century, I have taken the
material of this chapter chiefly from Hesiod, who lived at least
of Pandora are characteristic of
him.
First there was Chaos, the vast
immeasurable abyss, Outrageous as a sea, dark,
wasteful,
wild.
These words are Milton's, but
they express with precision what the Greeks thought lay back
of the very first beginning of
things. Long before the gods appeared, in the dim past,
unbroken darkness. At last, but
how no one ever tried to explain, two children were born to
this shapeless nothingness.
Night was the child of Chaos and so was Erebus, which is the
unfathomable depth where death dwells. In the
whole universe there was nothing else; all
was black, empty, silent,
endless.
And then a marvel of marvels
came to pass. In some mysterious way, from this horror of
blank boundless vacancy the best
of all things came into being. A great playwright, the
comic poet Aristophanes,
describes its coming in words often quoted:—
... Black-winged Night Into the bosom of Erebus dark
and deep
Laid a wind-born egg, and as the
seasons rolled
Forth sprang Love, the
longed-for, shining, with
wings of gold.
From darkness and from death
Love was born, and with its birth, order and beauty began
What took place next was the creation
of the earth, but this, too, no one ever tried to explain. It just happened.
With the corning of love and light it seemed natural that the earth
also should appear. The poet
Hesiod, the first Greek who tried to explain how things
began, wrote,
Earth, the beautiful, rose up,
Broad-bosomed, she that is the
steadfast base
Of all things. And fair Earth
first bore
The starry Heaven, equal to
herself,
To cover her on all sides and to
be
A home forever for the blessed
gods.
In all this thought about the past
no distinction had as yet been made between places and
persons. Earth was the solid
ground, yet vaguely a personality, too. Heaven was the blue
vault on high, but it acted in
some ways as a human being would. To the people who told
these stories all the universe
was alive with the same kind of life they knew in themselves.
They were individual persons, so
they personified everything which had the obvious marks
of life, everything which moved
and changed: earth in winter and summer; the sky with its
shifting stars; the restless
sea, and so on. It was only a dim personification: something
vague and immense which with its
motion brought about change and therefore was alive.
But when they told of the
corning of love and light the early storytellers were setting the
scene for the appearance of
mankind, and they began to personify more precisely. They
they defined them far more
clearly as individuals than they had earth and heaven. They
showed them acting in every way
as human beings did; walking, for instance, and eating,
as Earth
and Heaven obviously did not. These two were set apart. If they were alive, it
was
in a way peculiar to them alone.
The first creatures who had the appearance
of life were the children of Mother Earth and
Father Heaven (Gaea and Ouranos). They were
monsters. Just as we believe that the
however, think of them as huge lizards and
mammoths, but as somewhat like men and yet
unhuman. They had the shattering,
overwhelming strength of earthquake and hurricane and
volcano. In the tales about them they do not
seem really alive, but rather to belong to a
world where as yet there was no life, only
tremendous movements of irresistible forces
lifting up the mountains and scooping out
the seas. The Greeks apparently had some such
feeling because in their stories, although
they represent these creatures as living beings,
they make them unlike any form of life known
to man.
Three of them, monstrously huge and strong,
had each a hundred hands and fifty heads. To
three others was given the name
of Cyclops (the Wheel-eyed), because each
had only one
enormous eye, as round and as
big as a wheel, in the riddle of the forehead. The
Cyclopes, too, were gigantic,
towering up like mighty mountain crags and devastating in
their power. Last came the
Titans. There were a number of these and they were in no way
inferior to the others in size
and strength, but they were not purely destructive. Several of
them were even beneficent. One,
indeed, after men had been created, saved them from
destruction.
It was natural to think of these
fearful creations as the children of Mother Earth, brought forth
from her dark depths when the
world was young. But it is extremely odd that they were also
the children of Heaven. However,
that was what the Greeks said, and they made Heaven
out to be a very poor father. He
hated the things with a hundred hands and fifty heads, even
though they were his sons, and
as each was born he imprisoned it in a secret place within
the earth. The Cyclopes and the
Titans he left at large; and Earth, enraged at the
maltreatment of her other children,
appealed to them to help. Only one was bold enough,
the Titan Cronus. He lay in wait
for his father and wounded him terribly. The Giants, the
fourth race of monsters, sprangup from his blood. From this same blood, too, the Erinyes
(the Furies) were born. Their
office was to pursue and punish sinners. They were called
hair and eyes that wept tears of
blood. The other monsters were finally driven from the earth,
but not the Erinyes. As long as
there was sin in the world they could not be banished.
