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Greek Hygeia - Roman Salus
GODDESS of Hygiene Health Cleanliness Ancient Coins
Hygeia, was a daughter of the god of medicine, Asclepius. She was the goddess of
health, cleanliness and sanitation and afterwards, the moon.
In
Greek and
Roman mythology, Hygieia, or
Hygeia, was a daughter of the god of medicine,
Asclepius. She was the goddess of
health, cleanliness and sanitation and afterwards, the moon. She also
played an important part in her father's
cult. While her father was more
directly
associated with healing, she was associated with the prevention of
sickness and the continuation of good health. Her name is the source of
the word "hygiene".
At Athens, Hygieia was the subject of a local cult since at least the
7th century BC. "Athena Hygieia" was
one of the cult titles given to
Athena, as Plutarch recounts of the
building of the
Parthenon (447-432 BC):
However, the cult of Hygieia as an independent goddess did not begin
to spread out until the
Delphic oracle recognized her, and
after the devastating
Plague of Athens (430-27 BC) and in
Rome in 293 BC.
In the second century AD,
Pausanias noted the statues both of
Hygieia and of Athena Hygieia near the entrance to the
Acropolis of Athens.
Hygieia's primary temples were in
Epidaurus,
Corinth,
Cos and
Pergamon.
Pausanias remarked that, at the
Asclepieion of
Titane in
Sicyon (founded by
Alexanor, Asclepius' grandson), statues
of Hygieia were covered by women's hair and pieces of
Babylonian clothes. According to
inscriptions, the same sacrifices were offered at
Paros.
Ariphron, a Sicyonian artist from the
4th century BC wrote a well-known
hymn celebrating her. Statues of
Hygieia were created by
Scopas,
Bryaxis and
Timotheus, among others, but there is
no clear description of what they looked like. She was often depicted as
a young woman feeding a large snake that was wrapped around her body or
drinking from a jar that she carried. These attributes were later
adopted by the
Gallo-Roman healing goddess,
Sirona. Hygieia was accompanied by her
brother,
Telesphorus.
"Hygieia" was used as a greeting among the
Pythagoreans.
Salus (Health) a Goddess of the Romans, the same that was worshipped
under the name of Hygiea by the Greeks, who feigned her to be the
daughter of Asclepius and of Minerva. On a denarius of the Acilia family
appears the head of the goddess and on the reverse a female standing
with a serpent in her hand. The types of this divinity on imperial coins
most frequently present to view a woman clothed in the stola;
sometimes
she is sitting, at others standing; in others in a recumbent posture,
with a serpent either on her right or her left arm in a quiescent state,
rising in folds or entwined round an altar before her, and receiving
food from a patera, which she holds in her extended hand. It is in this
form (which was doubtless that of her statues and with these symbols)
that she is exhibited on most coins on the imperial series from Galba to
Maximianus. She had a celebrated temple at Rome, painted, it was said,
by Q. Fabius, who thence was surnamed Pictor (the painter) . - There
appears to be some affinity between this personification of Salus, when
offering food in a patella to a serpent, and the Lanuvian virgin
represented in the same act on coins bearing the head of Juno Sospita. -
The opinion also has the probability on the face of it, which refers the
serpent on coins, where mention is made of Salus Augusti, or Augustorum,
to Aesculapius and his daughter Hygaeia (or Salus) as deities of Health.
- Certain it is that when those sanitary divinities, and especially when
Dea Salus, occur on coins of Emperors, they indicate that those princes
were labouring at the time under some diseases; on which account, it
would seem, sacred rites had been performed for them and the memorial of
the event recorded on public monuments.
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