View:
By Section
[1] At Lessa the Argive territory joins that of Epidaurus. But before you reach Epidaurus itself you will come to the sanctuary of Asklepios. Who dwelled in this land before Epidaurus came to it I do not know, nor could I discover from the natives the descendants of Epidaurus either. But the last king before the Dorians arrived in the Peloponnesus was, they say, Pityreus, a descendant of Ion, son of Xuthus, and they relate that he handed over the land to Deiphontes and the Argives without a struggle.
[2] He went to Athens with his people and dwelled there, while Deiphontes and the Argives took possession of Epidauria. These on the death of Temenus seceded from the other Argives; Deiphontes and Hyrnetho through hatred of the sons of Temenus, and the army with them, because it respected Deiphontes and Hyrnetho more than Ceisus and his brothers. Epidaurus, who gave the land its name, was, the people of Elis say, a son of Pelops but, according to Argive opinion and the poem the Great Eoeae, the father of Epidaurus was Argos, son of Zeus, while the Epidaurians maintain that Epidaurus was the child of Apollo.
[3] That the land is especially sacred to Asklepios is due to the following reason. The Epidaurians say that Phlegyas came to the Peloponnesus, ostensibly to see the land, but really to spy out the number of the inhabitants, and whether the greater part of them was warlike. For Phlegyas was the greatest soldier of his time, and making forays in all directions he carried off the crops and lifted the cattle.
[4] When he went to the Peloponnesus, he was accompanied by his daughter, who all along had kept hidden from her father that she was with child by Apollo. In the country of the Epidaurians she bore a son, and exposed him on the mountain called Nipple at the present day, but then named Myrtium. As the child lay exposed he was given milk by one of the goats that pastured about the mountain, and was guarded by the watchdog of the herd. And when Aresthanas (for this was the herdsman’s name)
[5] discovered that the tale of the goats was not full, and that the watchdog also was absent from the herd, he left, they say, no stone unturned, and on finding the child desired to take him up. As he drew near he saw lightning that flashed from the child, and, thinking that it was something divine, as in fact it was, he turned away. Presently it was reported over every land and sea that Asklepios was discovering everything he wished to heal the sick, and that he was raising dead men to life.
[6] There is also another tradition concerning him. Coronis, they say, when with child with Asklepios, had intercourse with Ischys, son of Elatos. She was killed by Artemis to punish her for the insult done to Apollo, but when the pyre was already lighted Hermes is said to have snatched the child from the flames.
[7] The third account is, in my opinion, the farthest from the truth; it makes Asklepios to be the son of Arsinoe, the daughter of Leukippos. For when Apollophanes the Arcadian, came to Delphi and asked the god if Asklepios was the son of Arsinoe and therefore a Messenian, the Pythian priestess gave this response: —O Asklepios, born to bestow great joy upon mortals, Pledge of the mutual love I enjoyed with Phlegyas’ daughter, Lovely Coronis, who bare thee in rugged land Epidaurus. This oracle makes it quite certain that Asklepios was not a son of Arsinoe, and that the story was a fiction invented by Hesiod, or by one of Hesiod’s interpolators, just to please the Messenians.
[8] There is other evidence that the god was born in Epidaurus for I find that the most famous sanctuaries of Asklepios had their origin from Epidaurus. In the first place, the Athenians, who say that they gave a share of their mystic rites to Asklepios, call this day of the festival Epidauria, and they allege that their worship of Asklepios dates from then. Again, when Arkhias, son of Aristaechmus, was healed in Epidauria after spraining himself while hunting about Pindasus, he brought the cult to Pergamon.
[9] From the one at Pergamon has been built in our own day the sanctuary of Asklepios by the sea at Smyrna. Further, at Balagraiof the Cyreneans there is an Asklepios called Healer, who like the others came from Epidaurus. From the one at Cyrene was founded the sanctuary of Asklepios at Lebene, in Crete. There is this difference between the Cyreneans and the Epidaurians, that whereas the former sacrifice goats, it is against the custom of the Epidaurians to do so.
[10] That Asklepios was considered a god from the first, and did not receive the title only in course of time, I infer from several signs, including the evidence of Homer, who makes Agamemnon say about Makhaon:Talthybios, with all speed go summon me hither Makhaon, mortal son of Asklepios.
188
As who should say, ‘human son of a god’.
Description of Greece. Pausanias. ed. W. H. S. Jones, ed. H. A. Ormerod, ed. Gregory Nagy. . .