Asklepiads

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Ancient Greek physicians who claimed descent from the god Asclepius ; lines of a Greek lyric verse built on a fixed metrical pattern ; plants belonging to the milkweed family
2. Healers in ancient Greece traced to the god of medicine ; verse lines in a particular Greek lyric meter ; members of the milkweed family of flowering plants
3. Practitioners of medicine who regarded themselves as heirs of the god Asclepius ; poetic lines following a specific Greek metrical scheme ; flowering plants of the family Asclepiadaceae

Etymology: Asklepiads were the followers of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing, and the name was used for physicians who claimed descent from him. The god's cult was centred on sanctuaries called Asklepieia, where the sick slept in hope of a dream-cure, and the most famous of the physicians tied to that tradition was Hippocrates, who was said to belong to the Asklepiad line of the island of Kos. The word is formed from "Asklepios" with the patronymic suffix "-ides", meaning "son of" or "descendant of", so the literal sense is "sons of Asklepios". The same suffix appears in names such as "Priam's" descendants, the Atreides, showing how Greek used it to mark a family or lineage rather than a single father. Modern English uses "Asklepiad" mainly for these ancient healers and for the related plant family and poetic metre named after a Greek poet, Asclepiades of Samos, so readers meeting it in older texts should distinguish the physicians from the poet.