Note 134 — Chapter IV · HEROES

Hdt. vi, 69. Thus, too, the Theagenes mentioned above was regarded in Thasos not as the son of Timosthenes, τοῦ Θεαγένους δὲ τῇ μητρὶ Ἡρακλέους συγγενέσθαι φάσμα ἐοικὸς Τιμοσθένει, Paus. 6, 11, 2.—Everyone will be reminded, too, of the fable of Zeus and Alkmene. But it should be noticed how near such stories as that so naively told by Herod. approach the risky novel-plot in which some profane mortal visits in disguise an unsuspecting woman and plays the part of a god or spirit-lover. That in Greece, too, such stories were current we may perhaps deduce from Eur., Ion, 1530 ff. Ov., M. iii, 281; says outright: multi nomine divorum thalamos iniere pudicos. An adventure of this sort is told by the writer of [Aeschines] Ep. 10, and he is able to produce two similar cases which he certainly has not invented himself (8-9).—In more recent times both western and Oriental nations have delighted in telling such stories; a typical Oriental example is the story of “the Weaver as Vishnu” in the Panchatantra (see Benfey, Pantsch. i, § 56); in the West there is the story of Boccaccio dealing with Alberto of Imola as the angel Gabriel, Decam. iv, 2—Very suspicious, too, seems the account of a miracle that occurred in Epidauros: a barren woman comes to the temple of Asklepios to seek advice by ἐγκοίμησις. A big snake approaches her and she has a child. Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1885, pp. 21–2, l. 129 ff.