Hygieia Mythology

The name Hygieia simply means health, so the goddess personifies a condition. Pausanias names her as the daughter of Asclepius, while some local traditions make her his wife. Statues show her feeding a serpent from the bowl in her hand.

Asclepius is the son of Apollo and Coronis and was raised by the centaur Chiron. Because he began to raise the dead, Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt and he was later taken up to the sky. His temples spread from Epidaurus to Pergamon. Asclepius on the Chiron page →

The daughters of Asclepius are Hygieia, Panacea, Iaso, Aceso and Aegle. Their names mean health, all healing, cure, remedy and brightness. Together the five name the stages of an illness one by one.

Panacea is the goddess of recovering from illness and Hygieia of not falling ill. Ancient medicine kept the two apart and assigned regimen, meaning diet and exercise, to Hygieia. That distinction is the oldest counterpart of modern preventive medicine.

In her images the goddess holds a bowl with a serpent feeding from it. The serpent sheds its skin and so stands for renewal, while the bowl stands for the prepared remedy. The pair is used today as the symbol of pharmacy.

The oath begins, 'I swear by Apollo the physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia and by Panacea'. The text dates to the fifth or fourth century BC. Naming Hygieia there shows that keeping health counted as part of the physician's work.

At the Asclepieion of Epidaurus the sick slept in the temple and were treated in their dreams, a practice called incubation. Inscriptions on the temple walls record the names of those who recovered and their complaints.

On the Athenian Acropolis Athena was worshipped under the title Hygieia and had an altar beside the Propylaea. Plutarch reports that a workman who fell during Pericles' building works was healed by a herb the goddess showed. Here health is not a separate goddess but an aspect of Athena.

In Rome Salus means both health and the safety of the state. Her temple on the Quirinal was dedicated in 302 BC. When the Greek Hygieia reached Rome she merged with this older goddess.

Hippocratic texts explain health through the balance of food, sleep, exercise and climate. That order is called diaita, regimen, and it is the physician's first instrument. Hygieia is the goddess of this daily measure rather than a miraculous rescuer.

The French hygiène entered the language in the sixteenth century through the Greek hygieinos. The word carries the name of the goddess directly. Its present sense is limited to cleanliness, while the ancient sense covered the whole order of life.

Annibale de Gasparis found nine asteroids at the Capodimonte Observatory, and Hygieia is the largest of them. The name was proposed by the observatory director Ernesto Capocci. It was the last of the large belt bodies to be noticed, because its surface is dark.

Observations in 2019 showed Hygieia to be rounder than expected. The definition of a dwarf planet requires a body rounded by its own gravity, which opened its classification to debate. The International Astronomical Union has not yet ruled on it.

Those who use Hygieia connect it with preventive health, diet and habit. Its literature is thin compared with the four large asteroids. These readings have no link to the classical system of dignities and cannot be added to it.