It was, then, the unhappy fate of Æsculapius to be an orphan from his birth, if birth he had, to speak correctly; and it is possible that his advent was decidedly premature—in a medical sense. Apollo was puzzled to know what to do with his tender son; nor did he do for him all that could be expected, for baby Æsculapius was heartlessly exposed on Mount Titthium. Here the little unfortunate fell into the keeping of a friendly goat and dog. The goat gave the precious _enfant trouvé_ nourishment,[119] as Amalthea had done Zeus, and the dog kept guard over him.[120] Splendid services, indeed, on the part of two humble animals, in the interest of medicine and humanity! On Epidaurian coins, the infantile god of medicine is appropriately represented under a she-goat on Mount Titthium, with Aresthanas approaching. This person was the shepherd of whom Pausanias says that, coming to the rescue, “he beheld a splendor beaming from the infant, and, thinking that it was something divine, as indeed it was, departed from the place. But a report,” he continues, “was immediately spread through every land and sea that such as were afflicted with any kind of disease were healed by the boy, and that even the dead were raised to life.”[121] The reader need hardly be informed that accounts parallel to this are common enough in ancient records. How it happened that the child of Coronis, a Thessalian, first saw the light in Epidauria, a country which became particularly sacred to him, is a question which should be answered. It appears that Coronis came there with her warlike father, Phlegyas, who gave, as a reason for his visit, a desire to see the country, but, “in reality,” Pausanias says, “that he might inspect the multitude of the inhabitants, and learn whether there was a great quantity of fighting men.”[122] Pindar states that Apollo, on rescuing his child, bore him at once to Chiron— “To learn of human woes the healing lore,”[123] which does away with the fabled discreditable exposure of him; but whether this be so or not, in progress of time, he did put him under the care and instruction of “the beneficent leech,”[124] Cheiron (to use the archaic expression of the historian, Grote[125]), the Thessalian Centaur, or fabulous monster, whose figure from the waist down was like the body of a horse.[126] Under the direction of this strangely-formed creature, Æsculapius proceeded to study the medical virtues of plants; for Chiron was a great herbalist, being called by Homer, in the words of Pope, “the sire of pharmacy.”[127] In time the pupil exceeded the teacher in his knowledge of drugs. Chiron was regarded, Pindar tells us,[128] as the son of Saturn and the sea-nymph Philyra; and hence was a brother of Zeus. Saturn changed himself into a horse to conceal his amour with the nymph from his wife, Rhea. This would account for the form of the Centaur.