Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/188

174 of their dear parents," says Homer, who neglects the myth that one of the "dear parents" ate his own progeny, "like him who makes his generation messes to gorge his appetite." Hera was a jealous wife, and with good cause. The Christian fathers calculated that he sowed his wild oats and persecuted mortal women with his affections through seventeen generations of men. His amours with his mother and daughters, with Deo and Persephone, are the great scandals of Clemens Alexandrinus and Arnobius. Zeus seldom made love in propria persona, in all his meteorological pomp. When he thus gratified Semele she was burned to a cinder. The amour with Danaë, when Zeus became a shower of gold, might be interpreted as a myth of the yellow sunshine. The amours