Part 10 (2/2)

Children were brought up at their mothers' sides for a hundred years, playing at childish things. And when they came to years beyond a hundred they quarreled with one another, and wronged one another, and did not know enough to give reverence to the immortal G.o.ds. Then, by the will of Zeus, the Silver Race pa.s.sed away as the Golden Race had pa.s.sed away. Their spirits stay in the Underworld, and they are called by men the blessed spirits of the Underworld.

And then there was made the third race-the Race of Bronze. They were a race great of stature, terrible and strong. Their armor was of bronze, their swords were of bronze, their implements were of bronze, and of bronze, too, they made their houses. No great span of life was theirs, for with the weapons that they took in their terrible hands they slew one another. Thus they pa.s.sed away, and went down under the earth to Hades, leaving no name that men might know them by.

Then the G.o.ds created a fourth race-our own: a Race of Iron. We have not the justice that was amongst the men of the Golden Race, nor the simpleness that was amongst the men of the Silver Race, nor the stature nor the great strength that the men of the Bronze Race possessed. We are of iron that we may endure. It is our doom that we must never cease from labor and that we must very quickly grow old.

But miserable as we are to-day, there was a time when the lot of men was more miserable. With poor implements they had to labor on a hard ground.

There was less justice and kindliness amongst men in those days than there is now.

Once it came into the mind of Zeus that he would destroy the fourth race and leave the earth to the nymphs and the satyrs. He would destroy it by a great flood. But Prometheus, the t.i.tan G.o.d who had given aid to Zeus against the other t.i.tans-Prometheus, who was called the Foreseer-could not consent to the race of men being destroyed utterly, and he considered a way of saving some of them. To a man and a woman, Deucalion and Pyrrha, just and gentle people, he brought word of the plan of Zeus, and he showed them how to make a s.h.i.+p that would bear them through what was about to be sent upon the earth.

Then Zeus shut up in their cave all the winds but the wind that brings rain and clouds. He bade this wind, the South Wind, sweep over the earth, flooding it with rain. He called upon Poseidon and bade him to let the sea pour in upon the land. And Poseidon commanded the rivers to put forth all their strength, and sweep d.y.k.es away, and overflow their banks.

The clouds and the sea and the rivers poured upon the earth. The flood rose higher and higher, and in the places where the pretty lambs had played the ugly sea calves now gambolled; men in their boats drew fishes out of the tops of elm trees, and the water nymphs were amazed to come on men's cities under the waves.

Soon even the men and women who had boats were overwhelmed by the rise of water-all perished then except Deucalion and Pyrrha, his wife; them the waves had not overwhelmed, for they were in a s.h.i.+p that Prometheus had shown them how to build. The flood went down at last, and Deucalion and Pyrrha climbed up to a high and a dry ground. Zeus saw that two of the race of men had been left alive. But he saw that these two were just and kindly, and had a right reverence for the G.o.ds. He spared them, and he saw their children again peopling the earth.

Prometheus, who had saved them, looked on the men and women of the earth with compa.s.sion. Their labor was hard, and they wrought much to gain little. They were chilled at night in their houses, and the winds that blew in the daytime made the old men and women bend double like a wheel.

Prometheus thought to himself that if men and women had the element that only the G.o.ds knew of-the element of fire-they could make for themselves implements for labor; they could build houses that would keep out the chilling winds, and they could warm themselves at the blaze.

But the G.o.ds had not willed that men should have fire, and to go against the will of the G.o.ds would be impious. Prometheus went against the will of the G.o.ds. He stole fire from the altar of Zeus, and he hid it in a hollow fennel stalk, and he brought it to men.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Prometheus

Then men were able to hammer iron into tools, and cut down forests with axes, and sow grain where the forests had been. Then were they able to make houses that the storms could not overthrow, and they were able to warm themselves at hearth fires. They had rest from their labor at times.

They built cities; they became beings who no longer had heads and backs bent but were able to raise their faces even to the G.o.ds.

And Zeus spared the race of men who had now the sacred element of fire.

But he knew that Prometheus had stolen this fire even from his own altar and had given it to men. And he thought on how he might punish the great t.i.tan G.o.d for his impiety.

He brought back from the Underworld the giants that he had put there to guard the t.i.tans that had been hurled down to Tartarus. He brought back Gyes, Cottus, and Briareus, and he commanded them to lay hands upon Prometheus and to fasten him with fetters to the highest, blackest crag upon Caucasus. And Briareus, Cottus, and Gyes seized upon the t.i.tan G.o.d, and carried him to Caucasus, and fettered him with fetters of bronze to the highest, blackest crag-with fetters of bronze that may not be broken.

There they have left the t.i.tan stretched, under the sky, with the cold winds blowing upon him, and with the sun streaming down on him. And that his punishment might exceed all other punishments Zeus had sent a vulture to prey upon him-a vulture that tears at his liver each day.

And yet Prometheus does not cry out that he has repented of his gift to man; although the winds blow upon him, and the sun streams upon him, and the vulture tears at his liver, Prometheus will not cry out his repentance to heaven. And Zeus may not utterly destroy him. For Prometheus the Foreseer knows a secret that Zeus would fain have him disclose. He knows that even as Zeus overthrew his father and made himself the ruler in his stead, so, too, another will overthrow Zeus. And one day Zeus will have to have the fetters broken from around the limbs of Prometheus, and will have to bring from the rock and the vulture, and into the Council of the Olympians, the unyielding t.i.tan G.o.d.

When the light of the morning came the _Argo_ was very near to the Mountain Caucasus. The voyagers looked in awe upon its black crags. They saw the great vulture circling over a high rock, and from beneath where the vulture circled they heard a weary cry. Then Heracles, who all night had stood by the mast, cried out to the Argonauts to bring the s.h.i.+p near to a landing place.

But Jason would not have them go near; fear of the wrath of Zeus was strong upon him; rather, he bade the Argonauts put all their strength into their rowing, and draw far off from that forbidden mountain. Heracles, not heeding what Jason ordered, declared that it was his purpose to make his way up to the black crag, and, with his s.h.i.+eld and his sword in his hands, slay the vulture that preyed upon the liver of Prometheus.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Then Orpheus in a clear voice spoke to the Argonauts. ”Surely some spirit possesses Heracles,” he said. ”Despite all we do or say he will make his way to where Prometheus is fettered to the rock. Do not gainsay him in this! Remember what Nereus, the ancient one of the sea, declared!

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