Mary by Lesley Hazleton

Author:Lesley Hazleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury_US
Published: 2009-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

And that's just the beginning. Yeats goes on to describe "her loosening thighs" and "a shudder in the loins" before the swan finally lets go. It is as explicit a sexual act between human and divine as there could be, more so even than the renowned ecstasies of Teresa of Avila. But in fact it's doubtful if Homer or any other Greek ever intended such a lascivious vision, for the full version of the legend makes it clear that Leda had sex with her husband the same night she was raped by Zeus. Helen of Troy was the result of dual paternity: her physical father, and the spirit of Zeus.

In nearly every instance of gods siring legendary humans, they worked with men, not instead of them. Theseus was indeed the son of Poseidon, but he was conceived when both Poseidon and a human lover lay with his mother on the same night. Asculepius, the human who would become the god of healing, was the son of Apollo, but he was conceived when his mother lay with both her husband and the god at the same time. And many human offspring of Zeus, the master of disguise, were conceived when he took on the simplest and most deceptive guise of all: that of a man. Hercules was born after Zeus lay with his mother in the form of her husband, for instance, and Dionysus was conceived when Zeus took the form of a man to rape the maiden Semele.

Miraculous conception accrued to real people too, if they were famous enough. Alexander the Great was said to be conceived when Zeus took the form of a snake to couple with Olympias. The emperor Augustus was born after his mother fell asleep in the temple of Apollo and was impregnated by the god. Pythagoras and Plato too were sons of Apollo. And as with "the daughters of strange gods," the "great man" legend also applied to great women. In the Egyptian temple of Deir elBahri at Karnak, a relief in praise of Queen Hatshepsut shows her mother seated on a couch alongside the god Amon, who proclaims: "Hatshepsut shall be the name of this my daughter whom I have placed in thy body."

Divine paternity was, in a way, an act of conceptual art: a creative act that took place on the level of mind, not body. This is how sorcerers and seers could believably declare, "I am the son of the living god," a formulation that appeared frequently in Greek magical papyruses. As historian Morton Smith has pointed out, it was not to be taken literally. It was a way of calling down the power of the divine, of saying, "At this moment, I am inspired by, and act and speak for, the god."

But there was one vital difference between the concept of dual paternity in Middle Eastern cultures and in Hellenistic culture.

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