comrades, as Homer relates. When Menelaus was wounded by an arrow shot by Pandarus, Machaon was sent for, and "sucked the blood, and sovereign balm infused, which Chiron gave, and Æsculapius used."
After the Trojan war both the brothers continued to exercise their art, and some of their cures are recorded. Their sons after them likewise practised medicine, and the earliest Æsculapian Temple is believed to have been erected in memory of his grandfather by Spyrus, the second son of Machaon, at Argos. Perhaps he only intended it as a home for patients, or it may have been as an advertisement. From then, however, the worship of Æsculapius spread, and we read of temples at Titane in the Peloponnesus, at Tricca in Thessalia, at Trithorea, at Corinth, at Epidaurus, at Cos, at Megalopolis in Arcadia, at Lar in Laconia, at Drepher, at Drope, at Corona on the Gulf of Messina, at Egrum, at Delos, at Cyllene, at Smyrna, and at Pergamos in Asia Minor. The Temple of Epidaurus was for a long time the most important, but before the time of Hippocrates that of Cos seems to have taken the lead.
The Daughters of Æsculapius
are often described as allegorical figures, Hygeia representing health, and Panacea, medicine. Hygeia especially was widely worshipped by Greeks, and when rich people recovered from an illness they often had medals struck with her figure on the reverse. Pliny says it was customary to offer her a simple cake of fine flour, to indicate the connection between simple living and good health. Panacea was likewise made a divinity. She presided over the administration of medicines. Egrea and Jaso are but little known. The former (whose name signified the light of the Sun) married a serpent
