Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/211

 ASKLEPIUS. 179 Avenge the wounded dignity of her brother, put Koronis to death ; but Apollo preserved the male child of which she was about to be delivered, and consigned it to the Centaur Cheiron to be brought up. The child was named Asklepius or ^Esculapius, and acquired, partly from the teaching of the beneficent leech Cheiron, partly from inborn and superhuman aptitude, a knowl- edge of the virtues of herbs and a mastery of medicine and sur- gery, such as had never before been witnessed. He not only cured the sick, the wounded, and the dying, but even restored the dead to life. Kapaneus, Eriphyle, Hippolytus, Tyndareus and Glaukus were all affirmed by different poets and logographers to have been endued by him with a new life. 1 But Zeus now found himself under the necessity of taking precautions lest mankind, thus unexpectedly protected against sickness and death, should no longer stand in need of the immortal gods : he smote Askle- pius with thunder and killed him. Apollo was so exasperated by this slaughter of his highly-gifted son, that he killed the Cyclopes who had fabricated the thunder, and Zeus was about to condemn him to Tartarus for doing so ; but on the intercession of Latona he relented, and was satisfied with imposing upon him a temporary servitude in the house of Admetus at Pherae. Asklepius was worsliipped with very great solemnity at Trikka, at Kos, at Knidus, and in many different parts of Greece, but espe- cially at Epidaurus, so that more than one legend had grown up though the name " Corvo custode cjus " is there printed with a capital letter, as if it were a man named Corvus. 1 Schol. Eurip. Alkest. 1 ; Diodor. iv. 71 ; Apollodor. iii. 10, 3; Pindar, Pyth. iii. 59 ; Sextns Empiric, adv. Grammatic. i. 12. p. 271. Stesichorus named Eriphyle the Naupaktian verses, Hippolytus (compare Servius ad Virgil. ^Eneid. vii. 761) ; Panyasis, Tyndareus; a proof of the popularity of this tale among the poets. Pindar says that ^sculapius was " tempted by gold "to raise a man from the dead, and Plato (Legg. iii. p. 408) copies him : this seems intended to afford some color for the subsequent punish- ment. " Mercede id captum (observes Boeckh. ad Pindar. 1. c.) JEscula- pium fecisse recentior est fictio ; Pindari fortasse ipsius, quern tragici secuti sunt : baud dubie a medicorum avaris moribus profecta, qui Graecorum medicis nostrisque communes sunt." The rapacity of the physicians (grant- ing it to be ever so well-founded, both then and now) appears to me less likely to have operated upon the mind of Pindar, than the disposition to extenuate the cruelty of Zeus, by imputing guilty and sordid views to Askle piufl. Compare the citation from Diksearchus, infrb. p. 249, note 1.