Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/213

 ASKLEPIAD FAMILIES IN GREECE. Igl eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of Ajax. 1 Galen appears uncertain whether Asklepius (as well as Dion- ysus) was originally a god, or wheth.r he was first a man and then became afterwards a god ; 2 but Apollodorus professed to fix the exact date of his apotheosis. 3 Throughout all the historical ages the descendants of Asklepius were numerous and widely diffused. The many families or gentes called Asklepiads, who devoted themselves to the study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt near the temples of Asklenius whither sick and suffering men came to obtain relief all recognized the god not merely as the object of their common worship, but also as their actual progenitor. Like Solon, who reckoned Neleus and Poseidon as his ancestors, or the Milesian Hekatasus, who traced his origin through fifteen successive links to a god like the privileged gens at Pelion in Thessaly, 4 who considered the wise Centaur Cheiron as their progenitor, and who inherited from him their precious secrets respecting the medicinal herbs of which 1 Arktinus, Epicc. Grose. Fragm. 2. p. 22, Duntzer. The Ilias Minor men- tioned the death of Machaon by Eurypylus, son of Telephus (Fragm. 5. p. 19, Diintzcr). 8 'Aoxfyniof yi rot nal Aiovvaof, elr' uv&pUTtoi -xporepov f/arr/v elre KOL apxifisv deoi (Galen, Protreptic. 9. t. 1. p. 22, Kuhn.). Pausanias considers Win as i?e6f ef upx?/C (" 26, 7). In the important temple at Smyrna he was worsnipped as Zcvf 'AcrA7/7ri6f (Aristides, Or. 6. p. 64 ; Or. 23. p. 456, Dind.). 3 Apollodor. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom, i. p. 381 ; see Heyne, Fragment. Apollodor. p. 410. According to Apollodorus, the apotheosis of Herakles and of jEsculapius took place at the same time, thirty-eight years after He- rakles began to reign at Argos. 4 About Hekataeus, Herodot. ii. 143 ; about Solon, Diogen. Laert, Vit. Platon. init. A curious fragment, preserved from the lost works of Dikaearchus, tells us of the descendants of the Centaur Cheiron at the town of Pelion, or perhaps at the neighboring town of Demetrias, it is not quite certain which, per- haps at bofti (see Diksearch Fragment, ed. Fuhr, p. 408). Tavrrjv tie TJJV diivafiiv ev TUV irofartiv olSe -yevof, 6 67) Aeyertu Xeipuvof unoyovov dvai irapafiiSuGt 6e icai deiKvvai iraTTjp vi), KOI ovruf i) 6vvafiL( v%.uaaerat, uf oi>6eif uA/lof olds ruv Tro/liroiv oi>x oaiov 6e Toiif iucrTa/j,vovf T& ap[iana iu<r&ov rolf nafivoiai /3o7]deiv, iiTJiii TrpoiKa. Plato.de Republ iii. 4 (p. 391). 'A^<XA<)f VTT) ri co^urory Xeipuvi Compare Xenophon, De Venr.t. c. 1