Asclepius’s Family Tree

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Family

• Chiron(parent),Achilles(sibling),Actaeon(sibling),Aristaeus(sibling),Jason(sibling),Patroclus(sibling),Peleus(sibling)— Adopted

  On Mount Pelion, Chiron raised a generation of Greek heroes — Achilles, Asclepius, Jason, Patroclus, Peleus, Actaeon, and Aristaeus — teaching each according to their destiny: medicine, warfare, hunting, and the arts.

• Epione(spouse),Aceso(child),Hygieia(child),Iaso(child),Machaon(child),Panacea(child),Podalirius(child)— Marriage

  Asclepius and Epione founded a dynasty of healing deities. Their daughters Hygieia, Panacea, Iaso, and Aceso personified aspects of health and healing; their sons Machaon and Podalirius became physician-heroes at Troy.

• Apollo(parent),Coronis(parent)— Consort

  Apollo fathered Asclepius with the mortal Coronis. After killing Coronis for infidelity, Apollo rescued the unborn Asclepius from her funeral pyre.

  ⚠ Pausanias (2.26.7) reports that the Messenians claimed Asclepius's mother was Arsinoe, daughter of Leucippus, rather than Coronis. Hesiod's Catalogue of Women may have supported the Arsinoe version.

Slain by

• Zeus

  Zeus struck Asclepius with a thunderbolt for transgressing the boundary between life and death. By resurrecting mortals, Asclepius had threatened the natural order that all must die.

Equivalent to

• Aesculapius(Roman)

  The Roman Aesculapius was imported directly from the Greek Asclepius's sanctuary at Epidaurus in 293 BCE during a plague. His cult retained Greek practices including incubation healing and sacred serpents.

• Eshmun(Canaanite)

  Asclepius was identified with the Phoenician healing god Eshmun through Greco-Phoenician syncretism, particularly at Sidon where Eshmun's temple was reinterpreted as an Asclepieion.

• Imhotep(Egyptian)

  The Greeks identified the deified Egyptian healer Imhotep with their own god of medicine Asclepius, and the two cults merged at healing shrines in Ptolemaic Egypt.

Associated with

• Athena,Medusa

  Asclepius used blood from Medusa — given to him by Athena — to perform his miraculous cures and resurrections. The right-side blood healed; the left-side blood could kill.

• Hades

  Hades complained to Zeus that Asclepius was cheating death by resurrecting mortals, depriving the underworld of its rightful subjects. This complaint prompted Zeus to strike Asclepius with a thunderbolt.

• Hippolytus

  Asclepius resurrected Hippolytus after Theseus's son was killed by Poseidon's sea monster. This act of raising the dead was one of the transgressions that provoked Zeus to strike Asclepius down.

• Ocyrhoe

  Chiron's daughter Ocyrhoe prophesied the future greatness of the infant Asclepius but was transformed into a mare for revealing divine secrets.

• Orion

  In Pseudo-Eratosthenes' Catasterismi, Artemis asked Asclepius to resurrect the slain Orion, but Zeus struck Asclepius with a thunderbolt before he could complete the revival, preserving the boundary between life and death.

• Plutus

  In Aristophanes' comedy Plutus, the citizen Chremylus brings the blinded Plutus to Asclepius's temple, where the healing god restores his sight through an overnight incubation ritual.

• Zeus

  Zeus deified Asclepius after his death, placing him among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer, honoring his mastery of medicine.