Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

One of Apollo’s white crows witnessed this act of betrayal and flew back to tell his master all about the insult to his honour. Enraged, Apollo asked his sister Artemis to take revenge. Only too willing, she attacked the palace at Phlegyantis with plague arrows – poisoned darts that spread a terrible disease throughout the compound. Many besides Coronis were infected. The crow saw all and returned to give Apollo a full report.

‘She’s dying, my lord, dying!’

‘Did she say anything? Did she admit her guilt?’

‘Oh yes, oh yes. “I deserve my fate,” she said. “Tell the great god Apollo that I ask no forgiveness and beg no pity, beg no pity, only save the life of our child. Save the life of our child.” Ha! Ha! Ha!’

With such malicious glee did the crow crow, that Apollo lost his temper and turned it black. All crows, ravens and rooks ever since have been that colour.fn1

When Apollo, now filled with remorse, reached plague-stricken Phlegyantis he found Coronis lying dead on her funeral pyre, the flames licking all round her. With a cry of grief he leapt through the flames and from her womb cut out their child who was still living. Apollo raised Coronis to the stars as the constellation Corvus, the Crow.fn2

The rescued infant boy, whom Apollo named Asclepius, was put in the care of the centaur Chiron. Perhaps because he had been delivered by a surgical procedure (albeit a rather violent one), perhaps because while he had been in the womb infection had raged all around him, perhaps because his father was Apollo, god of medicine and mathematics – probably for all these reasons – Asclepius demonstrated early on some very remarkable talents in the field of medicine.

As the boy grew, it quickly became clear to Chiron that he allied an incisive, logical and curious mind with a natural gift for healing. Chiron, no mean naturalist, herbalist and reasoner himself, took enormous pleasure in training the boy in the medical arts. Besides giving him a thorough grounding in the anatomy of animals and humans, he taught him that knowledge is gained from observation and careful record-keeping rather than from spinning theories. He showed him how to gather medicinal plants, grind them, mix them, heat them, and work them into powders, potions and preparations that could be eaten, drunk or stirred into food. He instructed him how to staunch blood flow, concoct fomented poultices, dress wounds and reset fractured bones. By the time he was fourteen he had saved a soldier’s leg from being amputated, brought a fevered young girl back from the very brink of death, rescued a bear from a trap, saved the population of a village from an epidemic of dysentery and relieved the suffering of a bruised snake by the application of an ointment of his own devising. This last case proved to be invaluable, for the grateful serpent had licked Asclepius’s ear in thanks, whispering as he did so many secrets of the arts of healing that were closed even to Chiron.

Athena, to whom snakes were sacred, bestowed her thanks too, in the form of a jar of Gorgon’s blood. You might think this a poor gift. Far from it. Sometimes the law of opposites applies. A single drop of the silvery-gold ichor that keeps the gods immortal is fatal for humans to touch or taste. The blood of a creature as deadly and dangerous as a serpent-haired Gorgon, on the other hand, has the power to bring the dead back to life.

By the time he was twenty Asclepius had mastered all the arts of surgery and medicine. He embraced his teacher Chiron in a fond farewell and left to set up on his own as the world’s first physician, apothecary and healer. His fame spread around the Mediterranean with great speed. The sick, lame and unhappy flocked to his surgery, outside which he hung a sign – a wooden staff with a snake twined round it, seen to this day on many ambulances, clinics and (often disreputable) medical websites.fn3

He married EPIONE, whose name means ‘soothing’ or ‘relief from pain’. Together they had three sons and four daughters. Asclepius trained his girls as rigorously as Chiron had trained him.

The eldest, HYGIEIA, he taught the practices of cleanliness, diet and physical exercise that are today named ‘hygiene’ after her.

To PANACEA he revealed the arts of universal health, of medicinal preparation and the production of remedies and treatments that could heal anything – which is what her name means: ‘cure all’.

ACESO he instructed in the healing process itself, including what we would now call immunology.

The youngest girl IASO specialized in recovery and recuperation.

The elder boys, MACHAON and PODALIRIUS, became prototypes of the army doctor. Their later service in the Trojan War was recorded by Homer.

The youngest son, TELESPHORUS, is usually depicted as being hooded and of very restricted growth. His field of study was rehabilitation and convalescence, the return of a patient to full health.