From Brazil to the Basque country it has been common for the father to pretend to lie-in while the mother is in childbed; the husband undergoes medical treatment, in many cases being put to bed for days.* This custom, "world-wide," as Mr. Tylor calls it, has been used by Bachofen as the source of the myth of the double birth of Dionysus. Though other explanations of the _couvade_ have been given, the most plausible theory represents it as a recognition of paternity by the father. Bachofen compares the ceremony by which, when Hera became reconciled to Herakles, she adopted him as her own through the legal fiction of his second birth. The custom by which, in old French marriage rites, illegitimate children were legitimised by being brought to the altar under the veil of the bride is also in point.** Diodorus says that barbarians still practise the rite of adoption by a fictitious birth. Men who returned home safely after they were believed to be dead had to undergo a similar ceremony.*** Bachofen therefore explains the names and myths of the "double-mothered Dionysus" as relics of the custom of the _couvade_, and of the legal recognition of children by the father, after a period of kinship through women only. *** Tylor, Prim. Oult., I 94; Early History of Mankind, p. 293. ** Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861, p. 254. *** Plutarch, Quæst. Rom., 5. This theory is put by Lucian in his usual bantering manner. Poseidon wishes to enter the chamber of Zeus, but is refused admission by Hermes. "Is Zeus _en bonne fortune?_" he asks. "No, the reverse. Zeus has just had a baby." "A baby! why there was nothing in his figure...! Perhaps the child was born from his head, like Athene?" "Not at all--his _thigh_; the child is Semele's." "Wonderful God! what varied accomplishments! But who is Semele?" "A Theban girl, a daughter of Cadmus, much noticed by Zeus." "And so he kindly was confined for her?" "Exactly!" "So Zeus is both father and mother of the child?" "Naturally! And now I must go and make him comfortable."* * Dial. Deor., xi. We need not necessarily accept Bachofen's view. This learned author employed indeed a widely comparative method, but he saw everything through certain mystic speculations of his own. It may be deemed, however, that the authors of the myth of the double birth of Dionysus were rather in the condition of men who practise the _couvade_ than capable of such vast abstract ideas and such complicated symbolism as are required in the system of Preller. It is probable enough that the struggle between the two systems of kindred--maternal and paternal--has left its mark in Greek mythology. Undeniably it is present in the _Eumenides_ of Æschylus, and perhaps it inspires the tales which represent Hera and Zeus as emulously producing offspring (Athene and Hephaestus) without the aid of the opposite sex.*