Asclepius

Apollo left a crow to guard Coronis while he travelled to Delphi. Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, king of the Lapiths, was already pregnant by Apollo. She had long desired Ischys, son of Elatus of Arcadia, and allowed him to share her bed. Apollo perceived her betrayal before the crow reached Delphi to report it. He blamed the bird for failing to attack Ischys and turned its feathers from white to black. Its descendants were said to remain black thereafter.

Apollo told Artemis of the insult. She answered by shooting Coronis with her arrows. When Apollo looked upon Coronis’s dead body, he felt remorse. Her relatives placed her on a funeral pyre, and the fire of Hephaestus spread around the wood. Apollo saw that his unborn son would die with his mother. He stepped into the flames and seized the child from Coronis’s body.

Apollo carried the infant to the Magnesian Centaur, Chiron. He entrusted Asclepius to him for instruction in healing the diseases that afflict human beings. The child was therefore born from Coronis, yet rescued from the burning pyre before the fire could destroy him.

Hippolytus drove his chariot at full speed along the Isthmus. A huge wave rose above the Molurian Rock. From it sprang a great dog seal, or, in another account, a white bull. The creature bellowed and spouted water. Hippolytus’s four horses swerved towards the cliff, but he restrained them. The beast followed the chariot, and the horses veered from their course. Near the sanctuary of Saronian Artemis, a rein caught on the branch of a barren olive tree called the Twisted Rhachos. The chariot struck rocks and broke apart. Hippolytus became entangled in the reins. His horses dragged him against the tree and the rocks until he died. His death had been brought about by the curse of his father, Theseus.

Hippolytus’s ghost descended to Tartarus. Artemis, greatly angered by his death, begged Asclepius to restore him. Asclepius opened his ivory medicine cabinet and took out the herb with which Cretan Glaucus had been revived. He touched Hippolytus’s breast three times and repeated charms. At the third touch, Hippolytus raised his head and limbs. Some accounts say that Asclepius had accepted a large fee to bring him back, and that Hippolytus never again came under the power of death.

Hippolytus was said to have lived in Italy under the name Virbius, meaning ‘twice a man’, and to have been worshipped as a god. Artemis changed his name and placed him under her protection. In the grove of Arician Artemis, horses were forbidden. An inscription at Asclepius’s sanctuary in Epidaurus recorded that Hippolytus dedicated twenty horses in gratitude for his restoration.

Asclepius’s act brought the anger of the gods. Hades complained to Zeus that the physician was taking the dead from his realm. Zeus was also told that Asclepius had accepted gold. Zeus struck Asclepius and Hippolytus with his thunderbolt. He later restored Asclepius to life, fulfilling Euippe’s prophecy that Asclepius would become a god, die, and regain godhood.