Description & Facts: Sanctuary of Asclepius Athens, Greece 9.2006 This set of buildings, also called Asclepieion, were built close to a spring after the cult of Asclepius, the son of Apollo and god of medicine, had been introduced in Athens in 420 BC (Asclepius is the god to whom, according to Plato (Phædo, 118a), Socrates, in his last words before drinking the hemlock, asks Crito to sacrifice a cock.)