THE SERPENTINE GOD OF MEDICINE AT ROME.
As I have already intimated, the god of medicine—that is,
Æsculapius[9]—was not only on familiar terms, so to speak, with the
serpent, but at times given a serpentine form. Pausanias expressly
informs us that he often appeared in such singular shape.[10] The visitor
to imperial Rome about two thousand years ago saw this divinity in
reptilian guise an object of high regard and worship. It is worth while
to enter into a short study of the matter.
Now, at the outset, I may observe that it is a noteworthy fact that in
their regard for medical men the early Greeks and others contrasted
remarkably with the Romans. The Greeks would seem to have duly prized
the class. One has but to turn to Homer to find evidence of the fact. A
passage suggested by Machaon’s splendid exercise of his beneficent art,
spoken by Idomeneus when the “offspring of the healing god” was wounded
by a dart fired by “the spouse of Helen” (Paris), and “trembling Greece
for her physician fear’d,” runs:—
“A wise physician skill’d our wounds to heal,
Is more than armies to the public weal.”[11]
Cowper translates this interesting couplet more literally than Pope:—
“One so skill’d in medicine and to free
The inherent barb is worth a multitude.”
This is a very noble tribute to the physician; in fact, I know of but few
as good, among them being the one in “Ecclesiasticus” which reads: “The
skill of the physician shall lift up his head and in the sight of great
men he shall be praised.”[12] The latter is Hebræo-Egyptian in origin,
and its date is about two hundred years before our era. The early Romans
did not look on doctors with any such favor.[13]
It is a well-known fact that the art of medicine was never very
enthusiastically or successfully cultivated by the Romans. It was not
until a comparatively late date that medical practitioners existed
among them at all. Pliny has left us some interesting notes on the
matter. After the statement that many nations have gotten along without
physicians, he says: “Such, for instance, was the Roman people for a
period of more than six hundred years; a people, too, which has never
shown itself slow to adopt all useful arts, and which even welcomed the
medical art with avidity until, after a fair experience of it, there was
found good reason to condemn it.”[14] He himself was not a great friend
of it.
Cato, who died in the year of the city of Rome 605, said,
authoritatively: “They (the Greeks) have conspired among themselves
to murder all barbarians with their medicine, a profession which they
exercise for lucre, in order that they may win our confidence and
despatch us all the more easily. I forbid you to have anything to do with
physicians.”[15] Notwithstanding this, the imperious old Roman had not
a personal dislike to taking medicine; “far from it, by Hercules,” says
Pliny, “for he subjoins an account of the medical prescriptions by the
aid of which he had ensured to himself and his wife a ripe old age.”[16]
It appears that the first physician who exercised his profession at Rome
was “Archagathus, the son of Lysanias, who came over from Peloponnessus
in the year of the city 335.” He was kindly welcomed, and, from his
special line of practice, was called “Vulnerarius;” but, from cruelty
displayed “in cutting and searing his patients, he brought the art and
physicians into disrepute.”[17] It is this experience to which Pliny
refers in the foregoing quotation.
There is reason to believe that the Romans never regarded medicine as
an art appreciatively. They have transmitted to posterity little that
is original and valuable. Besides what is found in Pliny’s work, the
production of Celsus[18] is about all that calls for special mention,
and it is possible that the latter, as well as the former, was only a
compiler. Pliny significantly says: “The art of medicine at the present
time even teaches us in numerous instances to have recourse to the
oracles for aid.”[19] He lived from 23 to 79 A.D.
The Roman people had no special god of medicine until the year 292
B.C. In the preceding year, the prevalence of a pestilence caused much
consternation. This led to a consultation of the Delphian Oracle, or,
according to Livy (see page 9), the Sibylline Books, as to what should be
done, and the command of “the Delphic Oracle, or of the Sibylline Books,”
to use the language of an authoritative work,[20] was given, to send an
embassy to procure the aid of the Grecian god of healing, Æsculapius.
The story of the bringing of Æsculapius to Rome, like that of the
bringing of Cybele from Pessinus in Galatia, is an interesting one, and
must be known if one would fully appreciate the fact of the god being
given the serpentine form, the serpent being generally regarded as only
an attribute of him at his chief seat, the great Epidaurian Asclepion, or
Temple of Health. It is graphically told by Ovid.
Ovid begins his poem[21] with an invocation to the “melodious maids of
Pindus;” and, addressing them, continues:—
“Say, whence the isle which Tiber flows around,
Its altars with a heavenly stranger grac’d,
And in our shrines the God of Physic plac’d?”
We are then told that—
“A wasting plague infected Latium’s skies.
...
In vain were human remedies apply’d.
Weary’d with death, they seek celestial aid,
And visit Phœbus in his Delphic shade.”
