In a small valley in the eastern Peloponnese lie the remnants of what was once the greatest healing center of the ancient world.
Belonging to the nearby coastal city of Epidaurus, it would have attracted visitors from all over Greece and beyond,
with its healthy climate, mineral springs, and skilled physicians.
But this wasn’t a hospital in the modern sense, rather, it was a sacred sanctuary dedicated to Asclepius, the Greek god of healing.
We first hear of Asclepius in Homer’s Iliad, thought to have been composed around the 8th century B.C.
There, he appears as a man renowned for his healing abilities, and has two sons who were physicians in the Greek army.
Although there is some ambiguity in the wording, the Homeric Poems seem to view him as a mere mortal.
A few centuries later however, he had been firmly established as a god.
According to this view, Asclepius was the son of Apollo and Coronis, a mortal princess from Thessaly.
However, while Coronis was pregnant, she fell in love with a man called Ischys and went on to marry him.
This so angered Apollo that he sent his sister Artemis to kill her,
but as the body of Coronis lay burning on the funeral pyre, he decided to save the baby from its mother's womb, performing the first Caesarian section.
In this way, Asclepius' very birth was due to an act of medical intervention.
This is just one out of many versions of the story though.
For example, in some accounts, Coronis abandons her child near Epidaurus in shame for his illegitimacy, leaving the baby to be looked after by a goat and a dog.
Yet another version claims that his mother was Arsinoë, daughter of Leucippus, and that he was born in the region of Messenia, on the southwestern side of the Pelopponese.
The question of his birthplace was eventually settled however, as an oracle was brought in, and attested that it was indeed Epidaurus.
There are also variants of the story where Apollo himself kills Coronis, and where Hermes is the one who saves the child.
The motherless Asclepius was then brought up by his father who gave him the gift of healing and the secrets of medicine using plants and herbs.
He was also tutored by Cheiron, an old and wise centaur who lived on Mt. Pelion.
Under their training, he became a great physician and surgeon, and went on to raise the art of medicine to unprecedented heights.
Eventually, he became so skilled, that he could not only cure all the sick, but even return the dead back to life.
There are various traditions regarding how he acquired this latter power.
According to one, it was thanks to Athena giving him the blood of Medusa,
as that which had flowed from the veins on the right side of her body, could be used for resurrection.
Another story states that Asclepius was once commanded to restore the life of Glaucus, and had thereupon been confined in a secret prison.
While standing about pondering on what he should do, a snake crept near his staff.
Lost in his thoughts, Asclepius unknowingly killed it by hitting it repeatedly.
After a while, another snake came there with a herb in its mouth, and placed it on the head of the dead one, after which both escaped together.
Seeing this, Asclepius decided to use the same herb on Glaucus, and successfully brought him back.
It is sometimes also said that a snake taught Asclepius the secret knowledge of resurrection in return for some kindness rendered by him.
Before long, rumors of Asclepius’ miraculous healing powers spread across the world,
and ancient sources mention several persons who were believed to have been brought back to life by him.
But in so doing, he aroused the wrath of Zeus.
Not only was Zeus angered to see many of his old enemies, whom he himself had struck dead with his thunderbolts, returning to life,
but he feared that men might gradually end up escaping death altogether, and thereby breaking the eternal division between humanity and the gods.
In addition, some sources say that his brother Hades, king of the underworld, was complaining about the diminishing number of dead.
And so, Zeus killed Asclepius with a flash of lightning.
Apollo protested against his son’s treatment but was himself punished by Zeus for impiety and made to serve Admetos, the king of Thessaly, for one year.
According to some traditions, Asclepius was then placed among the stars, taking on the shape of the constellation Ophiuchus ("the Serpent Holder").
Later however, Apollo managed to convince Zeus to resurrect his son as a god, and to give him a place on Mount Olympus.
Asclepius is generally said to have married Epione, the goddess of soothing, with whom he had many children.
Most of them are personifications of the powers ascribed to their father.
For example, Iaso is the goddess of recuperation from illness, and Hygieia is the goddess of health, cleanliness, and sanitation.
