Myth Topic 5

 

Myths of Creation: Mortals

 

 

Most common origin for mortals:

 

Prometheus

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.77-89

“higher animal”

Culmination of creation

 

Prometheus

A Titan

Son of Iapetos and Clymene

brother Altas and Epimetheus

 

according to Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, he helped Zeus in the Titanomachy, but is punished for defending mortals against Zeus

 

 

 

Special Protector of Mortals

“forethought” --he is cleverness

brother is Epimetheus “after-thought”

 

 

 

A trickster god (cf. Hermes, Enki, Loki)

delights in pestering Zeus

“matching wits” Theogony 536

 

 

 

Prometheus at Mecone Theogony 537-570:

etiology of sacrifice to gods

Zeus takes fire from mortals

Prometheus steals fire (again?)

 

 

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (430BC)

Prometheus special gifts to mankind

 

 

Pandora

told in Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days)

For theft of Fire, Zeus creates woman

Woman is a punishment for humanity

 

 

Hephaestus makes Pandora

the form of a GODDESS

gifts from all the gods (Works and Days lines 80ff):

Athena (weaving)

Aphrodite (desire, heartbreak, love)

Hermes (bitchy mind, cheating heart)

 

Pandora (“all-gifted”)

 

 

Gives it to Epimetheus –who *accepts*

 

She opens the jar (??)

and all evils fly out, except for hope

 

Etiological:

origin of evil, suffering, women, marriage

 

Golden age lost

–like many other tales

cf. Genesis 2-3

 

 

Ancient Misogyny:

often primitive / ritualistic

like miasma

with Greeks misogyny seems directly tied to monogamy

 

 

Pandora and Eve?

 

Cf. Genesis 2:3–3:24

 

 

 

Hesiod and the Five Races

in the Works and Days (lines 129 ff)

 

Race of Gold

under good King Cronos

The earth yielded everything to all

Under the earth—wander as protective spirits

 

Silver

100 year old-baby

violent to each other

do not honor gods

Zeus buried them—subterranean spirits

 

 

Bronze

a terrible race

bloody and war-like

bronze weapons—plunder

have died, and are in Hades

 

 

Heroes

braver and juster

demi-gods

Cadmus, Oedipus, Trojan warriors

most died, but some have been taken away to a blessed Isle

(cf. King Arthur)

Cronos rules

 

 

Iron

The present age

“I wish

I had nothing to do with this fifth generation,

Wish I had dies before or been born after…”

 

Fight ourselves

the gods hassle us

 

 

 

Hesiod inherited this image from the East:

The human race in constant decline

A fundamentally conservative worldview

looking backwards

 

 

 

Reinterpreted by Vergil in his Fourth Eclogue

the golden age has returned!

 

Novus ordo saeclorum

“New order of the ages”

“New world order”

 

 

 

The Universal Flood

 

Noah is saved because of his righteousness

 

Mesopotamia: a River culture

Sumerian: 3000BCE

Enki warns Ziusudra

 

Akkadian (1700BCE) : Atrahasis

Enlil cannot get any sleep!

Other gods approval

—plague, drought, famine

Ea (=Enki) tells Atrahasis to build a boat

 

Many Eastern versions of this story; no archaeological evidence of a cultural break in Mesopotamia

 

 

Classical versions

Does not show up in surviving Greek texts

Ps-Apollodorus, Library (ACM p. 23)

 

 

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.244 ff

but surely based on earlier versions

Jupiter (=Zeus) visits earth: wickedness

exemplified by Lycaon

 

 

 

 

Deucalion (Prometheus’ son) and Pyrrha

Go to the shrine of Themis

“throw the bones of your mother over your shoulder”

Son: Hellen

 

eponymous ancestor

 

 

 

Cf. the account in Genesis, of Noah’s Flood

 

 

Noah's Flood with authors 1 2