Epidauros was renowned as the center of the cult of the healing god Asklepios. Attaining popularity in the fourth century BC, worship of Asklepios illustrates an important development in Greco-Roman religious life: the desire to complement increasingly sterile official cults with divinities who responded directly to personal appeals.
According to a common legend, Asklepios was the son of Apollo and a mortal woman, Koro-nis; the centaur Chiron raised him and taught him the art of healing. Asklepios was generally depicted as a mature bearded man, with a staff around which a snake was coiled. The main public festival at Epidauros took place in late April to early May. Included were an initial purification by washing, sacrifices, a formal banquet, and athletic and music competitions — features standard in the worship of any god, as we have seen. Peculiar to Asklepios were the devotions, performed throughout the year, of individuals seeking to have their illnesses cured. The suppliant would first cleanse him or herself by bathing, then spend the night in the abaton, a long stoa inside the sanctuary (Figure 17.2). Asklepios, or one of his sacred snakes, appeared in a dream and revealed the appropriate treatment. If cured, the patient might present as a thank-offering a stele on which the medical problem, the treatment, and the successful outcome were reported. Such inscriptions vividly recreate ancient Greek medical practices. Some reports are wonderfully improbable, such as the woman pregnant for five years who prayed to the god for relief, then gave birth to a five-year-old boy. Others, more credible, record special diets, exercise, and therapeutic baths.
Figure 17.2 Plan, the Sanctuary of Asklepios, Epidauros
The sanctuary is peacefully situated on flat ground amidst trees, with ruggedly profiled hills in the distance. Excavations were conducted here beginning in 1881 by Greek archaeologists P. Kavvadias and V. Stais. The principal structures inside the sacred precinct, dating from the fourth century BC, are the Temple of Asklepios, the tholos or round building (here known as the
Thymele), and the abaton. The buildings have been largely destroyed, leaving only foundations. With one exception, they do not impart as lively a picture of the activities that went on here as do the inscriptions and literary texts. The exception is the tholos, with its mysterious, intriguing foundations: six concentric rings of tufa (a volcanic stone) with doors in the inner rings, creating a maze in the inner three passages. Cuttings in the stone suggest wooden steps led from the main floor down into this crypt. The purpose of this unique maze, indeed of the entire building, remains uncertain. The tholos was certainly prestigious: surviving architectural pieces show a high quality of work. According to the building accounts, inscribed on stone, construction lasted over thirty years, payment being dependent on a steady trickle of donations. But faith was kept, the building completed. One popular view interprets the crypt as a home of the god’s sacred snakes, but a leading specialist on Epidauros, R. A. Tomlinson, prefers to identify the tholos as a funerary monument for Asklepios as a mortal (in contrast to the temple, which honored Asklepios as a god).
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