The snake embodies the capacity for renewal of life and rebirth in health, whereas the dog, with its reliable instinct for following a scent, represents a healthy invulnerability to both illusion and sham. Asklepios probably inherited his dog aspect from his father Apollo Kunegetes ("patron of dogs").
Mythology
Asklepios was apparently more successful than other mortal healers such as Amphiaraos or Trophonios. Nevertheless, knowledge about these two figures is invaluable in our reconstruction of the cult of Asklepios. After proving himself a healer of extraordinary success, serving for instance as genius loci ("guardian spirit") at the oracle of Tricca and curing the most hopeless illnesses, Asklepios went so far as to resurrect the dead, a display of pride or hubris that greatly angered Zeus. Zeus then cast a thunderbolt at the physician, but instead of killing him, the shock rendered him immortal by way of apotheosis.
The history of the divine Asklepios is found in both Pindar's Pythian Ode and Ovid's Metamorphoses 11, in which the mortal woman Coronis becomes pregnant with Asklepios, fathered by Apollo. She wants to marry one Ischys in order to legitimatize the birth of the child, but Apollo gets jealous and causes her to be burned to death.
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