From that
time on for untold ages, Cronus, he whom we have seen the Romans called
Saturn, was lord of the universe, with his sister-queen,
Rhea (Ops in Latin).
Finally one of their sons, the future ruler of
heaven and earth, whose name in
Greek is Zeus and in Latin Jupiter, rebelled against him.
He had good cause to do so, for
Cronus had learned that one of his children was destined
some day to dethrone him and he
thought to go against fate by swallowing them as soon
as they were born. But when Rhea
bore Zeus, her sixth child, she succeeded in having him
secretly carried off to Crete,
while she gave her husband a great stone wrapped in
swaddling clothes which he
supposed was the baby and swallowed down accordingly.
Later, when Zeus was grown, he
forced his father with the help of his grandmother, the
eons later a great traveler,
Pausanias by name, reports that he saw it about 180 A.D.: "A
stone of no great size which the
priests of Delphi anoint every day with oil."
There followed a terrible war
between Cronus, helped by
his brother Titans, against Zeus
with his five brothers and
A dreadful sound troubled the boundless sea.
The whole earth uttered a great cry.
Wide heaven, shaken, groaned.
From its foundation far Olympus reeled
Beneath the onrush of the deathless gods,
And trembling seized upon black Tartarus.
The Titans were conquered, partly because
Zeus released from their prison the hundred handed
monsters who fought for him with their
irresistible weapons—thunder, lightning, and
earthquake—and also because one of the sons of the
Titan Iapetus, whose name was
Prometheus and who was very wise, took sides
with Zeus.
Zeus punished his conquered enemies
terribly. They were
Bound in bitter chains beneath the
wide-wayed earth,
As far below the earth as over earth
Is heaven, for even so far down lies
Tartarus.
And on the tenth reach earth from heaven.
And then again falling nine days and nights,
Would come to Tartarus,
the brazen-fenced.
Prometheus' brother Atlas suffered a still
worse fate. He was condemned
To bear on his back forever
The cruel strength of the crushing world
And the vault of the sky.
Upon his shoulders the great pillar
That holds apart the earth and heaven,
A load not easy to be borne.
Bearing this burden he stands forever before
the place that is wrapped in clouds and
darkness, where Night and Day draw near and
greet one another. The house within never
holds both Night and Day, but always one,
departing, visits the earth, and the other in the
house awaits the hour for her journeying
hence, one with far-seeing light for those on earth,
the other holding in her hands Sleep, the
brother of Death.
Even after the Titans were conquered and
crushed, Zeus was not completely victorious.
Earth gave birth to her last and most frightful
offspring, a creature more terrible than any
that had gone before. His name was Typhon.
A flaming monster with a hundred heads,
Who rose up against all the gods.
Death whistled from his fearful jaws,
His eyes flashed glaring fire.
But Zeus had now got
the thunder and lightning under his
own control. They had become his weapons,
used by no one
else. He struck Typhon down with
The bolt that never sleeps,
Thunder with breath of flame.
Into his very heart the fire burned.
His strength was turned to ashes.
And now he lies a useless thing
By Aetna, whence sometimes there burst
The level fields of Sicily,
Lovely with fruits.
And that is Typhon's anger boiling up,
His fire-breathing darts.
Still later, one more attempt was made to
unseat Zeus: the Giants rebelled. But by this time
the gods were very
strong
and they were helped, too, by
mighty Hercules, a son of Zeus. The Giants were defeated
and hurled down to Tartarus; and
the victory of the radiant powers of Heaven over the brutal
forces of Earth was complete.
From then on, Zeus and his brothers and sisters ruled,
undisputed lords of all.
