We found religious medicine in the Homeric poems, and there was no century without healing cults. The cult of Asclepius was by no means the only one, but, for reasons that will be discussed later, it dominated the scene and set a pattern for the cults of other healing deities.

The temple of Asclepius is located just inside the north wall (Fig. 5) and is referred to by Pausanias (p. 34), who notes that the site was a place of refreshment in summer.

The story of Tiber Island is similar: in 293 BC, the inhabitants of Rome started to fall sick and die from an unknown disease, and the city fathers sent an expedition to Epidaurus in Greece to retrieve one of the snakes sacred to Asclepius (Greek Asklepiós, Aesculapius in Latin), god of medicine and healing, thus bringing the god to Rome. The story told by Livy was that as the ship carrying this snake came up the Tiber, the snake escaped and swam to the island. The Romans immediately concluded that Asclepius wished to dwell there (it would appear that clever Asclepius had immediately recognised an excellent place of quarantine), and built a temple to the god on the island.

Asclepius

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