ABSTRACT

The beginnings of life are no simple act of construction or assembly in which already extant things are realigned and take new forms. Life begins with an act of creation that results in something totally new and previously non-existent. The creation of life is a prodigy, and the work of something divine. But according to the Greeks, this divine power, here on earth, belonged only to the father and not to the mother. Here on earth, the male alone was the true parent, the true genere, since only the male was capable of the act of generation. And since the male created, he resembled the gods and became an object of veneration, and was to preserve that status for a considerable period of time.