THE HESIODIC AGES. are the men of the iron age, who know no peace by day and by night, and for whom, although some good may yet be mingled with the evil, the poet anticipates nothing but an increasing misery which at the last will become unbearable. Good faith and kindly dealing will in the end vanish from the face of the earth, until Aidôs and Nemesis (reverence and righteousness) will wrap their shining garments around their radiant forms, and soar away into the heights never pierced by the eye of man. 203 CHAP. IV. Heroic age. Such is the purely ethical legend by which the Hesiodic The poet accounts for the present condition of mankind-a state not only opposed to the legends of Hermes, Prometheus, and Phorôneus, but also to all the associations which had taken the strongest hold on the popular mind. The stories recited by bards or rhapsodists told them of a time when men walked the earth who were the children of immortal mothers, whose joys and sorrows were alike beyond those of men now living, who had done great deeds and committed great crimes, but who nevertheless held open converse with the flashing-eyed goddess of the dawn, and for whom the firegod forged irresistible weapons and impenetrable armour. In the conviction of the Hesiodic as of our Homeric poets, the heroes of this magnificent but chequered age were utterly different from the miserable race which had followed them, nor could they be identified with the beings of the three races who had gone before them. It was, however, impossible even for a poet, who probably preferred his ethical maxims to the story of the wrath of Achilleus or the avenging of Helen, to pass them by in contemptuous silence. They must therefore be placed by themselves in a position. which breaks the ethical order of the primeval ages;1 and thus the poet contents himself with saying that many of them slew each other at Thebes fighting for the apples or the cows of Oidipous, while others met their doom at Troy. All these were placed by Zeus in a region far away from the undying gods and beyond the bounds of the earth, where Kronos is their king, and where the teeming soil produces 1 It is noteworthy that the genera- Vuh are interrupted after the third tions given in the Theogony of the Popol creation. Max Müller, Chips, i. 335. BOOK yearly its triple harvests in the islands of the blessed by the deep eddying ocean. II. The Prometheus of In contrast with this gloomier belief, the Promethean Eschylus myth exhibits mankind in a scale ascending from the savage state in which they knew the use neither of fire nor of metals to that high civilisation in which Zeus fears that men may become like the gods in wisdom and thus share their power. For this myth, as related by Eschylos, knows nothing of a previous knowledge of fire, which, according to the Hesiodic version, Zeus took away from men in revenge for the cheat which left only the fat and bones of victims as the portion of the gods. This explanation, which is not altogether consistent with other passages in the Hesiodic Theogony, completely excludes the idea which lies at the very root of the Eschylean tradition, for Prometheus expressly speaks of men not as having lost high powers and the fruits of great results achieved by those powers, but as never having been awakened to the consciousness of the senses with which they were endowed. From the first, until he came to their aid, they were beings to whom sight and hearing were wholly useless, and for whom life presented only the confused shapes of a dream. The sunless caves, in which they lived like ants, were not wrought into shape by their hands. For them there were no distinctions of seasons, no knowledge of the rising and setting of the stars. For this state of unspeakable misery there was no remedy until men could be roused to a knowledge of their own powers and be placed in the conditions indispensable for their exercise—a result to be achieved only by bestowing on them the boon of fire. But this very idea involves the fact that till then fire was a thing unknown to men upon the earth. They might see it in the cloven thunderclouds, or tremble at the fiery streams hurled into the air from the heaving volcano, but to them fire was at the least a thing which they dared not approach with the thought of mastering and turning it to use. Some wiser being than they must therefore bring it to them in a form which shall deprive it of its terrors and make it the servant, not the destroyer of man. That being is Prometheus, who, ascending to the palace of Zeus, fills a ferule with fire, THE GIFT OF FIRE. and thus brings down the precious boon to the woe-begone children of men. Henceforth the task of raising them was practically stripped of its difficulty, and Prometheus was enabled to teach men how to cook and build, and where to find the riches stored up within the earth. From him came the knowledge of the movements of the heavens, and the changes of the seasons; by him men were taught to plough and reap, and to launch themselves in ships on the waters and spread their white wings to the breeze. From him they received skill in the discernment of herbs and roots for the healing of diseases under which they had groaned in hopeless suffering; and from him they learnt to understand the signs of the calm and the troubled heavens, and the meanings of the muscular movements of victims slain in sacrifice. 