entle and sweet and
teachable; and among all the pupils of Cheiron he was the best loved.
He learned the lore of the mountains, the woods, and the fields. He
found out what virtue there is in herbs and flowers and senseless
stones; and he studied the habits of birds and beasts and men. But above
all he became skillful in dressing wounds and healing diseases; and to
this day physicians remember and honor him as the first and greatest of
their craft. When he grew up to manhood his name was heard in every
land, and people blessed him because he was the friend of life and the
foe of death.

As time went by, AEsculapius cured so many people and saved so many lives
that Pluto, the pale-faced king of the Lower World, became alarmed.

"I shall soon have nothing to do," he said, "if this physician does not
stop keeping people away from my kingdom."

And he sent word to his brother Jupiter, and complained that AEsculapius
was cheating him out of what was his due. Great Jupiter listened to his
complaint, and stood up among the storm clouds, and hurled his
thunderbolts at AEsculapius until the great physician was cruelly slain.
Then all the world was filled with grief, and even the beasts and the
trees and the stones wept because the friend of life was no more.

When Apollo heard of the death of his son, his grief and wrath were
terrible. He could not do anything against Jupiter and Pluto, for they
were stronger than he; but he went down into the smithy of Vulcan,
underneath the smoking mountains, and slew the giant smiths who had made
the deadly thunderbolts.

Then Jupiter, in his turn, was angry, and ordered Apollo to come before
him and be punished for what he had done. He took away his bow and
arrows and his wonderful lyre and all his beauty of form and feature;
and after that Jupiter clothed him in the rags of a beggar and drove him
down from the mountain, and told him that he should never come back nor
be himself again until he had served some man a whole year as a slave.

And so Apollo went out, alone and friendless, into the world; and no one
who saw him would have dreamed that he was once the sun-bright Lord of
the Silver Bow.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS.

I. THE SLAVE.

In a little town north of Delphi, and not very far from the sea, there
lived a young man named Admetus. He was the ruler of the town, and hence
was called its king; but his kingdom was so small that he could