(M62) The belief in the physical fatherhood of God has not been confined to Syria in ancient and modern times. Elsewhere many men have been counted the sons of God in the most literal sense of the word, being supposed to have been begotten by his holy spirit in the wombs of mortal women. Here I shall merely illustrate the creed by a few examples drawn from classical antiquity.(258) Thus in order to obtain offspring women used to resort to the great sanctuary of Aesculapius, situated in a beautiful upland valley, to which a path, winding through a long wooded gorge, leads from the bay of Epidaurus. Here the women slept in the holy place and were visited in dreams by a serpent; and the children to whom they afterwards gave birth were believed to have been begotten by the reptile.(259) That the serpent was supposed to be the god himself seems certain; for Aesculapius repeatedly appeared in the form of a serpent,(260) and live serpents were kept and fed in his sanctuaries for the healing of the sick, being no doubt regarded as his incarnations.(261) Hence the children born to women who had thus visited a sanctuary of Aesculapius were probably fathered on the serpent-god. Many celebrated men in classical antiquity were thus promoted to the heavenly hierarchy by similar legends of a miraculous birth. The famous Aratus of Sicyon was certainly believed by his countrymen to be a son of Aesculapius; his mother is said to have got him in intercourse with a serpent.(262) Probably she slept either in the shrine of Aesculapius at Sicyon, where a figurine of her was shown seated on a serpent,(263) or perhaps in the more secluded sanctuary of the god at Titane, not many miles off, where the sacred serpents crawled among ancient cypresses on the hill-top which overlooks the narrow green valley of the Asopus with the white turbid river rushing in its depths.(264) There, under the shadow of the cypresses, with the murmur of the Asopus in her ears, the mother of Aratus may have conceived, or fancied she conceived, the future deliverer of his country. Again, the mother of Augustus is said to have got him by intercourse with a serpent in a temple of Apollo; hence the emperor was reputed to be the son of that god.(265) Similar tales were told of the Messenian hero Aristomenes, Alexander the Great, and the elder Scipio: all of them were reported to have been begotten by snakes.(266) In the time of Herod a serpent, according to Aelian, in like manner made love to a Judean maid.(267) Can the story be a distorted rumour of the parentage of Christ?