The glittering gold betrayed the noble leech,
From the dark prison-house to bid arrive
A captive thrall of death!
But Jove with wrathful hand refused to each
The hallowed breath.
Down came the bolt of fire.”[145]
Making such an ugly charge is probably unjust to the great healer. The historian, Grote, thinks so, and expresses the opinion that Pindar was disposed “to extenuate the cruelty of Zeus by imputing guilty and sordid views to Æsculapius.”[146] Long ago the accusation was met by Plato. Says he: “While they[147] assert that Æsculapius was the son of Apollo, they declare that he was induced by a bribe of gold to raise to life a rich man who was dead, which was the cause of his being smitten with a thunderbolt. But we, with our principles, cannot believe both these statements of theirs. We shall maintain that, if he was the son of a god, he was not covetous; if he was covetous, he was not the son of Apollo.”[148] He was the son of Apollo.
To conclude this imperfect sketch of the life of Æsculapius, I may add that he was married, as every wise as well as respectable physician should be,[149] and, as was desirable in an exemplar, the father of at least six children,—two sons and four daughters. The two sons, Machaon and Podalirius, taught by their “parent god,” as Homer informs us, became “famed surgeons,” “divine professors of the healing art,”[150] and were also distinguished warriors under Agamemnon. Of the daughters, Hygeia, Panacea, Jaso, and Ægle, the first became the goddess of health, of whom more anon.