However, the reader of Homer is well aware that medical affairs were regarded by the Greeks as subject to the will of Phœbus. The epidemic which affected the Grecian forces, spoken of in the beginning of his great work, was held to be caused by the god. Being moved to anger by the words of his daughter-robbed priest— “Latona’s son a dire contagion spread And heap’d the camp with mountains of the dead.”[89] Chryses, having received the maiden[90] back from her kingly abductor,[91] then addressed Apollo again, saying, among other things:— “If fir’d to vengeance at thy priest’s request, Thy direful darts inflict the raging pest, Once more attend! Avert the wasteful woe And smile propitious and unbend thy bow.”[92] The prayer was heard and answered as desired. Surgical as well as purely medical aid was sought and received from Apollo. Thus, when the Lycian chief, Sarpedon, was killed, Glaucus, himself sorely wounded and unable to protect his friend’s remains, petitioned the “god of health,” the “god of every healing art,” and “Apollo heard; and suppliant as he stood, His heavenly hand restrain’d the flux of blood; He drew the dolours from the wounded part, And breath’d a spirit in his rising heart.”[93] One of the names often applied to Apollo,[94] and subsequently to his son,[95] was distinctly medical, viz., Pæon, or Paieon.[96] Homer always uses it in referring to the physician of the Olympian gods, as where he speaks of the Pharian race as “from Pæon sprung.”[97] “Pæonian herbs”[98] is the phrase used by Virgil in his account of the restoration to life of Hippolytus. And this leads me to say that Apollo was believed to have a special knowledge of medicinal plants. By Ovid he is represented as saying:— “What herbs and simples grow In fields, in forests, all their power I know.”[99] It may be further said that Apollo always continued to have healing powers accorded him. No more proof of this is wanting than the first clause of the Hippocratic oath—“I swear by Apollo, the physician.”