[The Temple of Aesculapius in Diocletian's palace in Split]

Many temples, sanctuaries and even the entire small towns have been dedicated to Aesculapius's, the god of medicine. The remnants of Aesculapius temples in the Republic of Croatia have been found on locations of Narona, Salona, Pola and in Diocletian's palace in Split. The first archbishop of Split, "Giovanni di Ravenna", at the end of the 8th century or at the beginning of the 9th century, gave to Diocletian's Mausoleum the name of "Templum Jouis" and reassigned it to Christian church. Thomas the Archdeacon in the 13th century mentioned three temples in Diocletian's Palace: "templa...Jouis, Asclepii, Martis", while in 1567 Antonio Proculiano described four temples: the octogonal temple on the east dedicated to Jupiter (the present cathedral), the rectangular temple on the west (the present baptistry), a minor round temple on the south and a round-hexagonal temple on the north. The majority of authors, for centuries, called the baptistry: Aesculapius's temple, while only a few others called it Jupiter's or Janu's temple. It seems logical to assume that there was only one Jupiter's temple in Diocletian's Palace, namely the present cathedral. Four cultic edifices within the Diocletian's Palace were given six names: "Jouis, Asclepii, Martis, Janus's Kibela's and Venus's. Should the recent research prove the baptistry not to be Aesculapius's temple, the question might be raised whether one of the two, recently discovered small temples, Kibela's or Venus's, was dedicated to Aesculapius?