Aescilapius (Gr. in Greek mythology, the god of medicine and the patron of physicians. In the Homeric poems he is only spoken of as the "blameless physician," whose sons were serving in the Greek army before Troy. The most common story makes him the son of Apollo. He went about healing diseases and raising the dead to life. Pluto, god of Hades, took alarm at the latter exploit, and complained to Zeus, who struck Aesculapius dead with a flash of lightning. The most renowned seat of Aesculapius's worship in Greece was Epidaurus, in Argolis. He had a splendid temple there, with a statue half as large as that of Zeus Olympius at Athens. The cock was commonly sacrified to him, but the serpent was his favorite type. At Epidaurus a peculiar breed of holy serpents were kept about the temple, and into them the god was supposed to insinuate himself. When a city was afflicted with a pestilence, it used to send to Epidaurus for one of these Aeseulapian snakes, out of the sale of which the Epidaurian priests reaped large profits. The presence of the god in the pest-stricken city, in the form of a yellowish-brown snake, was held to be propitious, and likely to allay the rage of the pest.

About 400 B. 0. the Romans, under the pressure of calamity, sent a solemn embassy to request the presence of one of these representatives of Aesculapius. On a later occasion of the same nature (293 B. C.) the worship of Aesculapius was introduced into Rome. There were also famous temples erected in his honor at Cos, Cnidos, and Rhodes. In all these temples were tablets commemorating wonderful cures, en which were recorded the name and genealogy of the patient, his disease, and the mode of recovery. The priests of these temples formed the race of Asclepiadae, or children of Aescu-lapius. They were the only regular'physicians of antiquity. Formerly the priesthood of Aes-culapius was hereditary, but in later times the priests took pupils and initiated them into the mysteries of medicine.