As yet there were no human
beings; but the world, now cleared of the monsters, was ready
for mankind. It was a place
where people could live in some comfort and security, without
having to fear the sudden
appearance of a Titan or a Giant. The earth was believed to be a
round disk, divided into two
equal parts by the Sea, as the Greeks called it, which we know
Axine, which means the
Unfriendly Sea, and then, perhaps as people became familiar with
it, the Euxine, the Friendly
Sea. It is sometimes suggested that they gave it this pleasant
name to make it feel pleasantly
disposed toward them.) Around the earth flowed the great
river, Ocean, never troubled by
wind or storm. On the farther bank of Ocean were
mysterious people, whom few on
earth ever found their way to. The Cimmerians lived there,
but whether east, west, north or
south, no one knew. It was a land cloud-wrapped and misty,
where the light of day was never
seen; upon which the shining sun never looked with his
splendor, not when he climbed
through the starry sky at dawn, nor when at evening he
Except in this one country, all
those who lived across Ocean were exceedingly fortunate. In
the remotest North, so far away
it was at the back of the North Wind, was a blissful land
where the Hyperboreans lived.
Only a few strangers, great heroes, had ever visited it. Not
by ship nor yet on foot might
one find the road to the marvelous meeting place of the
Hyperboreans. But the Muses
lived not far from them,
such were their ways. For
everywhere the dance of maidens swayed and the clear call of
the lyre sounded and the ringing
notes of flutes. With golden laurel they bound their hair and
they feasted merrily. In that
holy race, sickness and deathly old age had no part. Far to the
south was
the country of the Ethiopians, of whom we know only that the gods held them in
such favor they would sit at joyful banquets
with them in their halls.
On Ocean's bank, too, was the abode of the
blessed dead. In that land, there was no
snowfall nor much
winter nor any
storm of rain; but from Ocean
the West Wind sang soft and thrillingly to refresh the souls of
men. Here those who kept
themselves pure from all wrong came when they left the earth.
Their boon is life forever freed from toil.
No more to trouble earth or the
sea waters
With their strong hands,
Laboring for the food that does
not satisfy.
But with the honored of the gods
they live
A life where there are no more
tears.
Around those blessed isles soft
sea winds breathe,
And flowers of gold are blazing
on the trees,
Upon the waters, too.
By now all was ready for the
appearance of mankind. Even the places the good and bad
should go to after death had
been arranged. It was time for men to be created. There is
more than one account of how
that came to pass. Some say it was delegatedby the gods
to Prometheus, the Titan who had
sided with Zeus in the war with the Titans, and to his
brother Epimetheus. Prometheus,
whose name means forethought, was very wise, wiser
even than the gods, but
Epimetheus, which means afterthought, was a scatterbrained
person who invariably followed
his first impulse and then changed his mind. So he did in
this case. Before making men he
gave all the best gifts to the animals, strength and
swiftness and courage and
shrewd, cunning, fur and feathers and wings and shells and the
like—until no
good was left for men, no protective covering and no quality to make them a
match for the beasts. Too late,
as always, he was sorry and asked his brother's help.
Prometheus, then, took over the
task of creation and thought out a way to make mankind
superior. He fashioned them III
a nobler shape than the animals, upright like the gods; and
then he went to heaven, to the
sun, where he lit a torch and brought down fire, a protection
to men far
better than anything else, whether fur or feathers or strength or swiftness.
And now, though feeble and short-lived,
Mankind has flaming fire and therefrom
Learns many crafts.
According to another story, the gods themselves
created men. They made first a golden
race. These, although
mortal, lived like gods without sorrow of heart, far from toil and
pain. The cornland of itself bore fruit
abundantly. They were rich also in flocks and beloved
of the gods. When the grave covered them
they became pure spirits,beneficent, the
guardians of mankind.
In this account of the creation the gods
seemed bent on experimenting with the various
metals, and, oddly enough, proceeding
downward from the excellent to the good to the
worse and so on. When they had tried gold
they went to silver. This second race of silver
was very inferior to the first. They had so
little intelligence that they could not keep from
injuring each other. They too passed away,
but, unlike the gold race, their spirits did not live
on after them. The next race was of brass.
They were terrible men, immensely strong, and
such lovers of war and violence that they
were completely destroyed by their own hands.
This, however, was all to the good, for they
were followed by a splendid race of godlike
heroes who fought glorious wars and went on
great adventures which men have talked and
sung of through all the ages since. They
departed finally to the isles of the
blessed, where they lived in perfect bliss
forever.
