Ovid in his Fasti records a story that Servius Tulliuswas a mysterious shape, claiming to be a vulcan, which appeared to the mother, Ocrisia, among the ashes of the altar, when she was assisting her mistress (Ocrisia was a captive) in the sacred rite of pouring a libation of wine upon the altar.
Pythagoras, who lived more than five hundred years before Christ, was said to be the offspring of Apollo. He was born on a journey, his father (or rather, his mother's earthly husband) having traveled up to Sidon on business. Pythais, the mother, had been beloved by a ghostly personage who claimed to be the god Apollo Afterwards this same apparition showed itself to the husband, informing him of the parentage of the coming child, and bidding him to have no connection with his wife until after its birth.
A similar event is said to have transpired in the case of Plato, Apollo his father also. His mother was Perictione, a virgin, who was betrothed to one Ariston at the time. In this case, also, Apollo appeared to inform the earthly lover of the child's paternity. Higgins, relating this tradition, adds:
"On this ground, the really very learned Origen defends the immaculate conception [Higgins evidently refers not to the Roman Catholic Doctrine of Mary's stainlessness by that term signified, but to the conception of Jesus] assigning, also, in confirmation of the fact, the example of Vultures (Vautours) who propagate without the male." (!!)
The Vulture was an accompaniment of Hathas, the Egyptian Venus; and it would therefore seem as though Origen had unwittingly stumbled on a bit of folklore. Graves, in his Sixteen Crucified Saviours, remarks (I know not on what authority, but give his remark rather for its suggestiveness than as a vouched for historical fact):
"Many are the cases noted in history of young maidens claiming a paternity for their male offspring by a God. In Greece it became so common that the reigning King issued an edict, decreeing the death of all young virgins who should offer such an insult to deity as to lay to him the charge of begetting their children."
"The vestal virgin Rhea Sylvin, who bore Romulus and Remus to the god Mars, is well known. It is a curious co-
