EsoteriaA library of sacred & hidden knowledge
Liber X · Greek Mythology

Liber X · Greek Mythology · Chapter VI: Religion, Mysteries & Oracles

Dodona and Asclepius: Oak Oracle, Lead Tablets and Epidaurus

The oracle of Zeus at Dodona, its sacred oak and lead question tablets, and the healing cult of Asclepius at Epidaurus, with its dream incubation and cures.

8 min read 1,845 words Updated

Dodona and Epidaurus were two of the most important sanctuaries of ancient Greece after Delphi. At Dodona in Epirus, Zeus was believed to speak through a sacred oak, and thousands of small lead tablets preserve the questions that ordinary people put to him. At Epidaurus in the Peloponnese, the healing god Asclepius was consulted through incubation: the sick slept in his sanctuary and hoped that the god would cure them or show them a remedy in a dream.

The most famous Greek oracle, Apollo's at Delphi, has its own article, The Oracle of Delphi; dream divination and other oracular methods across cultures are surveyed in Other Oracles.

Dodona: Zeus, Dione and the Speaking Oak§

The sanctuary of Dodona lies in a high valley below Mount Tomaros, south-west of modern Ioannina in north-western Greece. Already in the Iliad, Achilles prays to "Pelasgian" Zeus who rules wintry Dodona, where his interpreters, the Selloi, sleep on the ground and leave their feet unwashed. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is said in a false tale to have gone to Dodona to hear the will of Zeus from the god's high-leafed oak. Here Zeus was worshipped with the epithet Naios and alongside a consort, Dione, rather than Hera — a sign of the sanctuary's distinct local tradition. For the god himself, see Zeus, King of the Gods.

The historian Herodotus, visiting in the fifth century BCE, was told by the three priestesses of Dodona that a black dove had flown from Egyptian Thebes, settled on the oak and announced in a human voice that an oracle of Zeus should be founded there; another dove flew to Libya and founded the oracle of Ammon. Herodotus rationalised the story, suggesting that the "dove" was a captive Egyptian woman whose foreign speech sounded like birdsong. The priestesses themselves were called Peleiades, "doves".

For centuries Dodona had no temple: the sacred space was the oak, ringed by bronze tripods and cauldrons. Later a bronze boy with a whip, dedicated by the people of Corcyra, struck a bronze vessel whenever the wind blew, and "the bronze of Dodona" became a proverb for a ceaseless talker. A small temple was built in the fourth century BCE, and under the Molossian kings, especially Pyrrhus, the site gained a theatre and the festival games of the Naia. Sacked by the Aetolians in 219 BCE and damaged again by Rome in 167 BCE, it remained in use into the Roman period; in late antiquity a Christian basilica was built there.

The Lead Tablets: Questions of Ordinary Greeks§

Dodona's most remarkable legacy is its archive of questions. Since Konstantinos Karapanos' excavations of 1875–76, thousands of thin, folded strips of lead have been found on which consultants scratched their enquiries. The full Greek corpus published in 2013 contains over four thousand texts, and the French scholar Éric Lhôte had earlier edited a large selection. Most date from the sixth to the second century BCE.

The questions are brief and often follow a formula: an invocation of the god or of "good fortune", the name of the person asking, and a question to Zeus Naios and Dione, frequently framed as a choice: "is it better and more profitable if I…?" People asked whether to marry, whether they would have children, whether to sail, whether to move to another city, whether to take up a trade such as shepherding or metalworking, which god they should pray to for a cure, and whether a slave would run away. One well-known tablet records a man named Lysanias asking whether the child that a woman called Annyla was expecting was his. Communities asked too: the people of Corcyra enquired which gods they should honour to live in concord.

Answers are rarely recorded. The historian Esther Eidinow has used the tablets to study how Greeks managed uncertainty and risk; they show what worried farmers, traders and families, far from the political consultations made famous by Delphi.

How the Dodona Oracle Answered§

Ancient authors describe several methods at Dodona — the rustling of the oak, the flight or calls of doves, the sound of the bronze, a sacred spring — and how they related or changed over time is uncertain. The questions on the tablets, often framed as alternatives, suggest that by the classical period answers were usually obtained by drawing lots from a vessel, giving a "yes" or "no" or a choice between options. Cicero tells a story of Spartan envoys whose lots were scattered by a pet ape of the Molossian king before they could be drawn, an omen taken as a disaster.

States consulted Dodona too, Athens among them, and its reputation as the most ancient Greek oracle gave it lasting prestige until, like Delphi, it declined under Rome.

