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