Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Apollo took Coronis daughter of Phlegyas as his beloved while she dwelt by Lake Boebeis in Thessaly. She conceived Asclepius. Before the birth she lay with a mortal, Ischys son of Elatus (Arcadian in some strands). A crow—or raven—that had been white and was Apollo’s watchful bird saw the adultery and flew to Delphi (or wherever the god then was) to report it. Apollo’s anger fell first on the messenger: in the etiology preserved fullest in Ovid’s Roman telling, the god turned the once-white raven black as punishment for bringing evil news (or for officious haste). Artemis, at Apollo’s bidding—or Apollo himself—shot Coronis dead. As the pyre was kindled, Apollo (or Hermes in some notices) snatched the living child from the mother’s womb and gave him to Chiron. Thus the healer Asclepius was born from a faithless mother’s death, and the raven’s black feathers became a proverbial sign of ill tidings. Pindar softens Apollo’s knowledge: the god himself perceives the betrayal by his own prophetic art and sends Artemis; the bird’s role is clearer in handbook and Roman narrative. The episode stands as both Asclepiad birth-myth and bird-aetiology: divine love, mortal betrayal, the cost of speaking truth to a god, and the child saved from the flames.