The fifth race is that which is now upon the
earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and
their nature too has much of evil, so that
they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the
generations pass, they grow worse; sons are
always inferior to their fathers. A time will
come when they have grown so wicked that
they will worship power; might will be right to
them, and reverence for the good will cease
to be. At last when no man is angry any more
at wrongdoing or feels shame in the presence
of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too.
And yet even then something might be done,
if only the common people would arise and
put down rulers that
oppress them.
These two stories of the creation,—the story of the five
ages, and the story of Prometheus and
Epimetheus,—different as they are, agree in one
point. For a long time, certainly throughout
the happy Golden Age, only men were upon the
earth; there were no women. Zeus created
these later, in his anger at Prometheus for
caring so much for men. Prometheus had not
only stolen fire for men; he had also arranged
that they should get the best part of any
animal sacrificed and the gods the worst. He cut up
a great ox and wrapped the good eatable
parts in the hide, disguising them further by piling
entrails on top. Beside this heap he put an-
[Pandora lifted the lid and out flew plagues
and sorrows for
mankind] Illustration
other of all the bones, dressed up with
cunning and covered with shining fat, and bade Zeus
choose between them. Zeus took up the white
fat and was angry when he saw the bones
craftily tricked out. But he had made his
choice and he had to abide by it. Thereafter only
fat and bones were burned to the gods upon
their altars. Men kept the good meat for
themselves.
But the Father of Men and of Gods was not
one to put up with this sort of treatment. He
swore to be revenged, on mankind first and
then on mankind's friend. He made a great evil
for men, a sweet and lovely thing to look
upon, in the likeness of a shy maiden, and all the
gods gave her gifts, silvery raiment and a
broidered veil, a wonder to behold, and bright
garlands of blooming flowers and a crown of
gold— great beauty shone out from it.
Because of what they gave her they called
her Pandora,which means "the gift of all."
When
this beautiful disaster had been made, Zeus
brought her out and wonder took hold of gods
and men when they beheld her. From her, the
first woman, comes the race. Of women, who
are an evil to men, with a nature to do
evil.
Another story about Pandora is that the
source of all misfortune was not her wicked nature,
but only her curiosity. The gods presented
her with a box into which each had put
something harmful, and forbade her ever to
open it. Then they sent her to Epimetheus, who
took her gladly although Prometheus had
warned him never to accept anything from Zeus.
He took her, and afterward when that
dangerous thing, a woman, was his, he understood
how good his brother's
advice had been. ForPandora, like all women, was possessed of a
lively curiosity. She had to know what was in the box. One day she
lifted the lid— and out
flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief for mankind.
In terror Pandora clapped the
lid down, but too late. One good
thing, however, was there—Hope. It was the only good the
casket had held among the many
evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in
misfortune. So mortals learned
that it is not possible to get the better of Zeus or ever
deceive him. The wise and
compassionate Prometheus, too, found that out.
When Zeus had punished men by
giving them women he turned his attention to the archsinner
himself. The new ruler of the
gods owed Prometheus much for helping him conquer
the other Titans, but he forgot
his debt. Zeus ha~ his servants, Force and Violence, seize
him and
take him to the Caucasus, where they bound him
To a high-piercing, headlong
rock
In adamantine chains that none can break.
and they told him,
Forever shall the intolerable
present grind you down.
And he who will release you is
not born.
Such fruit you reap for your
man-loving ways.
A god yourself, you did not
dread God's anger,
But gave to mortals honor not
their due.
And therefore you must guard
this joyless rock—
No rest, no sleep, no moment's
respite.
Groans shall your speech be,
lamentation your only words.
The reason for inflicting this
torture was not only to punish Prometheus, but also to force
him to disclose a secret very
important to the lord of Olympus. Zeus knew that fate, which
brings all things to pass, had
decreed that a son should some day be born to him who
would dethrone him and drive the
gods from their home in heaven, but only Prometheus
knew who would be the mother of
this son. As he lay bound upon the rock in agony, Zeus
sent his messenger, Hermes, to
bid him disclose the secret. Prometheus told him:—
Go and persuade the sea wave not
to break.
You will persuade me no more
easily.
Hermes warned him that if he
persisted in his stubborn silence, he should suffer still more
terrible things.
