Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Asclepius.
The gallery
Statue of Asclepius from Epidaurus
Roman copy after a Greek original, c. 160 AD
A monumental marble Asclepius from his sanctuary at Epidaurus, now in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens — the bearded healer with staff and serpent, copied from a Classical Greek type.
Asclepius
Roman, 2nd century AD
A Roman marble of the god of medicine in the Galleria Borghese, Rome — draped, calm, and carrying the serpent-staff that later became medicine's emblem.
Statue of Aesculapius
Roman, 1st–2nd century AD
A Roman marble Aesculapius in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore — the healing god as a standing philosopher-physician, staff coiled with a snake.
A Visit to Aesculapius
Edward John Poynter, 1880
Poynter's Tate canvas imagines Venus bringing a thorn-wounded foot to Aesculapius — the Classical healer receiving a goddess in a marble grove, snake-staff at his side.
In play
Rod of Asclepius
A single serpent coiled on a staff remains medicine's true emblem — Asclepius' rod on ambulances, hospitals and the WHO seal, distinct from Hermes' twin-snake caduceus.
Ophiuchus
The serpent-bearer constellation is often read as Asclepius among the stars — the healer who learned from snakes, written across the summer Milky Way.
Caduceus as a symbol of medicine
Modern English still muddles Asclepius' rod with Hermes' caduceus — a standing reminder that the god of medicine and the god of merchants got crossed in print.