The tale of Amphytrion and Alcmena, of course, is a myth, and it is not clear that anyone actually “believed” it. It was instead a great story. Still, the idea behind it—that a mortal woman could give birth to a child spawned by a god—was plausible to many people of the ancient world. It would not be unusual for them to think that some of the great beings who stride the earth—great conquerors like Alexander, for example, or even great philosophers with superhuman wisdom such as Plato6—may well have been conceived in ways different from us mere mortals.