However as mentioned earlier, he also had two sons who appear in the Iliad, and a guild, or possibly priesthood called the Asclepiads may have claimed descent from them.
Continuing the art of medicine and healing of Asclepius,
they went on to produce many great physicians, the most famous being Hippocrates, “the father of medicine”.
In antiquity, temples dedicated to Asclepius could be found all over Greece, and eventually, his cult even spread to Rome.
Usually they were built in healthy places, on hills outside of towns, and near wells which were believed to have healing powers.
According to the geographer Strabo, the oldest of these temples was located in the town of Tricca, in Thessaly, but its site has never been discovered.
Another important sanctuary existed on the island of Kos which also had an important school of physicians,
and one could be found in Athens just below the Acropolis on the western slope.
His principal seat of worship however, was the sanctuary of Epidaurus.
Established in the 6th century B.C, it grew out of an earlier cult of Apollo, and the area has been devoted to healing deities since prehistory.
The precinct was surrounded by an extensive grove, and within it, no one was allowed to die, or t be born.
Ancient visitors would have entered the grounds through a monumental gate, of which little now remains,
and then followed a processional pathway that ended up in the temple of Asclepius.
Within it was a magnificent statue of ivory and gold, depicting the god as a handsome and manly figure, resembling that of Zeus.
Seated on a throne, he held a staff in one hand, while resting the other upon the head of a serpent.
Beside him would have also been a dog.
Both of these animals, especially the serpent were sacred to him.
This was partially because they helped him bring back Glaucus,
but also because snakes were associated with health in general, and were further believed to be guardians of wells with healing powers.
Therefore, a special type of tame snakes were kept in the sanctuary, and the god himself frequently appeared in the form of a serpent.
Among the other noteworthy buildings on the site were the circular tholos, with its mysterious underground labyrinth,
the stadium, as well as the massive theatre, which was built to seat 14.000 visitors, and is still in use today.
The last two would have come to good use during the pan-Hellenic Asklepieia festival,
which every four years attracted droves of people to celebrate theatre, sports, and music in honour of Asclepius.
For those coming to Epidaurus to be cured however, other parts of the sanctuary would have been of primary interest,
and their experience would have been quite different from the festival-goers.
First, one would need to go through Katharsis, or purification.
This involved taking a number of ritual baths, and was accompanied by a cleansing diet, which could last as long as six days.
Then, once you were considered pure, you were ready to be diagnosed and receive prescriptions.
This was done through “incubatio”, a sort of dream therapy.
Patients would be led into the "Enkoimeterion", or dormitory,
where they would be put into a hypnotic state, likely induced by hallucinogens, and then begin their dream journey.
As they slept, they would be visited by either Asclepius himself, or one of his children, who would reveal a remedy for their disease.
In the event that you didn’t have a personal encounter in the dream,
you could still report what you had experienced to one of the priests, and be given an interpretation.
Usually, the cures involved visits to the baths or a gymnasium, although you may also have been prescribed certain diets or medicinal herbs.
More advanced remedies, such as surgical operations were also offered,
for example the opening of an abdominal abscess or the removal of traumatic foreign material.
In this case, again, the patient would have taken some sort of drug to serve as anesthesia.
Once you were cured it was customary to offer a sacrifice to the god that had helped you, usually consisting of a rooster or a goat.
It was also common to offer a likeness of the body part that had been cured,
or to hang up a tablet recording your name, disease, and the manner in which it had been cured.
Many of these have been found, as in this example,
where a certain Cutius Gallus has combined the tablet with the body part, in thanks for regaining his ability to hear.
Having experienced its golden age during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC,
the sanctuary at Epidaurus continued to prosper under the Romans, who renovated it and added new buildings.
In the late Empire however its fortunes took a turn for the worse, and in 395 A.D. it was raided by the Goths.
The sanctuary finally shut down in 426, when emperor Theodosius II decreed the closure of all pagan sites in Greece.
It seems to have then been converted into a Christian healing center for a while,
but following two major earthquakes in 522 and 551, the site was abandoned for good.
