He'll think your mother chides, and leaves you so."


As indeed it was a frequent belief among the ancients, as with our
Indians, that the _body_ was inherited from the mother, the
_soul_ from the father. As in that noble passage of Ovid, already
quoted, where Jupiter, as his divine synod are looking down on the
funeral pyre of Hercules, thus triumphs--

"Neo nisi _materna_ Vulcanum parte potentem,
Sentiet. Aeternum est, a me quod traxit, et expers
Atque immune neois, nullaque domabile flamma
Idque ego defunctum terra coelestibus oris
Accipiam, cunctisque meum laetabile factum
Dis fore confido.

"The part alone of gross _maternal_ flame
Fire shall devour; while that from me he drew
Shall live immortal and its force renew;
That, when he's dead, I'll raise to realms above;
Let all the powers the righteous act approve."


It is indeed a god speaking of his union with an earthly Woman, but it
expresses the common Roman thought as to marriage,--the same which
permitted a man to lend his wife to a friend, as if she were a chattel

"She dwelt but in the suburbs of his good pleasure."