By Water & Blood

Chapter 20: Aesculapius, Hercules, and Serapis

Hence it is that a serpent is joined to the images of both Aesculapius and Salus, because these are referred to the nature of the sun and of the moon. And Aesculapius is the healthful force from the substance of the sun that comes to the aid of the minds and bodies of mortals. Salus, however, is an effect of lunar nature by which the bodies of living beings are helped, strengthened by a salutary tempering. Therefore figures of serpents are joined to their images, because they grant that human bodies, casting off as it were the skin of infirmity, may grow green again to their former vigor, as serpents grow green again each year when the skin of old age is shed. For this reason the form of a serpent is also referred to the sun itself, because the sun always returns, as from a certain old age of lowest depression, into its height as into the strength of youth. That the serpent is among the chief arguments of the sun is also shown by the fiction of its name, that it was called from seeing (apo tou derkein). For they say this serpent, with sharpest sight and sleepless nature, imitates the nature of this star, and therefore the guardianship of temples, shrines, oracles, and treasuries is assigned to serpents.

But that Aesculapius is the same as Apollo is proved not only from this, that he is believed born from him, but because the power of divination is also joined to him. For Apollodorus, in the books entitled On the Gods, writes that Aesculapius presides over divinations and auguries. Nor is it strange, since the disciplines of medicine and of divinings are associated. For a physician foreknows what is advantageous or disadvantageous that will be in the body, as Hippocrates says a physician ought to say of the sick man "the things present and the things that have happened and the things that are going to be," that is, what are, what have been, what will soon follow. Which agrees with divinings that know "things that are and that will be and that were before."

Nor is Hercules alien to the substance of the sun: for Hercules is that power of the sun which affords the human race virtue after the likeness of the gods. And do not suppose that he alone or first who was born of Alcmena among the Boeotian Thebes was named Hercules: rather, after many and last of all, he was deemed worthy of this appellation and honored with this name because by excessive fortitude he earned the name of the god who rules virtue. For the rest, the god Hercules is indeed religiously worshipped also at Tyre, but the Egyptians venerate him with the most sacred and august religion, and beyond memory, which among them stretches very far back, they worship him as without beginning. He himself is believed also to have slain the Giants when he fought for heaven, as the virtue of the gods. But what else are the Giants to be believed to have been than a certain impious race of men denying the gods and therefore thought to have wished to drive the gods from their celestial seat? Their feet ended in coils of serpents, which signifies that they thought nothing upright, nothing lofty, the whole walk and progress of their life sinking into the lower regions. From this race the sun exacted the penalties due by the force of pestilential heat. And in truth that Hercules is the sun is clear even from the name. For what else is Heracles but the glory of Hera (that is, of air)? And what further glory of air is there but the illumination of the sun, by whose withdrawal it is hidden in the depth of darkness? Moreover the administrations of the sacred rites among the Egyptians, by manifold action, assert the manifold power of the god, signifying that this Hercules is the sun in all things and through all things.

From a deed done elsewhere on earth also no slight argument is gathered. For when Theron, king of nearer Spain, driven by fury and equipped with a fleet of ships, was set on storming the temple of Hercules, the people of Gades came out against him, advancing in long ships; and when battle was joined and the fight still stood on equal terms, suddenly the king's ships were turned to flight and at the same time caught by unexpected fire and burned. The very few of the enemy who survived, when captured, reported that lions had appeared to them standing upon the prows of the Gadian fleet, and that suddenly their own ships had been burned by rays sent upon them such as are painted on the head of the Sun.

A city adjoining that same Egypt, which boasts Alexander of Macedon as its founder, observes Serapis and Isis with a cult of almost stunned veneration. Yet it testifies that it spends all that veneration on the sun under that name, either while they fix a calathus on his head or while they join to the image the sign of a three-headed living being. This expresses in the middle and largest head the likeness of a lion; on the right side rises the head of a dog of gentle, coaxing appearance; but the left part of the neck ends in the head of a rapacious wolf; and a serpent joins those animal forms with its coil, its head returning to the god's right hand by which the monster is checked. Therefore by the lion's head present time is shown, because its condition between past and future is strong and fervent in present action. But past time is also marked by the wolf's head, because the memory of things done is seized and carried off. Likewise the likeness of a coaxing dog designates the outcome of future time, about which hope, though uncertain, coaxes us. But to whom would the times be servants if not to their proper author? His crown marked with a calathus both shows the height of the star and displays the power of capacity, because all earthly things return into him while they are seized by heat sent upon them.

Hear now what is pronounced by oracle concerning the sun or Serapis. For Serapis, whom the Egyptians have set forth as the greatest god, when asked by Nicocreon king of the Cyprians which of the gods he was held to be, instructed the king's anxious religion with these verses: "I am such a god to learn as I myself shall say: the heavenly cosmos is my head, my belly the sea, the earth is my feet, my ears lie in the aether, and my far-shining eye is the bright light of the sun." From these it appears that the nature of Serapis and of the sun is one and indivisible. Isis is celebrated joined in religion, who is either the earth or the nature of things subject to the sun. Hence it is that the whole body of the goddess is thickened with continuous breasts, because the universe is nourished by the nurture either of the earth or of the nature of things.