[The Iliad of Homer by Homer]@TWC D-Link bookThe Iliad of Homer BOOK XXIV 56/111
555. 130 -- _AEsepus' flood._ A river of Mysia, rising from Mount Cotyius, in the southern part of the chain of Ida. 131 -- _Zelia,_ a town of Troas, at the foot of Ida. 132 -- _Podaleirius_ and _Machaon_ are the leeches of the Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs.
Their medical renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the Iliou Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and appreciating morbid symptoms.
It was Podaleirius who first noticed the glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of Ajax. "Galen appears uncertain whether Asklepius (as well as Dionysus) was originally a god, or whether he was first a man and then became afterwards a god; but Apollodorus professed to fix the exact date of his apotheosis.
Throughout all the historical ages the descendants of Asklepius were numerous and widely diffused.
The many families or gentes, called Asklepiads, who devoted themselves to the study and practice of medicine, and who principally dwelt near the temples of Asklepius, whither sick and suffering men came to obtain relief--all recognized the god not merely as the object of their common worship, but also as their actual progenitor."-- Grote vol.i.p.
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