It is probable that the Romans had always worshipped certain powers of healing, but what their names were under the old regime we do not know, except that possibly they were connected with the gods of water.  At the close of the kingdom they received, as we have seen, Apollo the divine healer, Apollo Medicus, and this was originally the only side of his activity which he exercised at Rome.  At various seasons of plague during the early centuries of the republic they called on him for help, and on one such occasion (B.C. 431) they built him a temple.  But in the course of time men began to think lightly of the old family physician who had stood by the Romans during more than two centuries; his methods were too conservative, they were felt not to be thoroughly up to date.  A new god of healing had appeared in Rome, the Greek god Asklepios, whom myth called Apollo’s son, though originally he had had no connection with Apollo.  His great sanctuary was at Epidauros, and from there his cult spread over all the Greek world.  At first he was known at Rome only in the worship of private individuals, who had brought him up from the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, probably Tarentum or Metapontum; but his cult was contagious, and the stories of his miraculous cures were eagerly heard.  It is no wonder then that in the presence of a great pestilence in B.C. 293, when the Sibylline books were consulted, “it was found in the books,” as Livy says, “that Aesculapius must be brought to Rome from Epidauros.”  The war with Pyrrhus however was on, and nothing could be done that year except the setting apart of a solemn day of prayer and supplication to Aesculapius.  It is interesting to observe how much the Romans have changed since the time exactly two centuries before (B.C. 493), when Ceres and her companions, the first gods introduced by the books, received their temple.  That was the acknowledgment of gods well known at Rome, and even then they were immediately identified with already existing Roman gods; now they actually send an expedition not only outside of Rome but of Italy itself to bring in the cult of a god whom they accept by his Greek name.  In the following year (B.C. 292) the expedition started for Epidauros to bring back the god, that is the sacred snake which was both his symbol and his visible presence.  Such an importation of a sacred snake from Epidauros is not unique in the case of Rome, but was the normal method of establishing a branch cult.  Snakes were kept at Epidauros for just this purpose, and many branches were thus established.  It is an extremely interesting question as to the practical medical value of the methods of healing practised at Epidauros and its branches.  For a long time those best fitted to express a technical opinion, modern physicians who examined the matter, found nothing good in them, and their opinion seems to receive confirmation from some of the inscriptions recently discovered at Epidauros, which tell the most extraordinary tales