
say that he would cure her but that he would require her to give
to the temple a silver pig as a memorial of her unbelief. Saying
this, he cut open her diseased eye and poured in a drug. When
day came she went away cured" (I.G., IV2, 1.121).
In
a virtually machineless society both hands and feet had to suffer
the wear and tear of production and locomotion, so that it is
not perhaps surprising that these are among the most numerous
dedications. And here for the first time we have a terracotta
model with a particular abnormality plainly depicted: one hand
with a kind of growth or abscess. It may be that this satisfied
patient went to the expense of giving the coroplast a special
order, or this kind of growth may have been a sufficiently common
complaint for the shops to have such models already made up. Perhaps
comparable is a certain Cretan woman who "thanks Asklepios
the Savior, having got a severe ulceration on her little finger
and being cured when the god ordered her to apply an oyster shell
burnt and powdered with rose salve and to anoint it with mallow
mixed with olive. oil. And so he cured her" (Insc. Cret.,
I, xvii.19).
Foot trouble was obviously of various kinds.
One visitor to the Asklepieion at Athens concluded his prayer
of thanks thus:
"Three times blessed Paion Asklepios,
I, Diophantos, was healed by your art of a painful, incurable
would; no longer do I appear crab footed or as walking on sharp
thorns but quick of step, just as you promised" (I.G., II2,
4514).
*EXCERPTS
FROM CURE AND CULT IN ANCIENT CORINTH: A GUIDE TO THE ASKLEPIEION,
AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CLASSICAL STUDIES AT ATHENS, PRINCETON, 1977.
