Tours: Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros

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Tour the Sanctuary of Asklepios and receive a primer on ancient Greek medicine.

Opening RemarksSanctuary EntranceMedical SteleSacrifices and PrayersTemple of AsklepiosPriest HousesThe AbatonIncubationClosing Remarks

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Hippokrates showing Epidauros, concept art by Caroline Soucy

The ill and infirm came to this sanctuary to pray and offer sacrifices to Asklepios, the god of medicine.

According to myth, Asklepios was once a mortal physician who eventually became a god.

He had many sanctuaries across Greece, but the most famous was in Epidauros.

When pilgrims passed through the entrance of the sanctuary, they could read this inscription:

"When you enter the abode of the god which smells of incense, you must be pure. And thought is pure when you think with piety".

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Asklepios, like most Greek gods, had a backstory wreathed in fire and blood. He was the product of an affair between the god Apollo and a mortal named Koronis. Apollo killed Koronis after discovering she had been unfaithful, and ordered her body burned on a funeral pyre. However, Apollo rescued his dead lover's unborn child from her womb before the fire consumed her body.

Apollo gave the baby to the centaur Chiron, who raised Asklepios and taught him how to practice medicine.

The healing cult of Asklepios was first attested to in Epidauros, but slowly spread to different cities, exploding in popularity from the 4th century BCE onwards.

Fragment of a stele with an inscription / 5th-1st Century BCE (Classical / Hellenistic Greece)

Medical steles constituted a sort of hub between medicine, religion, and the dinvine.

They were slabs with inscriptions that praised Asklepios' virtues and merit, and described his methods of healing.

The inscriptions relayed the dreams patients had within the abaton, one of the most important buildings in the sanctuary.

The steles outlined the patient's name, their disease, and how they were cured by Asklepios.

They were probably written by the sanctuary's priests, or at least under the priests' supervision.

Asklepios was a complex deity. In addition to being a god, he was also a trained physician and disciple of the centaur Chiron.

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The miraculous cures chronicled in medical steles weren't always clean and simple. Below is an inscription with a more detailed procedure:

"A man with abscess within his abdomen. When asleep in the Temple he saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god ordered the servants who accompanied him to grip him and hold him tightly so that he could cut open his abdomen. The man tried to get away, but they gripped him and bound him to a door knocker. Thereupon Asklepios cut his belly open, removed the abscess, and, after having stiched him up again, released him from his bonds. Whereupon he walked out sound, but the floor of the abaton was covered with blood."

Naiskos stele showing Asklepios and Hygieia with faithfuls at the altar / End of 4th cent. BCE (Hellenistic Greece)

In ancient Greece, religion was inseparable from rites, processions, and sacrifices.

This was no different in Epidauros, and visitors to Asklepios' sanctuary needed to prepare themselves accordingly.

Pilgrims cleaned themselves in order to be pure, then offered Asklepios food like honey cakes, cheesecakes, baked meals, and figs.

The food was placed on the sanctuary's holy table, where it was presumably later taken by priests.

After the preliminary offerings, visitors were allowed to enter the abaton — where they would hopefully encounter Asklepios in a dream.

Medical steles also mention that healed patients sometimes gave additional offerings to Asklepios as thanks for being cured.

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The poet Pindar's ode to Hieron of Syracuse features a section dedicated to the birth of Asklepios:

"Then Apollo spoke: 'I can no longer endure in my soul to destroy my own child by a most pitiful death, together with his mother's grievous suffering.' So he spoke. In one step he reached the child and snatched it from the corpse; the burning fire divided its blaze for him, and he bore the child away and gave him to the Magnesian Centaur to teach him to heal many painful diseases for men. And those who came to him afflicated with congenital sores, or with their limbs wounded by gray bronze or by a far-hurled stone, or with their bodies wasting away from summer's fire or winter's cold, he released and delivered all of them from their different pains, tending some of them with gentle incantations, others with sooting potions, or by wrapping remedies all around their limbs, and others he set right with surgery."

The temples of Epidauros, aquarelle by Alphonse-Alexandre Defrasse (1860-1939) / 1893

Asklepios was originally born a mortal, and was the product of an affair between the god Apollo and a mortal, Koronis.

Apollo killed Koronis after discovering she had been unfaithful, and ordered her body burned on a funeral pyre.

However, he rescued his unborn child from Koronis' womb before the fire consumed her body.

Apollo gave the baby to the centaur Chiron, who raised Asklepios and taught him to practice medicine.

