THIS is the figure who is set above the Scorpion, holding a serpent in both hands. It is said that this is Asclepios, and that Zeus raised him to the stars as a favour to Apollo. Asclepios practised the art of medicine with such skill that he even brought those who were already dead back to life, including Hippolytos* last of all, and because the gods grew angry at this, fearing that the honours that they received from human beings would be brought to an end if Asclepios accomplished such extraordinary deeds, it is said that Zeus, in anger, struck his house with a thunderbolt; afterwards, however, out of regard for Apollo, he raised Asclepios up to the stars. He can be distinguished with no great difficulty, being set above the largest constellation, I mean the Scorpion, and his image is easily recognizable.
Hyginus
The Constellation
Ophiuchus has his head in the position of a man who is leaning backwards, and he is represented as holding a serpent in his hands. His shoulders are divided from the rest of his body by the summer tropic, and the tip of his knee reaches up to the equator;* with his left foot, he is trampling on the eyes of the Scorpion, and he is resting his right foot on its carapace. As for the Serpent that he is holding, it almost touches the Crown with the tip of its mouth, while it seems to entwine itself around Ophiuchus with the middle of its body; the hind part of its body is shorter than the front part, where the left hand of Ophiuchus himself is portrayed. The end of its tail comes together with the tail of the Eagle at the equator. At his setting, he reaches the horizon at the rising of the twins, Crab and Lion; at his rising he appears at the same time as the Scorpion and Archer.
He has one star on his head, one on each shoulder, three on his left arm, four on his right arm, two on his loins, one on each knee, one on his right leg, and one on each foot, the brighter being on his right foot. So that makes thirteen stars in all.
The Serpent has two stars on the top of its head, four under its head, all in one place, two on the left hand of Ophiuchus, of which the one nearest to his body is the brightest, and five on the back of the Serpent where it comes together with the body of Ophiuchus, four on the first bend of its tail, and six on the second in the direction of its head. So that makes twenty-three stars in all.
The Mythology
Called Anguitenens* by our authors, he is set above the Scorpion, holding in his hands a snake which is coiled around his body. This is commonly said to be a man called Charnabon, who was king of the Getai who live in Thrace. He held power at the very time when the grain of cereal crops is first thought to have been entrusted to mortals. For when Demeter was bestowing her benefits on the human race, she placed Triptolemos, whose nurse she had been, in a chariot drawn by dragons—he is said to have been the first man to make use of wheels so as not to be delayed in his progress—and she instructed him to travel around the territories of all peoples distributing grain, to enable them and their descendants to advance more easily beyond a primitive way of life. When he came to the king of the Getai whom we have just mentioned, he initially received a hospitable welcome from him; but he was then subjected to a treacherous attack, as though he were the cruellest of enemies rather than a generous stranger who had come with no bad intent, and this man who had come to prolong the lives of others thus came close to losing his own life. For at the order of Charnabon, one of his dragons was killed, to prevent Triptolemos—who had suspected that an ambush was being prepared—from hoping to find safety in his chariot. But Demeter arrived, and returned the chariot to the young man from whom it had been stolen, attaching another dragon to it; and she inflicted no slight punishment on the king to avenge his malevolent plot. For according to Hegesianax, Demeter portrayed Charnabon as an image among the stars as a reminder to the human race, holding a dragon in his hands as if he were about to be killed by it. He had lived such a cruel life that he was only too happy to bring death upon himself.
Others indicate that this is Heracles, killing a snake in Libya beside the river Sagaris, after it had slaughtered a great many people and robbed the river-banks of their grain. As a reward for this deed, Omphale, the queen of the land, sent him back to Argos loaded with gifts, and Zeus placed him among the constellations because of his valour.
Some have said, however, that this is Triopas, king of the Thessalians. Seeking to roof his palace, he pulled down the temple of Demeter which had been built by the men of old; and in response, Demeter afflicted him with such hunger that, ever afterwards, he is supposed never to have been able to find enough food to satisfy it. Finally, when his life was drawing to its close, a dragon was sent against him, and he underwent many sufferings, and when he finally met his death, he was placed among the constellations at the will of Demeter. And so he can be seen to this day with a dragon coiled around him, as it inflicts well-deserved punishment on him for all eternity.
Polyzelos* of Rhodes indicates, however, that this is a man called Phorbas, who had performed very valuable services for the Rhodians. For when that island had been infested with large numbers of snakes, such that the inhabitants called it Ophioussa (Snake Island), and among this host of wild beasts there was a dragon of enormous size which had killed a huge number of people, so that the island was coming close to being deserted, it is said that Phorbas, son of Triopas and Hiscilla, daughter of Myrmidon, was carried there by a storm and killed every one of these beasts, including the dragon. Since he was a particular favourite of Apollo, he was placed among the constellations in the guise of dragon-slayer by way of praise and commemoration. And so the Rhodians, whenever they set off any distance from the shore in their fleet, begin by offering a sacrifice to honour Phorbas for his arrival, so that their compatriots might find, through unexpected valour, glorious success such as that which brought Phorbas to the heavens, little realizing what awaited him.
