Note 202.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

It was a common belief in antiquity, and thence through the Middle Ages and right down, among the uneducated classes, to modern times, that dead men and other supernatural beings might have intercourse with living women. Upon this belief and the innumerable tales connected therewith was founded Bürger’s famous ballad of Lenore.202.1 The story told by Herodotus of the paternity of Demaratus, King of Sparta, is an early example. Demaratus, being accused of not being the son of his predecessor, Ariston, adjured his mother in a solemn ceremony to tell him the truth. Her account was that, on the third night after her marriage to Ariston, an apparition in his likeness and wearing garlands came to her, and, having embraced her in conjugal wise, transferred to her the garlands it wore and departed. Ariston, coming in afterwards, saw the garlands and asked who had given them to her. She told him he had done so himself; and when he denied it she confirmed it with an oath. Ariston then began to suspect divine interference. On making enquiry it was found that the garlands were from the adjacent temple of the hero Astrabakus; and the diviners identified the apparition with the hero himself. In that night Demaratus’ mother became pregnant of him.203.1 Satyrs and Fauns, under the name of incubi, were generally held to be guilty of criminal assaults upon women when opportunity offered. Among the Gauls, we are told by Saint Augustine, this kind of evil spirit was known as Dusii; and their constant exploits, as well as those of the Silvans and Fauns, were so well attested that to the great ecclesiastic it seemed it would be impudent to deny them.203.2