An eagle red with blood
Shall come, a guest unbidden to
your banquet.
All day long he will tear to
rags your body,
Feasting in
fury on the blackened liver.
But nothing, no threat, nor torture, could
break Prometheus. His body was bound but his
spirit was free. He refused to submit to
cruelty and tyranny. He knew that he had served
Zeus well and that he had done right to pity
mortals in their helplessness. His suffering was
utterly unjust, and he would not give in to
brutal power no matter at what cost. He told
Hermes:—
There is no force which can compel my
speech.
So let Zeus hurl his
blazing bolts,
And with the white wings of the
snow,
With thunder and with
earthquake,
Confound the reeling world.
None of all this will bend my
will.
Hermes, crying out,
Why, these are ravings you may
hear from madmen,
left him to suffer what he must.
Generations later we know he was released, but why and
how is not told clearly
anywhere. There is a strange story that the Centaur, Chiron, though
immortal, was willing to die for
him and that he was allowed to do so. When Hermes was
urging Prometheus to give in to
Zeus he spoke of this, but in such a way as to make it
seem an incredible sacrifice:—
Look for no ending to this agony
Until a god will freely suffer
for you,
Will take on him your pain, and
in your stead
Descend to where the sun is
turned to darkness,
The black depths of death.
But Chiron did do this and Zeus
seems to have accepted him as a substitute. We are told,
too, that Hercules slew the
eagle and delivered Prometheus from his bonds, and that Zeus
was willing to have this done.
But why Zeus changed his mind and whether Prometheus
revealed the secret when he was
freed, we do not know. One thing, however, is certain: in
whatever way the two were
reconciled, it was not Prometheus who yielded. His name has
stood through all the centuries,
from Greek days to our own, as that of the great rebel
against injustice and the
authority of power.
There is still another account
of the creation of mankind. In the story of the five ages men
are descended from the iron
race. In the story of Prometheus, it is uncertain whether the
men he saved from destruction
belonged to that race or the bronze race. Fire would have
been as necessary to the one as
to the other. In the third story, men are descended from a
race of stone. This story begins
with the Deluge.
All over the earth men grew so
wicked that finally Zeus determined to destroy them. He
decided
To mingle storm and tempest over boundless earth
And make an utter end of mortal man.
He sent the flood. He called upon his
brother, the God of the Sea, to help him, and together,
with torrents of rain from heaven and rivers
loosed upon the earth, the two drowned the
land.
The might of water overwhelmed dark earth,
over the summits of the highest mountains.
Only towering Parnassus was not quite
covered, and the bit of dry land on its very
topmost peak was the means by which mankind
escaped destruction. After it had rained
through, nine days and nine nights, there came
drifting to that spot what looked to be a
great wooden chest, but safe within it were two
living human beings, a man and a woman. They
were Deucalion and Pyrrha—he
Prometheus' son, and she his niece, the
daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. The wisest
person in all the universe, Prometheus had
well been able to protect his own family. He
knew the flood would come, and he had bidden
his son build the chest, store it with
provisions, and embark in it with his wife.
Fortunately Zeus was not offended, because
the two were pious, faithful worshipers of the
gods. When the chest came to land and they
got out, to see no sign of life anywhere, only a
wild waste of waters, Zeus pitied them and
drained of the flood. Slowly like the ebbing tide
the sea and the rivers drew back and the
earth was dry again. Pyrrha and Deucalion came
down from Parnassus, the only living
creatures in a dead world. They found a temple all
slimy and moss-grown, but not quite in
ruins, and there they gave thanks for their escape
and prayed for help in their dreadful
loneliness. They heard a voice. "Veil your heads and
cast behind you the bones of your
mother." The commands struck them with horror. Pyrrha
said, "We dare not
do such a thing." Deucalion was forced to agree that she was right, but
he tried to think out what might lie behind
the words and suddenly he saw their meaning.
"Earth is the mother of all," he
told his wife. "Her bones are the stones. These we may cast
behind us without doing wrong." So they
did, and as the stones fell they took human shape.
They were called the Stone People, and they
were a hard, enduring race, as was to be
expected and, indeed, as they had need to
be, to rescue the earth from the desolation left
by the flood.
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