Is there a term in today’s English language for an offspring resulting from a god mating with a mortal? And/or, perhaps English has borrowed a term from the classic Greeks and Romans to classify such individuals?
Just wondering because it seems to be a common occurence in classic mythology.
Demigod.
Maastricht is quite correct.
On a related topic, the process/event of a Mortal becoming a Diety is Apotheosis.
This being a very good career move, I should point out.
Yes, but you need a PhD for that.
And then there’s Apocolocyntosis, the term used by a satiric writer (probably Seneca, everybody thinks) for what happened to the emperor Claudis after his death. Instead of “deification” (which is what Apotheosis means), it means “pumpkinification”:
No, silly!
You need a ThD!
And if two demigods mate, they have a one in four chance of producing a god.
They could have demidemigods
Or semidemigods
Or even hemidemigods. Allowing redneck Athenian peasants to ask “That thing a Hemi?”
hee hee hee!
Pratchett used this in, i think Hogfather. Soemone at the Quirm Academy for Young Ladies (or whatever it was called) was a hemi demi semi god or somesuch.
I thought pumpkins were New World. Did Romans have them or is this a slightly metaphoric translation?
Propbably because it sounds so ludicrous, “pumppkinification” seems to be the standard English translation. Even this page I cite uses it.
One might think one would need a Venn Diagram to predict just how much godliness one would inherit.
Then again, if Mercury and Neptune were your fathers, you could inherit the wind.
Nope – it’s been mapped out. GG = god gg = mortal
A union between a god and a human results in Gg – a demigod:
GG = gg
Gg Gg Gg Gg
A union between two demigods has four outcomes:
Gg = Gg
GG Gg Gg gg
Thus, there is a one in four chance that their child will be a full-fledged god, a one in four chance it’ll be purely mortal, and a two in four chance that it’s a demigod.
Somehow, that wasn’t on the curriculum (though a couple of professors clearly felt they had done it themselves).
Euhemerization is the idea that the gods weren’t really gods, just heroes of the past that got promoted in an excess of enthusiasm.
Mythology doesn’t need to follow your rules, man. Gilgamesh was one-third mortal and two-thirds god.
What if the mother is a god who transformed himself into a mare and the father is a gigantic stallion?
Oooh… yes, tough one. Neither the labels homosexuality, bestiality, or trans-species-transsexuality really apply, do they?
For the classic instance of semi-divine incestuous homosexual bestiality (with offspring, no less), see the tale of Math in the Mabinogi. The cut-and-pastable copyright-free translation is a little sketchy on the details, but what happens is two brothers, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, are punished by being transformed into pairs of animals, one male and one female. Each year they return to King Math to change forms (men > deer > boars > wolves), swap genders (M>M>F>M & M>F>M>F), and hand over their sons (one a year).
–rubs palms together, cackles gleefully-- We get to make up a new word here, right? Yes? Excellent !!
I propose Equiidiem. From Equus, and Diety.
I’m going to dare to be slightly more serious for a moment.
In Greek myth, usually the child of a god and a mortal is just a mortal (Helen, Hercules, Achilles). A COOL mortal, sure, but a plain ol’ mortal nonetheless. On the other hand, sometimes the child of a god and a human is a full-fledged god, like Dionysus. And sometimes the children of titans are mortal. And sometimes not. Basically, look for no rhyme or reason.
In essence, Greek myth didn’t really have the concept of a demigod. People were all the way gods, or all the way mortal. Cool mortal children of gods are usually termed ‘heroes’.