Serpents were sacred to Æsculapius, probably because of the superstition that those animals have a faculty of renewing their youth by a change of skin. The worship of Æsculapius was introduced into Rome in a time of great sickness, and an embassy was sent to the temple at Epidaurus to implore the help of the god. Æsculapius was so favorably inclined to the petitioners that he accompanied the returning ship in the form of a serpent. When they reached the river Tiber, the serpent glided from the vessel, and took possession of an island in the river. Here a temple was later erected in honor of Æsculapius. XVIII According to the more ancient Greek conception, Venus was the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, goddess of moisture; but Hesiod says that she came from the foam of the sea, and was therefore called by the Greeks Aphrodite--the foam-born. She was generally represented as a beautiful nude figure, or wearing her wonderful girdle, the Cestus--in which lay "love and desire and loving converse that steals the wits even of the wise." The most famous statue of Venus is the one that was found on the island of Melos (Milo), and is now in the Louvre, in Paris. It is probably the work of some sculptor of about the third century B.C. He followed an original of the age of Praxiteles, probably in bronze, which represented the goddess, partly draped, gazing at her reflection in an uplifted shield. A masterpiece of Praxiteles was the Venus of Cnidos, based upon which are the Venus of the Capitoline in Rome, the Venus de Medici in Florence, and the Venus of the Vatican, which is much superior to the other two. Poems:-- Chorus to Aphrodite in "Atalanta in Calydon" ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE Aphrodite in "Epic of Hades" LEWIS MORRIS Venus of Milo EDWARD R. SILL Venus and Adonis WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Adonis in "Epic of Hades" LEWIS MORRIS Death of Adonis THEOCRITUS, trans. by ANDREW LANG Laus Veneris ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE The "Lament for Adonis" by Bion has been translated by Andrew Lang, Edwin Arnold, and Mrs. Browning. The following stanza is from Tennyson:-- "Idalian Aphrodite beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder; from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o'er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine bunches Floated the glowing sunlights, as she moved." XIX