Hard question, and I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. So in my country’s mythology there is a creature that impregnates unsuspecting women, it was used to explain children born outside of marriage, and you could not blame the mother. Do you think women in ancient Greece also used Zeus (or any other god) to explain “unexpected pregnancies”?
Muse cas: most likely! This is a pretty cool ask tho! If you ever wanna submit some posts with your mythology feel free to!
muse des: yeah i agree with cas as well (in all aspects of his answer)
muse vans: dammit i had typed up a whole-ass answer for this and then tumblr bugged out and wouldn’t let me answer, but i spent too much time on it to just let it slide so here’s my take on it: (TL; DR- i personally don’t think that would have been a common excuse)
“oh my gosh,, that’s a really interesting point actually! honestly? i can’t really imagine that “oh it was zeus who visited me didn’t you know?” would have been a very credible excuse.
In Hesiod’s Work and Days, he describes five ages of man, and I’m not going to go into too much detail but basically there’s the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Hero Age, and Iron Age.
Now, the Hero Age is exactly what you’d expect- the era when all the heroes like Cadmus, Bellerophon, and Heracles were born. The Iron Age on the other hand, is Hesiod’s own time, so we can interpret this Age as been the current age that we’re in right now, and thus the time period when Ancient Greece existed. Hesiod describes the mortals in the Iron Age as an incredibly selfish and greedy race, so much so, that the gods abandon them. He writes:
“And then up to Olympos from the wide-pathed Earth, / lovely apparitions wrapped in white veils, / off to join the Immortals, abandoning humans...” (Hesiod’s Theogeny, Lines 230-232)
What I’m trying to say here, is that people likely wouldn’t have believed word-for-word the stories of their gods. Just as today people would not believe you if you said you had been visited by a god and now you’re the Virgin Mary 2.0, people then probably would not have believed you either. As Hesiod states, the era when the gods would interact a lot with humanity and produce divine heroes is over, so trying to excuse your pregnancy by palming it off on Zeus probably would not have gone down too well.”
Muse Mims: From a mythological perspective, most mortal men do claim Zeus as their father for the godly heritage (being praised as a demigod and such), but it doesn't mean they're all 100% are honest/true! We know that Zeus can be very careful not to show his true identity with most of his lovers, and his demigod children usually show their heritage by feats of strength (Heracles), godly aspects (Dionysus), or straight up claiming them (Pollux, Helen, etc). So it's safe to say that most of the kids Zeus sired are the ones he really had and claimed. Muse Vans pretty much covered the rest :)