Over time, Asklepios became so skilled in the art of healing, he could even raise the dead.

This angered Zeus, who sent Asklepios to Hades with a thunderbolt.

Apollo retaliated by killing the Cyclopes responsible for making Zeus' thunderbolts.

Then, Zeus revived Asklepios, making him immortal and deifying him in the process.

In sculptures, poterry, mosaics, and coins, Asklepios was portrayed holding a staff interwined with a sacred snake.

The staff is a symbol of medicine that still ensures to this day.

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Inside and outside the temple, devotees honored Akslepios with votive offerings such as coins, medical tools, bandages, reliefs, statues, and statuettes. Gowever, they also gave body part votives. These anatomical ex-votos (offerings) represented the part of the pilgrim's body affected by illness. They were offered either during the initial prayer for health, or at the end as thanks for being healed.

One example of such an offering comes from an ancient medical stele. According to the inscription, Pandaros arrived at the temple "with marks on his forehead". While sleeping, a vision of Asklepios visited him, tied a bandage around his head, and told him to remove it upon leaving the abaton. When Pandaros woke, he did as the god instructed. To his surprise, the marks on his forehead had been transferred to the bandage. As thanks, Pandaros dedicated the bandage to the temple, where it was presumably returned to its divine owner.

Red-figure Attic aryballos with scene of doctor bleeding the arm of a patient / 480-470 BCE (Classical Greece)

The Epidoteion was the priests' residence.

As the link between the patients and the gods, priests were essential to the operation of the sanctuary.

They were often elected into the priesthood for one year periods, but could also buy themselves a position if they were wealthy enough.

In addition to interpreting patients' dreams in the abaton, priests both supervised and performed sacrifices and rituals.

During these functions, they were usually clad in white.

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Asklepios and his family weren't the only staff at the sanctuary, as professional physicians worked there as well. After the priests interpreted the patient's dream, the surgery prescribed the the god — as well as the preparation of pharmacological drugs — was carried out by a medical staff.

Before becoming a traveller doctor, the famous physician Hippokrates allegedly did a residency at a sanctuary in his hometown of Kos. His acceptance onto the staff was likely due to his being an Asklepiad — a member of an aristocratic family that claimed to be descended from Asklepios.

Marble statue of Asklepios, Roman copy of a Greek original / 125-150 CE (Roman period)

The Abaton was built in the northern boundary of the sanctuary, where it surrounded a sacred well whose water was believed to have therapeutic properties.

The abaton was where pilgrims went for incubation, or dream rituals.

Details of the incubation ritual have been described in unearthed medical steles.

They were also noted in Aristophanes' play "Ploutos", which featured a more comedic view of the process.

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There were many methods for curing the sick in the sanctuary. In addition to being miraculously healed by Asklepios in the abton, pilgrims could also be given pharmaceutical drugs and remedies. They could also undergo surgical procedures, as evidenced by the scalpels, lances, and other tools discovered in archaelogical excavations.

The variety of treatments in not surprising. Asklepios was revered for being an experienced and versatile healer, and one of Pindar's odes describes him as such:

"Now all who came to him afflicted with natural sores or with limbs wounded by grey bronze or by far-flung stone, or with bodies wracked by summer fever or winter chill, he relieved of their various ills and restored them; some he tended with calming incantations while others drank soothing potions or he applied remedies to all parts of their bodies; still others he raised up with surgery."

Asklepios resurrects Hippolyte, oil painting by Jean Daret (1613/1615-1668) / 1636

Incubation was the dream ritual pilgrims experienced in the abaton.

After completing the necessary preliminary rituals, pilgrims were allowed to enter the sacred building, where they lay prone.

As they took in the smell of burning incense, the sanctuary's priests extinguished the oil lamps and asked them to sleep in silence.

Once they were asleep, Asklepios would appear in their dreams and give his medical advice.

The advice included diet and treatment recommendations, as well as requests for specific offerings or religious rituals.

Upoon waking up, priests interpreted the patients' dreams, unless a patient had been miraculously healed in their sleep.

However, if a patient was completely beyond help, they were removed from the abaton.

This was to adhere to a ritual law that stated no one could die — or be born — within the building.

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The incubation ritual was also used elsewhere in the Greek world, including Oropos. However, instead of healing advice, pilgrims incubated at Oropos to receive prophecies from the hero Amphiaraos.

Inscriptions and votive steles from the 4th century BCE indicate that while Amphiaraos did occasionally perform surgery in the patients' dreams, he was a prophet first and a healer second.

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