Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

RELIGION AND EROTIC

becomes her not amiss! Now, I beg you, O Zeus, betroth her to me in lieu of my midwife’s fee.

Zeus: You ask what is impossible, Hephzestus, for she will always wish to remain a virgin. Nevertheless, as far as 1 am concerned, I have no objection.

Heph.: That’s what I wanted ; I will attend to the rest. And now I will snatch her up and carry her off.

Zeus : If you think it easy, do so ; but I know that you won’t get much out of your bargain!

With these last words Zeus was said to be right after all; we read in Apollodorus (iii, 188), “ Athena once more came to Hephestus, wanting him to forge some arms for her. He, having been forsaken by Aphrodite, fell in love with her and began to pursue her, but she fled. And when he got near her after a great effort (for he was lame), he endeavoured to do violence to her, but she, being modest and a maiden, could not allow it, and Hephestus discharged his seed on her leg. ‘The disgusted goddess wiped the seed away with some woo] and threw it on the ground. And when she fled and the seed fell to the ground Erichthonius was born; and Athena reared him unknown to the other gods, since she desired to make him an immortal.”

With the birth of Phebus Apollo, the god of the sun and the light, is connected the story of the furious jealously of Hera, who drives Leto (Latona), who is with child by Zeus, over half the earth until she finds a modest refuge in Delos, a little rocky island at that time, still tossed about unsteadily in the sea. The god of light, the saviour of the world, was born in most modest surroundings by his mother pursued by hate. The parallel with the birth of Christ forces itself upon us. But the enormous difference between the two opinions, the JewishChristian and the ancient, is at once apparent. If it says in Luke: “And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling-clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room

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