The reply of the Oracle is this:—
“Relief must be implor’d and succour won
Not from Apollo, but Apollo’s son.
My son to Latium borne shall bring redress;
Go with good omens, and expect success.”
The Senate appointed an embassy to carry out the order:—
“Who sail to Epidaurus’ neighbouring land.”
To it the god (Æsculapius) is represented as saying:—
“I come and leave my shrine.
This serpent view, that with ambitious play
My staff encircles, mark him every way;
His form, though larger, nobler, I’ll assume,
And, changed as gods should be, bring aid to Rome.”
In due time “the salutary serpent,[22] the god, reached the Island of the
Tiber and assumed again his form divine”:—
“And now no more the drooping city mourns;
Joy is again restor’d and health returns.”
There is little or no reason to doubt that there was really a formal
bringing of Æsculapius to Rome, a cosmopolitan city which, indeed, as
Gibbon states without much exaggeration, bestowed its freedom “on all
the gods of mankind.”[23] Livy, the historian, speaks of the matter as
follows:—
“The many prosperous events of the year (459) were scarcely sufficient to
afford consolation for one calamity, a pestilence, which afflicted both
the city and country and caused a prodigious mortality. To discover what
end or what remedy was appointed by the gods for that calamity, the Books
were consulted, and there it was found that Æsculapius must be brought
to Rome from Epidaurus. However, as the Consuls had full employment
in the wars, no farther steps were taken in that business during this
year, except the performing of a supplication to Æsculapius of one day’s
continence.”[24] Elsewhere[25] he says that the god was brought the
following year,—that is, A.U.C. 460, or 292 B.C.
The Island of the Tiber (_Insula Tiberina_, now _Isola Tiberina_), the
“_inter duos pontes_” of the early centuries of our era, where Æsculapius
was worshipped, and which was sometimes called by his name (_Insula
Æsculapii_), is within the limits of the city of Rome. According to
tradition, it originated from alluvial accumulations within the period
of Roman history.[26] It is rather remarkable that, excepting the one at
the mouth (_Insula Sacra_, now _Isola Sacra_), there is no other along
the whole course of the famous river. It is ship-shaped, and quite small
in size, being only about a quarter of a mile in length,[27] and has been
called “San Bartolomeo,” from the church which has long occupied the site
of the ancient Temple of Health.[28] Mr. Davies speaks of it at length in
his interesting book. After an account of the origin of the worship of
Æsculapius on it, he says:—
“It was in commemoration of this event that the island was fashioned in
the form of a ship. Huge blocks of travertine and peperino still remain
about the prow (pointing down the stream), imitating on a grand scale
the forms of the planks, upon which are chiseled the figure of a serpent
twined around a rod, and, farther down, the head of an ox. A temple was
raised to Æsculapius, in which his statue was placed, which probably
stood in the fore part of the simulated vessel, hospitals for the sick
occupying the sides, a tall column or obelisk rising in the midst to
represent a mast. Temples were also dedicated to Jupiter and Faunus.[29]
To these were added a prison in the days of Tiberius.”[30]
Whether the establishment of the worship of the healing divinity on the
island at Rome was brought about by chance, or deliberately, is not
very clear. Pliny would seem to think that it was elsewhere at first
when he says, “The Temple of Æsculapius, even after he was received as
a divinity, was built without the city and afterward on an island.”[31]
The abhorrence of the people for physicians is given as the reason for
isolating the institution. The noble Romans had no love for a class that
made a trade of curing the sick, enriching themselves off the misfortunes
of their fellow-men; they were shocked, says Pliny, “more particularly
that man should pay so dear for the enjoyment of life.”[32] There may
have been other and better reasons. The Greeks themselves placed their
asclepia in rural and often insular places. Thus, the great Epidaurian
Asclepion was in a secluded vale, and two very celebrated ones, those of
Cos and Rhodes, were, as the names indicate, on islands. It is needless
to say that there are excellent sanitary reasons for placing sanatory
institutions in the country, and especially on insular sites. It will be
a long step in the right direction when we somewhat unwise moderns cease
to have our medical institutions within the built-up parts of our cities
and towns, and treat the sick, especially those affected with contagious
diseases, at a distance from the well.
Devotion to the serpentine healer appears to have lingered long in
sunny Italy.[33] A bronze serpent in the basilica of St. Ambrose was
worshipped as late as the year 1001, but the precise import of it is not
known. Referring to it, De Gubernatis says: “Some say that it was the
serpent of Æsculapius, others that of Moses, others that it was an image
of Christ. For us it is enough to remark here that it was a mythical
serpent before which Milanese mothers brought their children when they
suffered from worms in order to relieve them, as we learn from the
depositions of the visit of San Carlo Borromeo to this basilica.”[34] San
Carlo suppressed the superstitious practice.[35]