Asclepios Greek God of Medicine (350 B.C.) - National Museum, Athens

Asclepios   22" H Bonded White Marble $273 (less Internet discount of $25) = $248 (freight $27)

Asclepios (the Romans spelled his name Aesculapius) was worshipped as the god of medicine. He was not actually one of the twelve gods of Olympus but probably a mortal who originally practiced healing in the area of Trikkala on the Thessalian plain of central Greece and came later to be considered a god. Asclepions (temples where he was worshipped) were built at Athens, Corinth, Pergamon, Kos and most important of all, Epidauros. When a plague broke out in Rome in 293 B.C. a precise copy of the Athenian Asclepion was built in that city. The Romans sent for the god Asclepios to be brought to their city and he was sent in the guise of a snake. There was always an association between the snake and the health god; that snake became a symbol of medicine and the symbol has been carried down to the present day. This statue comes from a reproduction made directly from the marble original which was found in the Temple of Asclepios at Epidauros. Like other representations of Asclepios we see him as a venerable old man with thick and wavy hair and a heavy beard. He wears his himation or cloak in the style worn by learned teachers in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., leaving most of the breast uncovered. He leans on a staff around which the sacred snake is entwined. Asclepios, Aesculapios in latin, was the son of Apollo and god of the Medicine. Once there was a shepherd in Turkey, who was looking after his sheep when a snake bit him in his leg. He had much pain and he went to a Asclepion, a hospital, nearby Pergamum. When he arrived there he asked for help, but the medicin answered: 'This is a hospital for spiritual handicaps. But we can give you a poison so that you will die faster.' They gave him the poison but he didn't die, the two poisons, the one of the snake and the one of the Ascepion, stopped each other. From that moment the medicine sign is a stick with a snake surrounded and a basin on top of it.