With the emergence of the idea of a separable soul came the belief in its assumption after death of animal forms, and chief of these the mysterious earth-dwelling serpent, darting pestilence from his barbed tongue. The association of the serpent with disease and pestilence is wellnigh world-wide. The Vedas teem with it: classical and Christian literature and art are full of it. We find it in Ovid,[1] in Gregory of Tours,[2] in Paul the Deacon,[3] and in many other writers. The Book of Numbers too (xxi. 6 seq.) retains this imagery of pestilence: ‘And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.’ Imitative magic—the healing of like by like—is still the weapon with which Moses counters the pestilence.
In Fernando Po,[4] when an epidemic breaks out among children, it is customary to set up a serpent’s skin on a pole in the middle of the public square, and the mothers bring their infants to touch it. In Madagascar, Sibree[5] found that Ramahavaly, the god of healing, was also the patron of serpents, and was able to employ them as agents of his anger. In many parts of India also it is customary to make a serpent of clay or metal, and offer sacrifices to it on behalf of the sufferer.[6] Apollonius of Tyana also is said to have freed Antioch from scorpions by making a bronze image of a scorpion and burying it under a small pillar in the middle of the city. So the serpent has power not only to excite pestilence, but also to avert it.
From these spirits of the nether world, human or animal in form, it is a short passage to the conception of supernatural beings above the earth, but still in human shape and still with human attributes. Such are Apollo, Asclepius, and Rudra. Traces of the evolution of these deities are usually to be found in the attributes with which they are endowed in later literature and art. The usual symbol of Asclepius is a serpent coiled round a staff. Sacred snakes were kept in his temples,[7] and applicants for healing fed them with cakes.[8] Cures were frequently effected in the sanctuaries of Asclepius by serpents stealing out and licking the wounds of patients. The god-man finally supersedes the serpent, but conservative religious sentiment retains the older object of worship as the symbol and associate of the new. In Greek legend it is the serpent from which Asclepius learns the art of healing: true, Homer makes Chiron his teacher. Numerous other legends of the serpent origin of medicine survive. Polyindus the seer is said to have learnt the herbs that can restore men to life by observing how the serpents raised their dead to life. In Cashmere[9] the descendants of the Naga (serpent) tribes attribute their special skill in healing to knowledge bestowed on their ancestors by serpents: and the Celts acquired their medical lore from drinking serpent broth. As with Asclepius, so also we shall see with Apollo. Apollo in very truth slays the man-killing Python, and himself becomes also the sender of pestilence. He not only smites with disease the doer of evil, but wards it off from the upright. His are the arrows that scatter plague: but he is also the best of physicians. Such is the Apollo of the Iliad.
PLATE I (Face Page 4)
| Apollo with Bow and Mouse | Asclepius with Serpent |
| Serpent and Galley | |
| Christ on the Cross | The Brazen Serpent |
Homer’s[10] aged priest Chryses, when he calls upon Apollo to avenge the ravishing of his daughter, invokes him as God of the Silver Bow (Ἀργυρότοξος). Apollo hears his prayer, and
Down from Olympus’ heights he passed, his heart Burning with wrath: behind his shoulders hung His bow and ample quiver: at his back Rattled the fateful arrows as he moved: Like the night-cloud he passed: and from afar He bent against the ships and sped the bolt: And fierce and deadly twanged the silver bow: First on the mules and dogs, on man the last, Was poured the arrowy storm; and through the camp Constant and numerous blazed the funeral fires. Nine days the heavenly Archer on the troops Hurled his dread shafts.[11]
Homer’s picture of the Archer Apollo has inspired one at least of the masterpieces of Graeco-Roman sculpture. Apollo the Avenger sends the pestilence in punishment of sin. Homer sets it as a signal evidence of divine displeasure in the forefront of his epic, as does Sophocles after him in the greatest of his tragedies. Apollo is pictured as the god who spreads the plague by arrows shot from his bow. He swoops down with impetuous onset, like the sudden fall of night in Mediterranean lands, as the ‘pestilence that walketh in darkness’ and ‘the arrow that flieth by day’. The plague is first epizootic, falling on mules and dogs, then epidemic among the Greek host. A council is called, and Achilles advises that some prophet or priest be summoned to say what propitiatory sacrifices have been neglected: