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BOOK
II.

Prometheus and Pandora.

insult, according to the Hesiodic Theogony, Zeus avenged by depriving men of fire-a sequel hopelessly at variance with the more genuine form of the myth as related by Æschylos.

But the name Prometheus' suggested to the Greeks a connexion with words springing from the same root with Metis and Medeia. It came, in short, to mean Forethought or Providence, and thus they were led to its antithesis Epimetheus, Afterthought, and to exalt the one by framing a story to illustrate the vanity of the other. This is as manifestly implied by the story of Pandora as the overreaching of Zeus is patent in the institutional myth of the sacrifices. Prometheus is the wise and cautious counsellor, whose advice, if followed, will assuredly mitigate an evil or prevent a catastrophe. As such, he had bidden men, and more especially his brother Epimetheus, to be on their guard against any gifts which might be offered to them by Zeus, as their acceptance would be followed only by pain and misery. But it was impossible thus to defeat the schemes of Zeus or avert the doom of man. No sooner had Zeus been tricked in the matter of the sacrificial victims than he bade the fire-god Hephaistos mould of clay the figure of a maiden, into which Athênê the dawn-goddess breathed the breath of life, clothing her with silver raiment, while is with the Hesiodic myth.

These chil-
dren of men, who are described as being
unable either to see or hear, and as
clustering together like ants in their
sunless caves until they receive the
boon of fire and the blessings which
follow that gift, yet possess a knowledge
of things to come, and see most clearly
what is to be the course and the close of

their lives, podéρкeσlαι μóрov, before
Prometheus brings down for them the
heavenly fire. This power he takes
away from them, substituting blind
hopes or dreams in its place; and when
he has added to this benefit the gift of
the fire, he then instructs them in divi-
nation, thus supplying in a measure the
very knowledge which he had wished to
take away, and of which he had in fact
deprived them. The contradiction
could not be more complete.

1 It has been connected by Dr. Kuhn
with the Sanskrit Pramantha or churn
used for kindling fire with dried pieces
of wood. The wood thus has reference

not to his wisdom but to his giving of the fire; and it was in this case a mere resemblance of sound which led the Greeks to explain the name as denoting forethought. Hence Epimetheus is strictly the result of a false etymology; and the process which brought him into existence is illustrated by the language of Pindar, Pyth. v. 25, who assigns to Epimetheus a daughter Prophasis, Excuse, the offspring of after-thought. Grote, Hist. Gr. i. 102.

2 In the Finnish epic of Wäinämöinen, the smith is Ilmarinen, who makes, not for others, but for himself, a wife of gold and silver whom he brings to life after vast trouble. He finds however, that that side of his body which has touched the golden Bride is very cold in the morning. Hence he is willing to turn her over to Wäinämöinen, who, not much relishing the gift, advises him to take it to some place where gold is in more request.

THE MYTH OF PANDORA.

IV.

209 Hermes gave her the mind of a dog, to cozen, deceive, and CHAP. ruin those with whom she might come in contact. The maiden, thus arrayed, is brought to Epimetheus, and presented to him under the name Pandora, the gift of all the gods. Thus was woman brought to man; and the poet of the Theogony only adds that through woman man was speedily plunged into woe irremediable. The author of the Works and Days gives the reasons in detail. In the keeping of Epimetheus was a fatal jar, whose cover could not be lifted without grievous consequences to mankind. Pandora of course raises the lid, and a thousand evils are let loose. Thus far men had been plagued by no diseases: now the air was filled with the seeds of sickness which every where produced their baneful fruit; and the only possible alleviation of their woe was rendered impossible by the shutting up of Hope, which alone remained a prisoner within the cask when Pandora in her terror hastily replaced the cover.2 Here manifestly we have an account of the origin of evil which is altogether at variance with the true Pro

methean legend. The disaster thus caused by Pandora occurs long after the theft of the fire from Olympos, and at a time when Prometheus was paying the penalty for his offence. But in the version given by Eschylos Prometheus mentions, as one of his reasons for wishing to bestow on men the boon of fire, the crowd of diseases and plagues which they were unable either to mitigate or to cure. The reconciliation of these two myths, thus sprung from two different lines of thought, is an impossibility. But the Hesiodic legend is indeed inconsistent throughout. The

In another and a more probable tradition Pandora is an epithet of Gaia, the bountiful earth, lavish of her gifts to all her children: it would thus answer to the phrase δώτωρ ἐάων.

? The opinion that Hope was left a prisoner out of mercy to men seems untenable. The genuineness of the line in which Zeus bids Pandora replace the lid is very doubtful, while the whole legend assuredly represents Zeus as inexorably hostile to men, and hence as most unlikely to interfere in their behalf. In Mr. Grote's opinion the point is one which does not admit of question.

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BOOK.

II.

Prometheus and

mere comparison instituted between Prometheus and Epimetheus, the fore-thinker and the after-thinker, implies that there must be some advantage in the one, some loss in the other, if the contrast is to have any force. But in the Theogony and the Works and Days there is no more to be said in behalf of one than of the other. The provident and the improvident are alike outwitted and punished; and the gain, if any there be, is decidedly to the man who does not see the coming evils as they cast their shadows before them.

Putting aside these myths as the result of a mistaken Deukalion, etymology, we see in Prometheus simply another Phoroneus, the giver of fire, and, by consequence, of the blessings which spring from the knowledge of fire. As wakening the senses of men, as providing them with the appliances and comforts of life, as teaching them how to plough and build, to cross the seas and search the mines, he is practically the creator as well as the preserver of men; and the creative function thus assigned to him is brought out still more in the story of his son Deukalion, in whose days the great flood of waters overwhelms the whole of Hellas. By his father's advice Deukalion builds an ark, in which with his wife Pyrrha he floats for nine days and nights until the vessel rested on the summits of Parnassos.' When descending from the ark with Pyrrha (a name denoting redness, whether of the soil, or, as other names in the myth render far more probable, of the early morning), he offers his first sacrifice. Hermes is sent to grant them any one thing which they may choose. The prayer of Deukalion reflects the spirit of Prometheus; and he beseeches Zeus to restore mankind, now that the race has been swept away, as his father had entreated him to stay his hand when first he resolved to destroy them. The answer, whether given by

1 For other versions of this Flood see page 87, and vol. i. page 414. In all these deluges only the righteous, or those who have a consecrated character, are saved. The men of Delphoi are the ministers of the light-god Phoibos: hence wolves, by the same equivocation which led to the confounding of the tail of light, Lykosoura (Lykabas), with that of the wolf,

led them to the heights of Parnassos. where, of course, the city of Lykoreis, or Mountain of Light, is founded. Megaros, again, who is saved by following the high-soaring cranes, is a son of Zeus and a Sithnian nymph, or, in other words, a child of the waters, akin to the morning deities Athênê, Artemis, and Aphroditè. -Paus. i. 40, 1.

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS.

211

IV.

Zeus or by Theseus, is that they must cast the bones of CHAP. their mother behind them as they go upon their way; and the wisdom of Prometheus, which had warned them of the coming deluge, now teaches them that their common parent must be the Earth, and that her bones were to be seen in the rocks and stones strewn around them. These, accordingly, they cast backwards over their heads; and from those which Deukalion hurls spring up men, from those cast by Pyrrha

women.1

theus and

But Prometheus is one of those beings over whom tortures Promeand death have no lasting hold. Memnôn, Sarpêdôn, and Iô. Adônis may all die, but they must rise again to more than their ancient splendour; and thus Prometheus must be delivered from his long torments by one of those bright heroes whose nature he shares. The Promethean legend thus becomes intermingled with that of Iô as a parent of Herakles, for only beings like Herakles, Phoibos, or Asklepios may achieve such deliverances. Since, again, the sufferings of Prometheus have been caused by his resisting the will of Zeus, it follows that his rescue must involve the humiliation of Zeus; and thus the indomitable son of Iapetos is represented as using language which seems to point distinctly to the Norse belief in the Twilight of the gods, when the long day of the deities of Asgard shall be quenched in endless night.2 Nor are Iô and Herakles the only names denoting the brilliance of the morning or the sun, which are associated with the name of Prometheus. The whole legend teems with a transparent mythical history in its very names, if we confine ourselves to these alone. Deukalion and Pyrrha are the parents of Protogeneia, who, being wedded to Zeus, becomes

This myth, in Professor Max Müller's opinion, 'owes its origin to a mere pun on Aads and λâas.'—Chips, &c. ii. 12. The temptation so to assign it is great; but it seems unlikely that the same equivocation should run through the language of other tribes, among whom the story is found, as among the Macusi Indians of South America, who believe that the stones were changed into men, and the Tamanaks of Orinoko, who hold that a pair of human beings cast behind them the

fruit of a certain palm, and out of the
kernels sprang men and women.

2 It may be doubted whether this
idea is anything more than an inference
conceived by the mind of schylos;
for no other mention of the downfall of
the Olympian hierarchy seems to be
found in any other Greek writer. The
notion, which agrees well with the
gloomy climate of the North, was not
likely to fasten on the imagination of
Hellenic tribes in their sunnier home.

BOOK
II.

the mother of Aethlios, whose wife, Kalyke, is the mother of Endymion, the husband of Asterodia, who bears him fifty children. Translating these words into English, we have simply the assertions that the clear purple tints usher in the early dawn, the mother of the struggling sun, from whose union with the earth springs the wearied sun of evening, who, plunging into the western waters, is wedded to the tranquil night moving among the stars who are her children.

The
Titans.

SECTION V.-THE LIGHTNING.

With the gift of fire Prometheus imparted to man the power of interpreting the fiery lightnings which flash across the sky and seem to pierce the very bowels of the earth. These lightnings are the mighty fires in which the invincible weapons and arms are welded for beings like Phoibos, Herakles, or Achilleus; or they are themselves the awful thunderbolts forged by Hephaistos, the fire-god, and his ministers for Zeus himself. These ministers are the gigantic Titans, some of whom are thus compelled to do service to the god against whom they had rebelled; while others, like Typhoeus and Enkelados, are bound on fiery couches beneath huge mountains, through which they vomit forth streams of molten fire. Thus, among the myths related of these beings, we find some which refer to the manifestations of fire in the heaven, while others exhibit the working of the same forces upon the earth or under it. When we reach the Hesiodic or Orphic theogonies, these myths have been modified and woven together in a highly elaborate system. It is true that even here we find the poets, or mythographers, working more or less in unconscious fidelity to the old mythical phrases, which had mainly furnished them with their materials. Thus when the Orphic poet desired to go further back than the point to which the Hesiodic theogony traces the generation of the Kosmos, he traced the universe to the great mundane egg produced by Chronos, time, out of Chaos and Aithêr,—a symbol answering to the mighty mixing-bowl of the Platonic demiourgos, and akin to all the circular, oval,

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