In Epidauria’s barren region bore.”[111]
According to this dictum, he was, indeed, born in Epidaurus. Pausanias, by way of proof of the truth of it, says: “I find that the most illustrious rites of Æsculapius were derived from Epidaurus.”[112] From that point the worship seems to have spread. It is said, however, by Strabo,[113] that his birthplace was Tricca, in Thessaly.[114]
However, to return to our story: the time of the delivery of Coronis was not far off, when the news of her perfidy reached Apollo. Notwithstanding this, he, being seemingly under the influence of the “green-eyed monster” to an ungodly degree, cruelly resolved on having revenge at once. Artemis,[115] the goddess of chastity, was directed to slay the unfaithful maid with a thunderbolt, and the order was duly executed. On coins of Pergamus the unfortunate Thessalian appears entirely veiled.
After the fatal thunderbolt had descended on the enceinte Coronis, and her body was being consumed in the merciless pyre, Apollo’s paternal feelings became stirred, and saying, as Pindar tells us,
“I may not bear to slay my child
With his sad mother, sin-defiled,”[116]
proceeded forthwith to save his unborn offspring.
To what manner of operation did he resort? I leave it to some all-knowing specialist to find out; but, at any rate, by some method or other, the child was rescued.[117] Another version of the affair, preserved by Pausanias, robs the god of any possible skill as a gynæcologist—surgical, I mean. According to it, when Coronis was undergoing cremation, after being slain by Artemis, “the boy is said to have been snatched by Hermes from the flames.”[118] And of this I may observe that it was not inappropriate to have Hermes, the Grecian metamorphosis of the thrice-great god of wisdom and knowledge of the Egyptians, present at the unnatural accouchement, and in such close relation to Æsculapius at the very beginning of his wonderful career.
It was, then, the unhappy fate of Æsculapius to be an orphan from his birth, if birth he had, to speak correctly; and it is possible that his advent was decidedly premature—in a medical sense. Apollo was puzzled to know what to do with his tender son; nor did he do for him all that could be expected, for baby Æsculapius was heartlessly exposed on Mount Titthium. Here the little unfortunate fell into the keeping of a friendly goat and dog. The goat gave the precious enfant trouvé nourishment,[119] as Amalthea had done Zeus, and the dog kept guard over him.[120] Splendid services, indeed, on the part of two humble animals, in the interest of medicine and humanity!
On Epidaurian coins, the infantile god of medicine is appropriately represented under a she-goat on Mount Titthium, with Aresthanas approaching. This person was the shepherd of whom Pausanias says that, coming to the rescue, “he beheld a splendor beaming from the infant, and, thinking that it was something divine, as indeed it was, departed from the place. But a report,” he continues, “was immediately spread through every land and sea that such as were afflicted with any kind of disease were healed by the boy, and that even the dead were raised to life.”[121] The reader need hardly be informed that accounts parallel to this are common enough in ancient records.