Healing deities, healing cults, Greece and Rome IOANNIS MYLONOPOULOS In one of his early works, Pablo Picasso placed at the sides of a dying person’s bed a physician and a nun as symbols of science and charity. Despite the myriad sophisticated interpreta- tions of the paintings, the two figures illustrate on the most basic level the eternal twin powers to which people appeal in cases of serious illness: medicine and religion. This attitude has not changed much since ancient times. In the period of Greek or even Roman antiq- uity, when western medicine was in its infancy and superstition dominated the diagnosis of illnesses, the cult of healing deities and heroes played a vital role in society. The ancient Greeks had numerous divinities to whom they assigned curative powers. In the Homeric poems, Paian serves as the divine phy- sician of the Olympians, though in later periods his name appears primarily as a cultic surname of Apollo. Deities such as Aphrodite, Artemis, Demeter, or even Dionysos could also function as healers when addressed as such with the appropriate cultic surname. According to Athenaeus (2.36a–b), for example, Dionysos could be called Hygiates and even Iatros. One must stress, however, that any divine protector of a city could be addressed as a healer. Until the powerful entrance of Asklepios into the Greek pantheon, Apollo, when addressed as Iatros or Paian, appears to have been the healing Olym- pian par excellence in both a negative and pos- itive sense, for, in contrast to Asklepios or Hygieia, he could both cause pestilence and also cure it. Thus, a deadly disease and its cure were fused in a single divine being. From this perspective, Asklepios always remained a slightly one-sided figure. Apart from him, however, it is chiefly local heroes such as Amynos in Athens or Amphiaraos in Oropos whose sole function was to preserve health. Within the ranks of heroic healers, Herakles as potential cure bringer is unexpected but all the more interesting (Salowey 2002). His therapeutic properties can be explained in mythological terms on the basis of his success at draining swamps. Indeed, some of Herakles’ labors, such as the elimination of the Lernaean Hydra or the cleaning of Augeias’ stables, were already viewed in antiquity as allegorical references to the hygienic engineering feats of Herakles the cultural hero (Philostr. VA 8.7.9). In addition, according to Pausanias (2.32.4) Herakles dis- covered the medicinal waters at the healing shrine of Hippolytos in Troizen and was explicitly worshipped in Lakonian Geronthrai as a healing hero (IG V 1119). Bearing the surname Alexikakos, Herakles enjoyed cults in Epidauros, Mantineia, and the Athe- nian deme Melite. “Alexikakos” means in gen- eral “the one who averts evil,” but Herakles Alexikakos was specifically conceived as one of the deities preventing epidemics. In Athens, two healing cults stood out before the introduction of Asklepios’ cult from Epidauros: that of Amynos on the southern slope of the Areopagos hill and that of Athena Hygieia on the Acropolis. Athena was one of those protectors of cities who could assume the function of a healing divinity when accompa- nied by the appropriate cult surname – in this case Hygieia. Amynos, on the other hand, remains an obscure cultic figure. Excavations indicate that his sanctuary goes back to at least the sixth, or even the seventh or late eighth century BCE. At some point (certainly after the fourth century), Amynos and Asklepios were coworshipped in the same sanctuary near the Areopagos hill. Despite the immense importance that Asklepios’ cult quickly acquired and the fact that he as a newcomer overshadowed nearly all preexisting healing deities in every Greek city, local healing cults of heroes never completely lost a following. Nonetheless, their clientele remained a strictly regional one throughout antiquity. The cult of Amphiaraos in Oropos represents one of the few exceptions to this rule. In the late fifth century BCE, the Athenians The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 3089–3090. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah17185 1