page_title: Miraculous births
section_title: Gods
hierarchical_section_title: Miraculous births / Greco-Roman and Hellenistic mythology / Gods
context_page_description: Stories of miraculous births often include conceptions by miraculous circumstances and features such as intervention by a deity, supernatural elements, astronomical signs, hardship or, in the case of some mythologies, complex plots related to creation.
context_section_description: Greco-Roman and Hellenistic literature is rich in the tradition of birth among the gods. In his poem Theogony, the Greek poet Hesiod tells a story that Zeus had once lain with the goddess Metis, impregnating her, but, fearing that she might bear a child mightier than he himself, he swallowed her. Their daughter Athena was born fully grown from Zeus's forehead, fully armed and clad in armor. Hesiod also relates that the goddess Aphrodite was born from the foam of the sea after Ouranos's castrated testicles were thrown into it.
  Helios was a child of Zeus by Euryphaessa.  He was also called "the son of Earth and starry Heaven," and the son of Hyperion. Dionysus was dithyrambus, "he who entered life by a double door." His first birth took place prematurely. His mother, Semele, died when Zeus appeared to her in a flash of lightning, and so Zeus opened his own flesh and enclosed the infant.  In time, Dionysus was born "perfect" from Zeus' thigh.  Dionysus Zagreus was important in Orphic theology. In Protrepticus ii. 14 ff. by Clement of Alexandria, this child had the form of a bull.  Zeus intended to make him the ruler of the universe but the jealous Titans lured the child away, tore him to pieces, cooked him and ate him.  Athena preserved his heart, however, which Zeus swallowed.  According to Boslooper, Clement omitted one part of the myth that forms a connection between his account and the Theban legend of Dionysus.  Because Zeus swallowed the heart of Dionysus Zagreus, when Semele bore Dionysus the new god was Zagreus reborn.
caption: The Birth of Minerva by René-Antoine Houasse (before 1688)
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