Salus (Health) a Goddess of the Romans, the same that was worshipped under the name of Hygiea by the Greeks, who feigned her to be the daughter of Aesculapius and of Minerva. On a denarius of the Acilia family appears the head of the goddess and on the reverse a female standing with a serpent in her hand. The types of this divinity on imperial coins most frequently present to view a woman clothed in the stola; sometimes she is sitting, at others standing; in others in a recumbent posture, with a serpent either on her right or her left arm in a quiescent state, rising in folds or entwined round an altar before her, and receiving food from a patera, which she holds in her extended hand. It is in this form (which was doubtless that of her statues and with these symbols) that she is exhibited on most coins on the imperial series from Galba to Maximianus. She had a celebrated temple at Rome, painted, it was said, by Q. Fabius, who thence was surnamed Pictor (the painter) . - There appears to be some affinity between this personification of Salus, when offering food in a patella to a serpent, and the Lanuvian virgin represented in the same act on coins bearing the head of Juno Sospita. - The opinion also has the probability on the face of it, which refers the serpent on coins, where mention is made of Salus Augusti, or Augustorum, to Aesculapius and his daughter Hygaeia (or Salus) as deities of Health. - Certain it is that when those sanitary divinities, and especially when Dea Salus, occur on coins of Emperors, they indicate that those princes were labouring at the time under some diseases; on which account, it would seem, sacred rites had been performed for them and the memorial of the event recorded on public monuments. - See VOTA PVBLICA PRO. SALuti PR., as in Commodus; SALVS AVGusti, as in Tetricus Filius and Claudius Gothicus; and SALVTI AVGusit, or AVGVSTORum, as in M. Aurelius.