* The following is a good case in corroboration of what is
said in the text. In the Dictionnaire Infernal, to which
more particular reference will be made shortly, there is, s.
v. Fécondité, a report of a trial before the Parliament of
Grenoble, in which the question was, whether a certain
infant could be declared legitimate which was born after the
husband had been absent from his wife four full years. The
wife asserted that the baby was the offspring of a dream, in
which she had a vivid idea that her wandering spouse had
returned to love and duty. Midwives and physicians were
consulted, and reported on the subject. As a result, the
Parliament ordained that the infant should be adjudged
legitimate, and that its mother should be regarded as a true
and honourable wife. The judgment bears date 13th February
1537.
The quaint ideas associated in mythology with the supernatural generation here referred to have been various. In some instances they have been wholly poetical, as when we are told that "the Supreme" by his union with law and order (Themis) produced "Justice," "the Hours," "Good Laws," and "Peace" (Hesiod Theogony, 900), and as when Europa is said to have tempted Jupiter to leave Phoenicia, and travel westward to Crete as the first step towards the colonization of an unknown continent. In other instances, the ideas have been framed upon the very natural belief that anyone—whether existent in story only, or in reality—who has greatly surpassed his fellows, must have had a large element of the Deity in his constitution. In other instances, the notion has been associated with the once prevalent belief, that the Creator had a sex, to which we shall refer by and by; and in other cases, the fancy has clearly been mingled with the fact, that many an unmarried woman has attributed to some god, a pregnancy, or baby, which has been due, in reality, to a very mortal man. Here we may notice that the fecundity which damsels of old were wont to refer to a god or some inferior, but yet beneficent, deity, more modern christian girls have associated with a demon. Jupiter and Apollo being replaced by a special class of imps who were named "incubi," and of the particulars of whose embraces the strangest stories are told. This small truth seems to be sufficient to demonstrate that the Greeks were not familiar with the being to whom we give the name of "Satan" and the "Devil," and that their belief coincided in one respect with that of the older Jews, who considered that whatever occurrence happened in the world, whether apparently for good or evil, was done by Jehovah, or as the Hellenic damsels reported by Jupiter, Apollo, or Mars.
Here, too, I may be permitted to introduce a remark suggested by a narrative, told to me by a lady of high British rank. She had been brought up in a foreign country under the eye of a sensible and pious, we may add prudish, mother, who endeavoured to shield her daughter from all contact with external vicious influences, and to prevent her ears or her mind from ever coming to the knowledge of those matters which are associated with love, marriage, and offspring. When the young lady naturally inquired of mamma where the infants sprang from which came into the world and grew up around her, she was told, "from God," and she was referred to Psalm cxxvii. 3, which declares that "children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward." After having attained adult age, and being wholly imbued with this belief, she, on one occasion, expressed her opinion that Mademoiselle—who had recently been confined—must have been a peculiarly virtuous maiden, to have received so great a present as a baby from the beneficent Creator. This speech fell like a bombshell amongst a mixed company, but she knew not why. It was not until her marriage some time subsequently, that she learned that infants were said to come from God or the Devil according to circumstances, but that in reality they were always due to men and women.
The anecdote given above, naturally enables us to call attention to the remarkable fact that though the Grecian poets repeatedly spoke of maidens being fertilized by a divinity, yet Greek fathers never paid any heed to the power of that god, whom their daughters asserted to have operated upon their femininity; but always treated the earthly love of the alleged celestial spouse, as if the latter was wholly powerless to punish the hard-hearted parent, who had no scruples to turn his daughter from his door, so that she might hide her shame in distant lands. In those classic times, procreation by a god upon a human being was the attempted cover for bastardy. Moreover, even the woman herself, to whom Jupiter or Apollo was alleged to have descended from heaven to honour, felt herself so much injured by the visit, that she either tried to destroy the resulting offspring with her own hands, or exposed it upon a mountain to the tender mercies of dogs and vultures. Much in the same way many a modern maiden places her shame-covered infant in the turn-table of a foundling institution. Antiope, for example, the daughter of a king of Thebes, was, according to her version, beloved by
Jupiter, who visited her in the form of a satyr and implanted twins. When she discovered the coming event, which casts its shadow before, she left the paternal mansion, to avoid her father's anger, and fled to a mountain, on which she left her hapless offspring. They were found by shepherds and brought up.
The story of fair Leucothöe is still more to the point. She was sufficiently beautiful to attract Apollo, who seduced her under the form of her own mother—not a very likely story it is true, but the two lived happily together until a rival told the loved one's father of the amour. The incensed paterfamilias ordered his daughter to be buried alive, and yet the god who could change her body after death into the frankincense tree, and himself into a matronly looking woman and yet retain his sex, could not prevent his earthly spouse from dying a cruel death. In other words, Orchamus, the parent of the damsel, wholly disbelieved in the existence of a divine "spark," and felt assured that his daughter had disgraced herself with a man far below her in earthly rank.
