ritual · Roman

Prayer to Apollo and Aesculapius

Phoebus Apollo, bearer of health, for You we compose our song, and favorably promote Your discoveries. With Your healing arts, You lead life back when it is withdrawn from us and recall us from joining the Manes in Heaven. You who formerly dwelt in the temples of Aegea, Pergamum, and Epidaurum, and who drove off the Python from Your peaceful house at Delphi, sought a temple at Rome to Your glory, by expelling the foul presence of illness. Come to me now as each time You have fondly strengthen me when often You were called, and may You be present in all that is set out in this book.

Commentarius · Commentary

The preface to the Liber Medicinalis of Quintus Serenus Sammonicus — a pharmacopoeia in hexameters, in which every ailment gets its prescription.

The prayer stands at the head of a medical handbook, and its request is correspondingly businesslike: "come here, and whatever you have often said to me in my longing and confirmed, set it all out on the soft papyri". What is asked of the god is not health but dictation. The physician-poet wants Asclepius to supply the content of his book.

There are two gods here, not one. The first two lines address Phoebus; from the third, tuque potens artis, the address turns to Asclepius, and everything after is about him: Aegae, Pergamum, Epidaurus — his three famous healing sanctuaries.

The card's English merges them into one, and further turns Asclepius' arrival in Rome in the form of a snake (lines 6-7) into the expulsion of Python from Delphi — a different event and a different god.

Fons · Source

AuthorQuintus Serenus Sammonicus

WorkLiber Medicinalis

SectionPraefatio

Period2nd-3rd c. AD

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureRoman

Formritual

DeitiesApollo, Aesculapius

FunctionsInvocation · Petition · Praise

SphereHealing