205 CHAP. IV. It was impossible for the poet to show more clearly that The Prometheus was the friend who bestowed on man, originally ment of punisha creature more feeble and helpless than any of the brute Promebeasts, all that can make life valuable. Of earlier conany dition in which men lived, as in the golden or silver ages, or of theus. BOOK II. How then came it about that Prometheus should be able thus to enter Olympos, and why should he seek to conceal the deed which he had resolved to do? These questions the poet answered by a reference to other myths with which Prometheus was connected. This friend of man was himself either a Titan or the son of the Titan Iapetos; and when his gigantic kinsfolk rose in rebellion against Zeus, Prometheus played the part of Michael in the great war waged within the courts of heaven. Finding that all good counsels were cast away on the brutal partisans of Kronos, Prometheus throws in the weight of his wisdom on the side of Zeus, and the result is that Kronos with his adherents is hurled, like Satan with the revolted angels, into the abyss of Tartaros or hell. Thus far Prometheus was a benefactor to Zeus without awakening either his jealousy or his wrath. Henceforth he might have remained for ever in the bright homes of Olympos had it not been for the injustice of which Zeus became guilty as soon as he found himself securely seated on the throne of heaven. To each of the deathless gods he assigned a place and function; of men alone he took no count, his heart's desire being to sweep the whole race from the earth and to create another. But it is clear that this resolution was formed not because men were already becoming too wise and too powerful, as the Hesiodic version would represent it, but because man was too mean and wretched a thing to be suffered to cumber the earth. Here Zeus expresses no fear, and Prometheus is opposed to him not because he is too severe upon enemies whom he dreads, but because he feels no pity for creatures whose wretchedness calls only for compassion. The mercy refused by Zeus is extended to them by Prometheus, who determines to raise them from their abject. misery and by stealing the fire converts the opposition of Zeus into a fierce longing for vengeance against the mighty being who had dared to thwart his will. The great heart whose pulses had beaten in sympathy with the griefs and wants of men shall itself be torn with an agony far surpassing their puny woes. In the sentence thus passed upon him it seems difficult not to discern a phrase or a sentiment in close analogy with those which are seen in the myths of Erinys THE TORTURING OF PROMETHEUS. or Atê. The awful being, who with sleepless eye wanders through the air to watch the deeds of men and exact a righteous penalty for the shedding of innocent blood, had been, or was, in the land of the Five Streams only the beautiful Saranyû or morning. But the natural phrase, the dawn will find out the evil doer,' changes Saranyû in Hellas into the dread minister of divine vengeance; and it was necessary only to give a physical meaning to the phrase that the hearts of the enemies of Zeus shall be racked with pain, to furnish a starting-point for the myth which told how the vulture gnawed the heart of Prometheus as he lay bound to the frozen crags of Caucasus. But the visible vulture gnawing a bleeding heart would soon have finished its horrid task; the heart, therefore, must constantly grow, and thus the story ran that the portion consumed during the day was restored in the night, and the region of everlasting ice and storm was chosen as the place of torture presenting the most awful contrast with the sunlit halls of Olympos. 207 CHAP. IV. The zeal of Prometheus on behalf of mankind is brought The cheatto a climax in the institutional legend which professed to us. account for the portion assigned to the gods in the distribution of victims slain in sacrifices. They have only the bones and the fat, while the meat and the entrails belong to men. This practice is ascribed strictly to the craft of Prometheus, who, in the great contest between gods and men in Mêkônê, divided an ox, and placing the meat under the stomach and the bones under the more inviting and auspicious fat, called on Zeus to make his choice. The god with great eagerness placed both hands on the fat, and was enraged on finding that it concealed only a heap of bones.1 This The Hesiodic poet in relating this story makes use of one or two expressions which imply or assert that Zeus saw through the trick from the first, and that thus it was in fact no trick at all. When Zeus saw the two heaps laid out for his choice, he is made to say that the division is not fair. The poet adds that this was a sarcasm from a god whose wisdom was boundless; and in the same way, when he is summoned to choose, the poet says that he did so with his eyes open, yvw § ovd hypoinge door. The words are intro duced simply to save the majesty of |