Asclepius and Epidaurus: The Sapiential Medicine as Divinatory Art. Between Therapeutic Landscapes and Healing Dreams (original) (raw)
2019, Cosmos and history: the journal of natural and social philosophy
Epidaurus was in the antiquity a therapeutic complex which included several buildings to which people came from every part of Greece to be cured by the god Asclepius, a deity venerated from 500 before Christ to the fourth-fifth century anno Domini, when many other pagan cults had already ceased to exist. Epidaurus was a very complex structure, a sort of city-state or sovereign state, able to host thousands of adepts. Here, patients were subject to ablution, purification and sporadic fasting. Asclepius appeared in a dream, in a sort a practice of magic-ritual and sapiential medicine.
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Asclepius at Epidaurus: The Divine Power of Healing
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The phenomenon of the ascendancy of the cult of Asclepius in the civic religion of the Greek polis is closely paralleled with the rise of the Hippocratic tradition. Asclepius manifested himself in the dreams of those in need both as a physician performing advanced surgical procedures and as a healing god who miraculously and effortlessly eliminated the pain and the cause of the disease. This paper focuses on divine epiphanies in the context of disease and healing, as well as on the usage of these divine epiphanies as diagnostic and therapeutic tools in the medicinal thought and practice of classical antiquity in general and in the cult of Asclepius in particular.
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Articles: Healing dreams at Epidaurus. Analysis and interpretation of the Epidaurian iamata
Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica, 2014
To Cosmas-the first person who encouraged me to explore Greece when I was twelve years old. Healing dreams at Epidaurus. Analysis and interpretation of the Epidaurian iamata 2 One type of the most important sources for the Epidaurian worship of Asclepius are the iamata inscriptions engraved on the four stelai that were erected in the fourth century BC by the authorities of a sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus. The body of the surviving texts contains approximately seventy tales, which are basically records of the cures and 'medical therapies' carried out by Asclepius. However, the iamata inscriptions cannot be simply considered as an official index of afflictions registered and healed at the Epidaurian medical centre: the analysis of the particular inscriptions enables modern scholars to reveal their didactic, moralistic, economic and even advertising role. In my paper, I discuss different aspects of the iamata: at the beginning, I cite the leading theories concerning the nature, veracity and authenticity of the iamata, since this particular issue constantly attracts scholarly attention and remains controversial. Subsequently, I retrace the development of the Asclepiad worship and explain the phenomenon of the spread of the cult of Asclepius as healing god. Since the problem of the iamata cannot be discussed without references to other sources, in my paper I frequently refer to iconographical, architectonic and literary pieces of evidence. The cited sources enrich my research with diverse perspectives: visual evidence allows us to comprehend the healing process; accounts left by the classical authors, in turn, offer us a glimpse of the ancients' attitudes towards the phenomenon of the 'divine healing' in Epidaurus and other medical sites. Finally, the architectonic details and reports from archaeological excavations make it possible to reconstruct to a degree the infrastructure of the most famous medical centre in the Greek and Roman world. The content of the preserved inscriptions together with the aforementioned
Asclepius’ Myths and Healing Narratives: Counter-Intuitive Concepts and Cultural Expectations
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This article suggests a bio-cultural approach to the Asclepius cult in order to explore the attractiveness and memorability of the religious ideas, myths, and narratives about the divine healer. The transformation of Asclepius from a mortal doctor to a divine physician is traced in mythical sagas developed in Greek antiquity. The interference of local religious, political and financial interests in the formation of myths are briefly presented. Then, the focus is shifted to the inner features that were embedded in the myths and attracted people’s attention. Following Guthrie’s theory (1992), it is suggested that the anthropomorphic perception of the ancient Greek gods was projected onto Asclepius. Boyer’s theory (1996, 2001) of counter-intuitive concepts of religious ideas is applied to the myths of Asclepius. It is suggested that his actions, rather than the portrayal of his figure and character, are what violated human-intuitive expectations about the world, grabbing the attention of supplicants and becoming conserved in memory. Further, the correlation of intuitive ontological expectations and mundane knowledge acquired through cultural conditioning is examined. The healing inscriptions from the asclepieia seem to support the findings of research conducted by Porubanova-Norquist and her colleagues (2013, 2014), according to which violations of cultural expectations have similar effects in attention and memory processes as the counter-intuitive concepts. It is further suggested that the activity of Asclepius violated cultural expectations shared by people of the ancient Greek world. This activity was particularly salient because it pertained to human experiences of illness and disease, and revealed Asclepius’ willingness to help the sick.
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