Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/214

 182 HISTORY OF GRLECE. their neighborhood was full, Asklepiads, even of the late* times, numbered and specified all the intermediate links which separated them from their primitive divine parent. One of these genealogies has been preserved to us, and we may be sure that there were many such, as the Asklepiads were found in many different places. 1 Among them were enrolled highly instructed and accomplished men, such as the great Hippocrates and the historian Ktesias, who prided themselves on the divine origin of themselves and their gens 2 so much did the legendary element pervade even the most philosophical and positive minds of his- torical Greece. Nor can there be any doubt that their means of medical observation must have been largely extended by their vicinity to a temple so much frequented by the sick, who came in confident hopes of divine relief, and who, whilst they offered up sacrifice and prayer to JEsculapius, and slept in his temple in order to be favored with healing suggestions in their dreams, might, in case the god withheld his supernatural aid, consult his 1 See the genealogy at length in Le Clerc, Historic de la Mcdecine, lib. ii. c. 2. p. 78, also p. 287 ; also Littr6, Introduction aux (Euvres Completes d'Hippocrate, t. i. p. 35. Hippocrates was the seventeenth from ^Escula pius. Theopompus the historian went at considerable length into the pedigree of the Asklepiads of Kos and Knidus, tracing them np to Podaleirius and his first settlement at Syruus in Karia (see Theopomp. Fragm. Ill, Didot) : Polyanthus of Kyrene composed a special treatise Tepi r^f ruv ' 'Aflf/cA^Tna- 6uv yeveffeue (Sextus Empiric, adv. Grammat. i. 12. p. 271); see Stephan. Byz. v. Kwf, and especially Aristides, Oral. vii. Ascltpiadce. The Asklepiads were even reckoned among the ' ApxyyeTcu of Rhodes, jointly with the He- rakleids (Aristides, Or. 44, ad Rhod. p. 839, Dind.). In the extensive sacred enclosure at Epidaurus stood the statues of Asklc- pius and his wife Epione (Pausan. ii. 29, 1) : two daughters are coupled with him by Aristophanes, and he was considered especially evirate (Plutns, 654) Jaso, Panakeia and Hygieia are named by Aristide's. Kiaduv; also Phsedr. c. 121. (p. 270). About Ktesias, Galen, Opp. t v. p. 652, Basil.; and Bahrt, Fragm. Ktesiae, p. 20. Aristotle (see Stahr. Aristo- telia, i. p. 32) and Xenophon, the physician of the emperor Claudius, were both Askldpiads (Tacit. Annal. xii. 61). Plato, de Republ. iii. 405, calls them roi)f KOfnpoiie 'Aovc/ltfTaadaf. Pausanias, a distinguished physician at Ge,'a in Sicily, and contemporary of the philosopher Empedokles, was also an Asklepiad : sec the verses of Empedoklttg upon him, Diogen. Lafirt. viii. 61.
 * Plato, Protagor. c. 6 (p. 311). 'ImroKpurri rbv Kwov, rbv ruv 'AerK/?-