As a starting point we believe we may state with assurance of its truth that the expectation of the coming of a Son of God, a Messiah, in the flesh was universal with all the leading nations that flourished in the ages previous to the advent of the Redeemer. This is true of the people of Egypt, Babylon, Arabia, Persia, Hindostan, Greece and Rome; as also of the races that inhabited the American continent. And so strong in certain cases had this idea grown that by gradual stages it became changed into the belief that that expected Son of God had already come, and such a being was reverenced and worshiped under various names. In Greece and Rome this idea became so prevalent that nearly every very eminent man was thought to be a son of one of the gods; and evil designing men sometimes personated these deities on purpose to seduce the virtuous of the other sex, whose chastity they could overcome in no other way than by falsely declaring themselves to be the god for whom such women had particular reverence and esteem.[A] Whilst on the other hand young women who found themselves mothers without husbands would cunningly declare that their children were the offspring of a god; or, to use the words of the historian Grote, when speaking of Greece, "the furtive pregnancy of young women, often by a god, is one of the most frequently recurring incidents in the legendary narratives of the country." To such an extent did this excess run, that at a later period a decree was issued subjecting to a very severe penalty any woman who should pretend that her child was of divine parentage. One writer states: "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 women who should offer such an insult to Deity as to lay to him the charge of begetting their children." Whilst on this point Mr. Draper writes: "Immaculate conceptions and celestial descents were so currently received in those days, that whoever had greatly distinguished himself in the affairs of men was thought to be of supernatural lineage. Even in Rome, centuries later, no one could with safety have denied that that city owed its founder, Romulus, to an accidental meeting of the god Mars with the virgin Rhea Sylvia, as she went with her pitcher for water to the spring. The Egyptian disciples of Plato would have looked with anger on those who rejected the legend that Perictione, the mother of the great philosopher, a pure virgin, had suffered an immaculate conception through the influences of Apollo, and that the god had declared to Ariston, to whom she was betrothed, the parentage of the child. When Alexander issued his letters, orders and decrees, styling himself 'King Alexander, the son of Jupiter Amnion,' they came to the inhabitants of Egypt and Syria with an authority that now can hardly be realized.