Ophiolatry – or serpent worship, in plain English – was very common in ancient civilizations. “The snake would be good and evil, sagacity and immortality, the link between the known world (the surface of the Earth) and the unknown (underground)”, says Joffre de Rezende, from the Federal University of Goiás, member of the Brazilian Society of History of Medicine. In Greece, serpents circulated around the temples of the god of medicine (Asclepius in Greek, Aesculapius in Latin) and were considered beneficial to patients. When a plague attacked Rome in 293 BC, the Romans sought out one of these snakes. When the epidemic subsided, they believed that the animal represented the power of this god.
“In the sculptures discovered in archaeological excavations of the Greco-Roman civilization, Asclepius is always holding a wooden staff around which a serpent is wrapped”, says Joffre. This staff would represent the tree of life: the perpetuation of the cycle of death and rebirth that occurs in nature. Without it, therefore, the symbol would be incomplete.