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