Asclepius

Medicine they say Apis, an Egyptian aboriginal, invented before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius increased the art.

But there were also, among the Egyptians, men who were once living and afterward became gods by human opinion:

And from the reign of Heracles in Argos to the deification of Heracles himself and of Asclepius thirty-eight years are reckoned, according to the chronographer Apollodorus.

for, as the poet says, the god did not grant even this to the sons of Asclepius.

And neither Chiron nor Asclepius nor the sons of Asclepius healing them are of any benefit to them, because of their own licentiousness and wickedness;

Only the son of Phoebus, if he yet saw this light of day—

he slew my son Asclepius, piercing his bosom with a thunderbolt;

then then might she have left the dark abode and gates of Hades and have come again, for he would raise the dead to life, till that the thunderbolt’s forked flame, hurled by Zeus, smote him.

Just as the saying goes, "Asclepius prescribed for this man horse-exercise, or cold baths, or going barefoot," so this too may be said:

Or Asclepius the work of the Fruit-bearer?

the man who throws in my face the friendship of Alexander, this man Demosthenes, stole away the opportunities of the city by making the motion that the prytanes call an assembly for the eighth day of Elaphebolion, the day of the sacrifice to Asclepius, and the introductory day of the festival —the sacred day—a thing that no man remembers ever to have been done before.

He takes charge of the processions—that which is held for Asclepius, when the initiates keep house, and that of the Great Dionysia, together with the supervisors, whom formerly the people elected, ten in number, and they paid the expenses of the procession from their own means, but now it allots one from each tribe and gives a hundred minae for the equipment.

For surely it did not escape your love that a certain Asclepius, because he would not choose communion with Doeg, being struck by them, died under the blows—or rather, through the blows was translated to life.

and the physician was a lover of money — Asclepius was his name.

when, as we gazed toward the wave-beat shore, a wave tremendous we beheld towering to the skies, so that from our view the cliffs of Scirori vanished, for it hid the isthmus and the rock of Asclepius;

But if Asclepius, being a god and struck by a thunderbolt, could not help himself, how will he help others?

Deep-thinking Cheiron reared Jason under his stone roof, and later Asclepius, whom he taught the gentle-handed laws of remedies.

But even skill is enthralled by the love of gain.

And so the son of Cronus hurled his shaft with his hands through both of them, and swiftly tore the breath out of their chests;

But when her kinsmen had placed the girl in the wooden walls of the pyre, and the ravening flame of Hephaestus ran around it, then Apollo spoke:

Let us not, then, demand a reckoning from Homer or any other of the poets on other matters by asking them, if any one of them was a physician and not merely an imitator of a physician’s talk, what men any poet, old or new, is reported to have restored to health as Asclepius did, or what disciples of the medical art he left after him as Asclepius did his descendants;

It was by knowing how to foster love and unanimity in these that, as our two poets here relate, and as I myself believe, our forefather Asclepius composed this science of ours.

For the healing of your sickness, I will send Asclepius to Troy, since it is doomed to fall a second time before my arrows.

Know also that you will never gain relief from this grave sickness, as long as the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, until of your own free will you come to the plains of Troy, find there the sons of Asclepius, our comrades, be relieved of this infection, and, with this bow’s aid and mine, be hailed as the sacker of Troy’s towers.