Bulfinch's Mythology: The Age of Fable - Bulfinch Thomas

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cast behind you the bones of your mother." They heard the words with astonishment. Pyrrha first broke silence: "We cannot obey; we dare not profane the remains of our parents." They sought the thickest shades of the wood, and revolved the oracle in their minds. At length Deucalion spoke: "Either my sagacity deceives me, or the command is one we may obey without impiety. The earth is the great parent of all; the stones are her bones; these we may cast behind us; and I think this is what the oracle means. At least, it will do no harm to try." They veiled their faces, unbound their garments, and picked up stones, and cast them behind them. The stones (wonderful to relate) began to grow soft, and assume shape. By degrees, they put on a rude resemblance to the human form, like a block half finished in the hands of the sculptor. The moisture and slime that were about them became flesh; the stony part became bones; the veins remained veins, retaining their name, only changing their use. Those thrown by the hand of the man became men, and those by the woman became women. It was a hard race, and well adapted to labor, as we find ourselves to be at this day, giving plain indications of our origin.

      The comparison of Eve to Pandora is too obvious to have escaped

       Milton, who introduces it in Book IV, of Paradise Lost:—

      "More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods

       Endowed with all their gifts; and O, too like

       In sad event, when to the unwiser son

       Of Jupiter, brought by Hermes, she ensnared

       Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged

       On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire."

      Prometheus and Epimetheus were sons of Iapetus, which Milton changes to Japhet.

      Prometheus, the Titan son of Iapetus and Themis, is a favorite subject with the poets. AEschylus wrote three tragedies on the subjects of his confinement, his release, and his worship at Athens. Of these only the first is preserved, the Prometheus Bound. Prometheus was the only one in the council of the gods who favored man. He alone was kind to the human race, and taught and protected them.

      "I formed his mind,

       And through the cloud of barbarous ignorance

       Diffused the beams of knowledge. …

       They saw indeed, they heard, but what availed

       Or sight or hearing, all things round them rolling,

       Like the unreal imagery of dreams

       In wild confusion mixed! The lightsome wall

       Of finer masonry, the raftered roof

       They knew not; but like ants still buried, delved

       Deep in the earth and scooped their sunless caves.

       Unmarked the seasons ranged, the biting winter,

       The flower-perfumed spring, the ripening summer

       Fertile of fruits. At random all their works

       Till I instructed them to mark the stars,

       Their rising, and, a harder science yet,

       Their setting. The rich train of marshalled numbers

       I taught them, and the meet array of letters.

       To impress these precepts on their hearts I sent

       Memory, the active mother of all reason.

       I taught the patient steer to bear the yoke,

       In all his toils joint-laborer of man.

       By me the harnessed steed was trained to whirl

       The rapid car, and grace the pride of wealth.

       The tall bark, lightly bounding o'er the waves,

       I taught its course, and winged its flying sail.

       To man I gave these arts."

       Potter's Translation from the Prometheus Bound

      Jupiter, angry at the insolence and presumption of Prometheus in taking upon himself to give all these blessings to man, condemned the Titan to perpetual imprisonment, bound on a rock on Mount Caucasus while a vulture should forever prey upon his liver. This state of torment might at any time have been brought to an end by Prometheus if he had been willing to submit to his oppressor. For Prometheus knew of a fatal marriage which Jove must make and by which he must come to ruin. Had Prometheus revealed this secret he would at once have been taken into favor. But this he disdained to do. He has therefore become the symbol of magnanimous endurance of unmerited suffering and strength of will resisting oppression.

      Byron and Shelley have both treated this theme. The following are Byron's lines:—

      "Titan! To whose immortal eyes

       The sufferings of mortality,

       Seen in their sad reality,

       Were not as things that gods despise,

       What was thy pity's recompense?

       A silent suffering, and intense;

       The rock, the vulture, and the chain;

       All that the proud can feel of pain;

       The agony they do not show;

       The suffocating sense of woe.

      "Thy godlike crime was to be kind;

       To render with thy precepts less

       The sum of human wretchedness,

       And strengthen man with his own mind.

       And, baffled as thou wert from high,

       Still, in thy patient energy,

       In the endurance and repulse,

       Of thine impenetrable spirit,

       Which earth and heaven could not convulse,

       A mighty lesson we inherit."

       Table of Contents

      The slime with which the earth was covered by the waters of the flood, produced an excessive fertility, which called forth every variety of production, both bad and good. Among the rest, Python, an enormous serpent, crept forth, the terror of the people, and lurked in the caves of Mount Parnassus. Apollo slew him with his arrows weapons which he had not before used against any but feeble animals, hares, wild goats, and such game. In commemoration of this illustrious conquest he instituted the Pythian games, in which the victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot, or in the chariot race, was crowned with a wreath of beech leaves; for the laurel was not yet adopted by Apollo as his own tree. And here Apollo founded his oracle at Delphi, the only oracle "that was not exclusively national, for it was consulted by many outside nations, and, in fact, was held in the highest repute all over the world. In obedience to its decrees, the laws of Lycurgus were introduced, and the earliest Greek colonies founded. No cities were built without first consulting the Delphic oracle, for it was believed that Apollo took special delight in the founding of cities, the first stone of which he laid in person; nor was any enterprise ever undertaken without inquiry at this sacred fane as to its probable success" [From Beren's Myths and Legends of Greece and Rome.]

      The famous statue of Apollo called the Belvedere [From the Belvedere of the Vatican palace where it stands] represents the god after his victory over the serpent Python. To this Byron alludes in his Childe Harold, iv. 161:—

      "The lord of the unerring bow,

       The god of life, and poetry, and light,

       The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow

       All radiant from his triumph in the fight.

       The shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright

       With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye

       And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might,

       And majesty flash their full lightnings by,

      

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