dancing with and acting as her herald or attendant, linking the Classical association between beauty and "the bloom of youth". Marriage As the bride of Heracles, Hebe was strongly associated with both brides and her husband in art and literature. She was the patron of brides, due to being the daughter of the goddess of marriage Hera and the importance of her own wedding. Hebe's role as the patron of brides is referenced in Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion, where the poem also connects her to the fertility of the bride. In some depictions on vase paintings, such as the Ricci Hydria dated to approximately 525 B.C.E., Hebe drives a chariot and is the one to bring her future husband, Heracles, to Olympus from Earth upon his apotheosis, a role traditionally fulfilled by Athena. A Krator in the Cleveland Museum may depict Hebe in chariot ready to leave Olympus to retrieve her husband in the presence of her mother, Artemis, and Apollo. The lost comedic play, Hebes Gamos ("The Marriage of Hebe") by Epicharmus of Kos, depicted the wedding feast of Hebe and Heracles. In Theocritus’s Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Heracles dines with Ptolemy I and Alexander at a feast on Olympus and after he has his fill of nectar, he bestows his bow and arrows and club to them and leaves for his wife’s chamber. Here the couple is presented as one of the paradigms for marriage of Philadelphus and Arsinoe with Heracles retiring to Hebe's chambers in a scene reminiscent of a wedding. Catullus in Poem 68 makes a positive reference to the legal marriage of Heracles to the virginal goddess Hebe to contrast with the poet's secret affair with a married woman. Propertius also makes a reference to Heracles feeling a blazing love for Hebe upon his death at Mount Oeta, altering the traditional myth where Heracles marries Hebe after ascending to divinity. Hebe had two children with Heracles: Alexiares and Anicetus. Although nothing is known about these deities beyond their names, there is a fragment by Callimachus that makes a reference to Eileithyia, Hebe's sister and the goddess of childbirth, attending to Hebe while in labour. Giver of youth One of Hebe's roles was to be the cupbearer to the gods, serving them ambrosia and nectar. In Classical sources, her departure from this role was due to her marriage. Alternatively, the Iliad presented Hebe (and at one instance,