n of the cult into Greece is not known,
but its great centres were at Epidaurus, Cos, Pergamos and Tricca. It
throve with wonderful rapidity. Asklepios became one of the most popular
of the gods. By the time of Alexander it is estimated that there were
between three and four hundred temples dedicated to him.

His worship was introduced into Rome at the time of the Great Plague at
the beginning of the third century B.C. (as told by Livy in Book XI),
and the temple on the island of Tiber became a famous resort. If you can
transfer in imagination the Hot Springs of Virginia to the neighborhood
of Washington, and put there a group of buildings such as are
represented in these outlines of Caton's(13) (p. 52), add a sumptuous
theatre with seating capacity for 20,000, a stadium 600 feet long with
a seating capacity of 12,000, and all possible accessories of art and
science, you will have an idea of what the temple at Epidaurus, a few
miles from Athens, was. "The cult flourished mostly in places which,
through climatic or hygienic advantages, were natural health resorts.
Those favoured spots on hill or mountain, in the shelter of forests, by
rivers or springs of pure flowing water, were conducive to health. The
vivifying air, the well cultivated gardens surrounding the shrine, the
magnificent view, all tended to cheer the heart with new hope of cure.
Many of these temples owed their fame to mineral or merely hot springs.
To the homely altars, erected originally by sacred fountains in the
neighbourhood of health-giving mineral springs, were later added
magnificent temples, pleasure-grounds for festivals, gymnasia in
which bodily ailments were treated by physical exercises, baths and
inunctions, also, as is proved by excavations, living rooms for the
patients. Access to the shrine was forbidden to the unclean and the
impure, pregnant women and the mortally afflicted were kept away; no
dead body could find a resting-place within the holy precincts, the
shelter and the cure of the sick being undertaken by the keepers of inns
and boarding-houses in the neighbourhood. The suppliants for aid had
to submit to careful purification, to bathe in sea, river or spring, to
fast for a prescribed time, to abjure wine and certain articles of
diet, and they were only permitted to enter the temple when they were
adequately prepared by cleansing, inunction and fumigation. This lengthy
and exhausting preparation, partly dietetic, partly suggestive,