아스클레피오스 숭배와 치유의 도상

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to study the feature of the Asklepian cult. Although there were many healing gods and heros worshipped in Antiquity, Asklepios held a unique position as a ‘Saviour(Σωτήρ)’ in the Greek society and his cult became one of the most popular cults in the Mediterranean world. His sanctuaries(Asklepeia) provided divine power of the cure and recuperation, provided both practical medicine and religious ritual. It is interesting fact that Asklepios' cult extended from local tribes to Pan—Hellenic world especially during the Classical period, chronologically juxtaposed with the era when Hippocrates and his fellow physicians(Ἀσκληπιάδαι) developed Greek medicine as systematized knowledge of science. While the iconography of coinage show the political power of Asklepian temple medicine in the city—states like Larissa, Trikka, Epidauros and Pergamon, the imagery of votive reliefs and stele inscriptions indicate us the intimate character of this healing god. Unlike the dominant Olympian gods, Asklepios was considered as the practical deity who supports humans in their daily life and needs, and aids individuals to recover their soundness and wholeness(ὑγίεια). The sanctuary of Epidauros was the center of such Asklepian cult renown for the miraculous cures, where the petitioners receives spiritual and physical treatments. What <Hippocratic corpus> and the stele inscriptions of Epidaurian Sanctuary indicate us is that the methods of practical physicians and of Asklepian cult were developed independently. Doctors of the Hippocratic School pursued natural causes and rational treatments of diseases, while the remedy of Asklepios was based on the divine power and spiritual recovery. Still their relations were complementary and not antqgonistic. The so—called Ἀσκληπιάδαι—the lay physicians—acknowledges their limits, conceding incurable ailments and other mortal problems to the divine power of Asklepios who was their ancestor and protector guardian.