I mean ok Apollo is fine, He’s the Lord of illness and medicine, and Hygeia and Salus surely are lovely and caring to provide health and wellbeing to the individual and the State.
But Aesculapius/Asklepios*?
He’s the one who would stitch you back to life without asking if you did something good to deserve it. You can’t put Him in the rhetoric of “divine morals” because He is the Friend of Man and He is THE model we can look at when we decide to strive for perfection in any field.
He’s not the raging God who walks the battlefield to ruin the nations. He’s literally That Dude in the medic tent that tries to keep your bowels inside your lifeless body saying “R e a l l y man, I just saved you yesterday - how dare you trying to die again?” while deciding if He should put your appendicitis back where it was because Nature surely is wise and all, but that organ makes you question how anatomy works.
He was literally born out of death (Apollo cut Him from His mother's womb when she was laid out on the funeral pyre) and I'm convinced that just for this He is the thrice born - He died before experiencing life, He lived as a human and died, and was reborn as a God.
He learned His skills from Chiron and discovered the mystery of resurrection watching a couple of snakes and on an iconographical level it's so good because among many other things snakes are representations of the soul, so He directly learned His skill from the dead (*cough cough* necromancy *cough cough*).
He was so good at doing His job that He shattered the natural cycle of life and death and Hades had to walk His way up to Zeus to complain that souls no longer went to His realm because of Asklepios. Like, how good do you have to be in your job to piss off a God?
He is the fucking Resurrector, born out of a funeral pyre, killed by lightning and brought back by divine's will because yes He ruined the cycles but He did that because He reached perfection in his job. He is the one who decides who should follow Thanatos/Mors and He has a staff because He's perfectly capable of beat the shit out of death if it decides to show up when He's on duty.
He could've been the dreadful God of necromancy and be one of the scariest Gods in the pantheon but instead He decided to be the Soothing One, the Great Physician who helps mankind in its mortal journey, the One who listens to everyone's prayers, and He doesn't care if you're crippled (both physically and mentally) or if you're on the edge, waiting for a reason to jump.
Aesculapius became a God because He loved mankind and we completely forgot about Him.
That's why I want to s̵̡̢̛̫̣͍͇̻̬͚̘̼̓͑͊̅̋̿͐̓̍̄͆͊̚͝ç̸̢̻̳̣͚̣̉͑̅̀́̋͊̎̂̕͝͝r̴̢̜̲̘̬̤̹̣͉̣̣̒́͜͜ȩ̸̦͕̣̘̞̯̣̈̅̐͂̒̃̿͒́͌̒͗̕̚͜a̷͕̪̙̮̜̙͈͎̰͓̔̽̈̽̓̒͜͠m̸̳̞̩̗̟̲͓̘̭͍̭͈̝̔͗̇̅̿͋̔̃̾̿͛̈́͊̃.
*I’ll use both names because He’s the only God I perceive as the same both in the Greek and the Roman pantheon (and given His history it makes perfect sense)
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