Many astronomers have supposed that this is Asclepios, who was placed among the stars by Zeus as a favour for Apollo. For Asclepios, when he was living among mortals, surpassed all others in the art of medicine to such a degree that he was not satisfied merely to alleviate human sufferings, but even brought the dead back to life. Last of all, so it is said, he revived Hippolytos after he had been killed as a result of the malice of his stepmother and the ignorance of his father, as Eratosthenes recounts. Some have said that Glaucos, son of Minos, was brought back to life through his skills. As punishment for this transgression, Zeus burnt his house down by striking it with a thunderbolt, but placed Asclepios himself in the sky with a snake in his hands, out of regard for his skill and for the sake of his father Apollo.
This, according to some accounts, is the reason why he is holding a snake. When he was forced to revive Glaucos and was imprisoned in a secret place, and was thinking about what he should do, staff in hand, a snake is said to have crept toward his staff. In his alarm, he killed it, hitting it repeatedly with his staff as he drew away. Later, so the story goes, another snake arrived there, carrying a herb in its mouth, and placed the herb on the head of the first snake; and after that, both snakes took to flight. Whereupon Asclepios made use of that same herb to bring Glaucos back to life. As a result, so it is said, the snake was placed both under the protection of Asclepios and among the stars. His successors followed his example and passed down the knowledge by which physicians make use of snakes.
Commentary
(i) Since snakes were emblematic of the cult and person of the healing-god Asclepios, who was often represented holding a staff with a snake coiled around it, Eratosthenes chose to identify him primarily as the Serpent-bearer in the sky. In myth, he was described as a son of Apollo by Coronis, a mortal woman, and he thus resembled Heracles in having been a mortal hero who attained divine status only after his death. He became the finest of healers, but met his death when he proceeded to subvert the natural and divine order by raising men from the dead (see Ap. 3.10.4, with a catalogue of those who benefited). It could be claimed in the present context that Zeus, after striking him dead in punishment, had set him in the sky as a favour to his father Apollo. The revival of the Cretan prince Glaucos, son of Minos, which Hyginus ascribes to Asclepios, was usually ascribed to the Theban seer Polyidos (e.g. Ap. 3.3.1, Hyginus, Mythical Tales 136), and more appropriately too, because Asclepios was supposed to have learned how to revive people through further development of his own medical skills.
(ii) There was a well-known myth in which Demeter was said to have transmitted her gift of grain to mortals at Eleusis, near Athens, using a man of that town, Triptolemos, to spread it through the world in a chariot drawn by winged dragons. Various tales were developed in which people were said to have tried to interfere with his mission, among them a certain Charnabon, king of the Getai in Thrace, who caused one of his dragons to be killed; the story was recounted in the lost Triptolemos of Sophocles, and a catasterism was then added by Hegesianax. Hyginus is our only source for the full story. By contrast to most astral myths in which people are represented in the sky by way of reward and commemoration, Charnabon is represented so that his fate may serve as a warning to others.
(iii) To pass on to tales in which the killing of dragons could be regarded as a useful service, some authors apparently appealed to a myth in which Heracles was said to have killed a huge snake in Lydia while serving Omphale, a queen of that land, as a slave (see Ap. 2.6.3 for the circumstances). If it had not already been used in another context, in connection with the Kneeler and the Dragon (see pp. 26–8), a more obvious choice would have been the myth in which Heracles killed the dragon of the Hesperides. This Lydian tale is relatively obscure, Hyginus is indeed our only source for it.
(iv) A certain Phorbas, who was honoured in hero-cult on Rhodes, was supposed to have delivered that island from an infestation of snakes. Of Thessalian birth, he was said to have been invited over for that purpose on the advice of the oracle at Delphi, and to have settled there with his followers (Diodorus 4.58.4–5). A Rhodian author appealed to this legend to explain the origin of the Serpent-bearer. We are told that Apollo portrayed Phorbas among the stars because he was a favourite of his, which implies some special connection with the god, even if he is now said to have arrived on the island by accident rather than on the advice of Apollo. Although it would have sufficed to say that he is represented in the sky with a snake to symbolize his services as a serpent-killer, the myth is altered to explain this through the idea that one of the snakes was of wholly exceptional size.
(v) The Thessalian king who was struck with insatiable hunger for violating a temple or grove of Demeter was usually identified as Erysichthon, son of Triopas, and this Erysichthon was said to have perished when he finally started to consume his own body; the story is first recounted by Callimachus (Hymn 6, 31 ff.), but some earlier allusions suggest that it was quite ancient. A tradition is also recorded, however, in which Triopas himself was said to have desecrated a grove of Demeter, though not to have suffered any divine punishment but merely to have been obliged to move abroad because his behaviour had angered the local people (Diodorus 5.61.1–3). But in the astral myth recorded by Hyginus, Demeter is said not only to have afflicted him with hunger, as in the case of Erysichthon, but also to have sent a snake against him toward the end of his life, the latter detail evidently being added to the story simply to account for the form of the constellation. As in the case of Charnabon, the catasterism is to be a source of infamy rather than of glory. This Triopas was sometimes said to have been the father of Phorbas.