CHAPTER XIV.
HYGEIA, THE GODDESS OF HEALTH.
The need of a special divinity to preserve people in a state of health was widely felt, even in very early times. In Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and elsewhere, this need found pronounced expression. Isis and Istar[433] and Athene were each, in one way or another, accorded great power over bodily or mental health. But the Greeks, in their Hygeia, markedly emphasized and entirely specialized the conception. Here we have an exclusively health divinity, who had more or less of a counterpart in the Salus of the Romans,—a goddess highly esteemed, worshipped on set days, and to whom a fine temple was devoted at the Eternal City, situated near the gate called from it Porta Salutaris.
Fig. 17.—Serpent and Bowl of Hygeia.[434]
From the preceding statements, the reader will observe that the divinities who were specially interested in the preservation of health were all females. This is an exceedingly interesting fact. It is not an incongruous one, either. The ancients were keenly alive to the sense of fitness in things; and hence it is hardly likely that they made a mistake in Hygeia, the health goddess. From the exercise of the great function of nurturing and caring for the young of the species, woman has sufficient claim to the distinction of being, par excellence, the guardian of health. Why the goddess should be a maid rather than a matron is not extremely clear. Likely the idea was to present in her a woman just mature and free from blemish, in a typically perfect state.
However, we have in Hygeia, “daughter of Pæon, queen of every joy,” to use the appropriate words with which Armstrong starts off in the invocation to her, at the beginning of his fine poem,[435] a very interesting and beautiful conception. It is easy to understand why this divinity became very popular. O Goddess! if—
“But for thee,
Nature would sicken, nature soon would die,”
as the author just quoted declares, thy worship might well have become universal, for without health life is burdensome, a gift of doubtful value! Health and long life are things mortals have always craved and always prized. In that interesting Hebræo-Chaldean history, “Tobias,” Sara, with her husband, gives utterance to a truly human prayer: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, and let us grow old both together in health.”[436] “At heart,” says Dr. Brinton, “all prayers are for preservation; the burden of all litanies is a begging for life.”[437]