AesclepiusHygieia. ASCLEPIUS AND HYGIEIA. The mortal son of Apollo and Coronis, Asclepius became deified as the god of healing and medicine. As an unborn child, he was rescued from his mother’s funeral pyre by Apollo (or Hermes, according to Pausanias) and given to the centaur Chiron, who taught him medicine. Asclepius married Epione and they had several children, among them the Greek goddess of health, Hygieia. When Theseus’s son Hippolytus died, Artemis begged Asclepius to restore him to life. Asclepius did so but was himself killed by Zeus for disrupting the course of nature. Apollo avenged his son’s death by killing the Cyclopes who made Zeus’s thunderbolts. The healing cult of Asclepius, centered in Epidau-rus, was especially important in the fourth century bce. His worship was brought to Rome—where he was called Aesculapius—after a plague in 293 bce. The Roman cult followed the Greek version almost completely, but of the minor deities worshiped with Asclepius, only his daughter Hygieia made the transition. Asclepius is usually shown in ancient art with his attributes, a staff with a snake coiled above it. In postclassical treatments he often appears as an allegory of healing or in pseudohistorical renderings of the temple of Aesculapius in Rome. Classical Sources. Homeric Hymns, “To Asclepius.” Pindar, Pythian Odes 3.1—45. Orphic Hymns 67, “To Asclepius,” 68, “To Hygieia.” Virgil, Aeneid 7.760—83. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.600—34,15.533—46,15.626—744; Fasti 6.746—54. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 3.10.3-4. Pausanias, Description if Greece 2.26.3—10, 8.25.11. Hyginus, Fabulae 49; Poetica as-tronomica 2.23. Lucian, Dialogues of the Gods 15, “Zeus, Asclepius, and Heracles.” See also Apollo, Loves; Phaedra.