From these, and a number of other Grecian anecdotes, we can draw no other conclusions than that the sires in those days were as jealous of the honour of their daughters as we are of our own now; that when that honour was in danger of being tarnished, a god was alleged by the damsel to be the offender; that the story was not believed; and that the daughter fled, was punished, or was pardoned, according to the sternness or credulity of the parents. The idea that individuals who were the sons or daughters of a god, must necessarily be great and good, does not appear to have prevailed amongst the ancient Greeks. Nay, we may even doubt whether any of them really believed that Jupiter, Apollo, or Neptune, could, or had ever become incarnate, for the sole purpose of impregnating a human female. That such an idea, however, prevailed amongst the Babylonians we learn from Herodotus, who informs us, book i. c. 181, that Belus comes into a chamber at the summit of a sacred tower to meet therein a native woman, chosen by the god from the whole nation; and in the succeeding chapter he indicates that a similar occurrence takes place in Egyptian Thebes, and in Lycian Patarae. Yet even whilst writing the tales, the historian expresses his own incredulity of their value, and we may well suppose that the thoughtful generally, would only give such credence to the statements of the temple priests, as was given to certain Christian stories by a philosopher, who said he believed them because they were impossible. Even if the common people credited the assertion that "The Supreme" did elect a woman with whom to converse, we must not despise them too lightly, for we are distinctly told in our own scriptures that Jehovah appeared as a man, and as such, ate, drank, and talked with Abraham (Gen. ch. xviii.); that Elohim was in the habit of conversing face to face with Moses (Exod. xxxiii. 11); and that the same God wrestled with Jacob as a man, and could not prevail against the patriarch until he had lamed him. We must also notice that myriads of Christians have believed, and many still do so, that He in a certain form had commerce with a Hebrew maiden (Luke i. 34, 35), and had by her a begotten son.
When civilization spread over Greece, there seems to have been a change of expression—which being at the first wholly metaphorical, subsequently became realistic. Thus, any man peculiarly characteristic amongst his fellows for strength, knowledge, or power, was designated "a son of God." Thus, as Grote remarks (12 vol. edition), vol. ii. p. 132, note 1. "Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage; a damsel of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to Smyrna at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the poet" (Aristotle ap. Plutarch Vit. Homer, p. 1059). Plato, also by some, called "the divine," was said by Seusippus to be a son of Apollo (Smith's Dictionary, 8. v.) The Hebrews had a similar metaphorical expression, and gave to everything supereminently good, an epithet which we may paraphrase as "divine." Some few writers used the title, "sons of God," as for example, Job i. 6, and xxxviii. 7, and Hosea i. 10; an epithet adopted by John i. 12, Rom. viii. 14, 19, Phil ii. 15, 1 John iii 1, 2, as if the same were applicable to all who are virtuous and good to an especial degree. The Hebrews even seem to have adopted the belief that Elohim, like the Grecian Zeus, had many children, could, and did really, associate with human beings, for we can in no other way reasonably interpret the strange narrative in Genesis vi, wherein we are told that the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, who became the sires of mighty men of great renown.
Amongst the Romans, similar ideas to those which we find amongst the Greeks prevailed. For example, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars and a Vestal virgin; but so little did her relatives believe in the possibility of the occurrence, or the divine nature of the maiden's offspring, that the mother was buried alive, and the twins which she bare were exposed, much in the same way as modern "foundlings" are. In this case, as in many others, it is probable that little notice would have been taken of such supernatural generation had the mother been of low origin—but when a god inveigles a king's daughter from her duty, both the one and the other must be punished; the one in her person, the other in his child. Yet these very writers who told of the punishment of the Vestal Hia for her intrigue with Mars, took advantage of the story, and spread a report that Romulus, the offspring of the two, was, after his death, taken up to heaven to dwell there as a god. At a subsequent period, Augustus Caesar announced, on his mother's authority, that he was the son of Apollo, and claimed to be treated as a veritable scion of that venerable deity.
The account of the conception and birth of Servius Tullius is curious from its circumstantiality. Ovid tells us, Fasti, vi., 625-659, Bonn's translation: "Vulcan was the father of Tullius; Ocrisia was his mother, a woman of Corniculum, remarkable for her beauty. Her, Tanaquil, having duly performed the sacred rites, ordered, in company with herself, to pour some wine on the decorated altar. Here amongst the ashes, either was, or seemed to be, a form of obscene shape; but such it really was. Being ordered to do so, the captive (Ocrisia was a slave), submits to its embraces; conceived by her, Servius had the origin of his birth from heaven. His father afforded a proof, at the time when he touched his head with the gleaming fire, and a flame rising to a point, blazed upon his locks." In some earlier lines, the poet tells us that the goddess, Fortune, was enamoured of this same Roman king, and visited him nightly—much as Venus came to converse with Anchises.