Hebe
（
Ἥβη), the personification of youth, is described as a daughter of Zeus and Hera (
Apollod. 1.3.1.), and is, according to the
Iliad (
4.2), the minister of the gods, who fills their cups with nectar; she assists Hera in putting the horses to her chariot (5.722); and she bathes and dresses her brother Ares (5.905).
According to the
Odyssey (
11.603); comp.
Hes. Th. 950), she was married to Heracles after his apotheosis. Later traditions, however, describe her as having become by Heracles the mother of two sons, Alexiares and Anticetus (
Apollod. 2.7.7), and as a divinity who had it in her power to make persons of an advanced age young again. (
Ov. Met. 9.400, &c.)
She was worshipped at Athens, where she had an altar in the Cynosarges, near one of Heracles. (
Paus. 1.19.3.) Under the name of the female Ganymedes (Ganymeda) or Dia, she was worshipped in a sacred grove at Sicyon and Phlius. (
Paus. 2.13.3;
Strab. viii. p.382.)
At Rome the goddess was worshipped under the corresponding name of Juventas, and that at a very early time, for her chapel on the Capitol existed before the temple of Jupiter was built there; and she, as well as Terminus, is said to have opposed the consecration of the temple of Jupiter. (
Liv. 5.54.) Another temple of Juventas, in the Circus Maximus, was vowed by the consul M. Livius, after the defeat of Hasdrubal, in B. C. 207, and was consecrated 16 years afterwards. (
Liv. 36.36 ; comp. 21.62;
Dionys. A. R. 4.15, where a temple of Juventas is mentioned as early as the reign of Servius Tullius; August.
de Civ. Dei, 4.23;
Plin. Nat. 29.4,
14,
35.36,
22.)
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