ABSTRACT
Hygieia was a goddess honoured both in public sanctuaries and in the home. She was also good health personified, the objective of nearly if not all human beings, whether laymen or doctors. An important means to achieving that objective was through diet, for Galen tells us that dietetics was the most useful branch of medicine (On the Powers of Foods 1.1). The aim of this chapter is to explore the broad cultural perspective within which the Greeks combined the objective of good health (hygieia) with honouring the goddess (Hygieia) in cult and literature.
