I will now say a few words about a remarkable attribute of some representations of the god of medicine. I refer to Telesphorus, Euemerion, or Acesius,[268] a small figure, a boy, but not a son, as is sometimes stated. As will be seen in the cut of him given, and which is copied from one given by Tooke,[269] as seen in a statue in the Louvre, he is wrapped in a mantle and is barefooted. Figures of him, however, vary considerably in appearance. In him we have, according to some, a sort of dæmon or familiar spirit, such as that which Socrates is said to have had. It is better, I think, to regard him as a genius,[270] meant to symbolize the hidden sustaining vital force, the vis medicatrix naturæ, or anima medica, upon which greatly depends the recovery of the sick. It has been suggested that the careful wrapping may be intended to indicate the need of such protection during convalescence.
The dog was prominent in connection with the Epidaurian and other statues of Æsculapius. The fidelity and watchfulness of this friendly animal render it a very fit attribute of the god. The part played with the goat, according to the legend, has been taken by some to afford an explanation of the connection. Another is furnished by the name, which, as will be pointed out in the next chapter, apparently means man-dog.
The Parsis believed that dogs with four eyes could drive away the death-fiend; but such not being procurable, one “with two spots above the eyes” was used for the purpose. In their great sacred book,[271] the animal is represented to be the special one of Ormazd. Herodotus states that the Magi do not hesitate to kill all animals, “excepting dogs and men.”[272]
The Oriental Mardux, in whom was assimilated the more ancient Silik-mulu-khi, a healing divinity, was attended by dogs, as was Nimrod, the hunter, with whom he may have been identical.[273]
The cock, as well as the dog, was a prominent attribute in many representations of Æsculapius. This alert bird, a bird watchful of the returning light, was very properly associated with a sun-god. It was a common object of sacrifice to the god, by patients who were grateful for relief or cure. Socrates has, through Plato, made this memorable. Said the dying sage, as he felt his limbs growing cold: “When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end.” Feeling his body gradually losing its vital heat, and realizing that relief from his troubles was at hand, he said, as he passed away, “Crito, I owe a cock to Æsculapius; will you remember to pay the debt?” “The debt shall be paid,” responded his friend.[274]
The practice of sacrificing[275] a cock for the restoration of health was not exclusively practiced by the votaries of Æsculapius. In his “Life of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus,” Plutarch says that “a white cock” was sacrificed generally by each of the patients he touched “for swelling of the spleen.” The full quotation will be given in a succeeding chapter. The bird is still sacrificed in some parts of Scotland and other countries, for the removal of at least one disease,—epilepsy. Dr. Mitchell, of Edinburgh, states that the practice is very familiar to him. In the northern part of his native country, “on the spot,” says he, “where the epileptic first falls, a black cock is buried alive, along with a lock of the patient’s hair and some parings of his nails.”[276]
There is yet another animal associated with the god of medicine,—the goat. It was especially by the Cyrenians that the connection was much emphasized. Pausanias remarks that “the Cyrenians sacrifice goats, although this rite was not delivered by the Epidaurians.”[277] Still, as already pointed out, on Epidaurian coins, Æsculapius was represented sucking a goat,—an illustration of the legend.
Why the goat was connected in sacrifice with the god is explained by Tooke thus: “A goat is always in a fever, and, therefore, a goat’s constitution is very contrary to health.”[278] Shakespeare, in “King Lear,” uses the phrase “goatish disposition” in reference to a “whoremaster man.” The fabled satyrs were in part goats in form. I am not aware that there was anything of the Biblical scape-goat principle[279] about the sacrifice, a superstition similar to the one which prevailed “all over Egypt,” as we are told by Herodotus,[280] of praying that evils impending over the people might fall on the head of the sacrificial victim, and then casting it into the Nile, if there was no Greek at hand to whom it could be sold.
The great prominence of the goat in the Æsculapian rites in Cyrene may have been due, to some extent at least, to the proximity of Egypt, a country in which the animal played a prominent part. In the goat of Mendes,[281] the incarnation of Khem or Min, was personified, says Lenormant, “in the most brutish manner the reproductive power.”[282] Both the goat and the cock were often associated with the Egyptian Hermes.
I may add that the cause of the association of the goat with Æsculapius has been referred to the name. The Abbé Banier states the case thus: “Es or ex, which begins the name of the god, signifies a goat in the language of the Phœnicians,[283] and, with a little variation, the same thing in Greek;[284] and this had given rise to the fable of Æsculapius being nursed by that animal.”[285]