Æsculapius was only too successful a practitioner; for when he was exercising his art upon Glaucus, Zeus killed the physician with a flash of lightning, as he feared that men might gradually escape death altogether. Others say the reason was that Pluto complained that by such medical treatment the number of the dead was too much diminished. On the request of Apollo, Zeus placed Æsculapius amongst the stars. His wife was Epione (the soother). Homer mentions Podalirius and Machaon as sons of Æsculapius, and the following are also said to have been his sons and daughters—Janiscus, Alexenor, Aratus, Hygeia, Ægle, Iaso, and Panaceia. Most of these, as Hygeia, the goddess of health, and Panaceia, the all-healing, it will be seen, are merely personifications of the powers ascribed to their father. There is no doubt that facts are the basis of the Æsculapian story. The divinity was worshipped all over Greece. His temples were for the most part built in mountainous and healthy places, and as often as possible in the neighbourhood of a medicinal spring; in a sense they became the prototypes of our hospitals and medical schools. Multitudes of sick persons visited them, and the priests found it to their interest to study diseases and their remedies; for though faith and religious fervour may do much for the sick, the art of the physician and the hand of the surgeon are adjuncts by no means to be despised even in a temple clinic. The chief of the Æsculapian temples was at Epidaurus; there no one was permitted to die and no woman to give birth to a child. The connection of the serpent with the divinity probably arose from the idea that serpents represent prudence and renovation, and have the power of discovering the secret virtues of healing plants. The idea of the serpent twined round the rod of Æsculapius is that “as sickness comes from him, from him too must or may come the healing.”[332] The knots on the staff are supposed to symbolize the many knotty points which arise in the practice of physic. MINERVA was the patroness of all the arts and trades; at her festivals she was invoked by all who desired to distinguish themselves in medicine, as well as by the patients whom they failed to cure. As the goddess of intelligence and inventiveness, she was the Greek patroness of physicians, and was the same deity as Pallas Athene, who bestows health and keeps off sickness. ARTEMIS, or DIANA, as the Romans called the Greek goddess, was a deity who, inviolate and vigorous herself, granted health and strength to others. She was the sister of Apollo, and though a dispenser of life could, like her brother, send death and disease amongst men and animals. Sudden deaths, especially amongst women, were described as the effect of her arrows. She was θεὰ σώτειρα, who assuaged the sufferings of mortals. When Æneas was wounded, she healed him in the temple of Apollo.[333] Yet Artemis ταυροπόλος produced madness in the minds of men.[334]