Asklepios, medicine, and the politics of healing in fifth-century Greece; between craft and cult.

9780801889783

Asklepios, medicine, and the politics of healing in fifth-century Greece; between craft and cult.

Wickkiser, Bronwen Lara.

Johns Hopkins U. Press

2009

178 pages

$55.00

Hardcover

R138

Mythical traditions hold that Asklepios was the son of Apollo and a mortal woman, and was trained as a doctor by the centaur Cheiron, explains Wickkiser (classics, Vanderbilt U.), and people flocked to his sanctuaries for cures across the Greco-Roman world from about 500 BC to the sixth century AD. So did why his cult expand rapidly for the first time only in the fifth century BC though he had been known as a healer since Homer's time, she wonders. Most scholars say the wars of the period provided plenty of opportunity for healing, and left people disenchanted with the traditional pantheon, but she is skeptical: pretty much any given period was rife with war and injury. She begins with a brief review of Greek medicine from the Bronze Age to the fifth century BC, then looks at the limits of medicine and the development of Asklepios' cult, and doctors and divine healers. Her focus then narrows to Athens, as she explores the record of his arrival in the city, the topography of his Athenian cult, and his place and role in the Athenian empire. The study began as her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Texas-Austin.

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