Asclepius: The Physician God and His Myth§

Asclepius (Greek Asklēpios, Latin Aesculapius) appears in Homer as a mortal, the "blameless physician" whose sons Machaon and Podaleirios serve as healers in the Greek army at Troy. In the version told by Pindar, he was the son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis; Apollo killed Coronis for her infidelity but rescued the unborn child from her funeral pyre and gave him to the centaur Chiron, who taught him medicine. When Asclepius went so far as to raise the dead, Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt for overstepping mortal limits.

From this figure, half hero and half god, emerged the most popular healing deity of the Greek world. His daughters included Hygieia (Health) and Panakeia (Cure-all). His emblem was a staff with a single coiled serpent, often confused with Hermes' two-snaked wand (see the caduceus), and harmless snakes and dogs lived in his sanctuaries. The Hermetic dialogue that bears his name, the Asclepius, shows how his figure was later adopted in learned philosophy.

Epidaurus and the Practice of Incubation§

At Epidaurus the cult of Asclepius grew beside an older sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas and flourished from the late fifth century BCE. In the fourth century it was rebuilt on a grand scale, with a temple and gold-and-ivory statue, a circular tholos whose maze-like foundations remain unexplained, an abaton or colonnaded hall for sleeping, guest houses and the theatre still famous for its acoustics.

Incubation (Greek enkoimēsis) followed a sequence that varied between sanctuaries. Visitors purified themselves, made preliminary offerings such as cakes, and paid fees; then, at nightfall, they lay down on skins or pallets in the abaton. The god was expected to appear in a dream, sometimes with his snakes or dogs, and either to heal on the spot or to prescribe a treatment. Grateful patients often dedicated models of the healed body part.

Pausanias saw six inscribed stelae at Epidaurus recording cures; parts of several, from the fourth century BCE, survive and are known as the iamata. They tell of a woman pregnant for five years who gave birth to a boy who at once washed himself at the fountain, of a man whose spear-point lodged in his jaw was drawn out during sleep, and of an Athenian woman who mocked earlier miracles, was healed of blindness in one eye and was told to dedicate a silver pig as a reminder of her foolishness. These texts were propaganda for the god, and scholars read them as evidence of belief and sanctuary practice rather than as medical records. Aristophanes' comedy Wealth (388 BCE) parodies a night of incubation in Athens, including a priest who quietly collects the food offerings from the altar.

Athens, Rome and Pergamon: The Spread of the Healing Cult§

In 420/419 BCE Asclepius was brought from Epidaurus to Athens; according to later tradition the poet Sophocles received the god, in the form of his sacred snake, into his house until a sanctuary was ready, and after his death was honoured as a hero for it. Asclepius was also brought to Rome after a plague in 293 BCE: Livy and Ovid tell how a serpent from Epidaurus left the ship and swam to the island in the Tiber, where his temple was built. The island still has a hospital.

The Asclepieion on Kos, an island associated with Hippocrates, and the sanctuary at Pergamon became renowned centres. At Pergamon, in the second century CE, the orator Aelius Aristides spent long periods as a patient and recorded years of dreams and divine instructions in his Sacred Tales, the fullest personal account of devotion to a healing god from antiquity. The physician Galen, also from Pergamon, called himself a servant of Asclepius. Even Socrates, in Plato's Phaedo, ends his life with a request to his friend: "Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?" (trans. Benjamin Jowett). In late antiquity Asclepius was often compared with Christ by pagans and Christians alike. How sacrifice and sanctuaries operated in general is described in Greek Sacrifice, Festivals and Temples.

Frequently asked questions§

How did the oracle of Dodona work?§

Ancient writers mention the rustling of Zeus's sacred oak, doves, bronze vessels and a spring, but by the classical period consultants usually wrote a question on a lead tablet, and the answer was probably obtained by drawing lots. Many questions are phrased as a choice between alternatives.

What are the Dodona lead tablets?§

They are thin strips of lead on which visitors wrote their questions to Zeus Naios and Dione, mostly between the sixth and second centuries BCE. More than four thousand reveal everyday concerns about marriage, children, health, travel and work.

What was incubation in the cult of Asclepius?§

Incubation was the practice of sleeping in a sanctuary, especially the abaton at Epidaurus, hoping that Asclepius would appear in a dream to heal or to prescribe a treatment.

What is the difference between the rod of Asclepius and the caduceus?§

The rod of Asclepius is a staff with one coiled serpent. The caduceus is Hermes' herald's wand, with two snakes and often wings; its use as a medical emblem is a later confusion.

Sources and further reading§