Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/169

Rh with the vital principle of respiration, was the story of Prometheus, who formed a man of similar materials, to which he communicated life by fire stolen from heaven. Christ twice born, of his Father, God, and of his mother, Mary, was prefigured by Bacchus, who was first born of Semele, and afterwards of Jupiter. And as Minerva sprung from the brain of Jupiter, so Christ proceeded from God without a mother. Christ born of the Virgin Mary was expressed in the fable of Danäe shut within a tower, through the covering of which Jupiter descended in a shower of gold, and begat Perseus. Actæon, killed by his own hounds, was a type of the persecution and death of our Saviour. The poet Lycophron relates, that Hercules, in returning from the adventure of the golden fleece, was shipwrecked; and that being devoured by a monstrous fish, he was disgorged alive on the