Arnobius

“ In the very heart of the rock, and in that flinty hardness, a child was formed and quickened to be the offspring of great Jupiter. It is not easy to object to conceptions so unnatural and so wonderful. For as the human race is said by you to have sprung and proceeded from stones, it must be believed that the stones both had genital parts, and drank in the seed cast on them, and when their time was full were pregnant, [2] and at last brought forth, travailing in distress as women do. ”

“ And here, indeed, very thrifty men, and frugal even about shameful works, that that sacred seed may not seem to have been poured forth in vain—the rock, one says, drank up Jupiter’s foul incontinence. ”

“ But you will perhaps say the human race shuns and execrates such unions; [1] among the gods there is no incest. And why, then, did his mother resist with the greatest vehemence her son when he offered her violence? ”