THE FIRST HUMANS

When we come to the creation of humanity, we find no one dominant account such as Hesiod provides for the creation of the cosmos. Instead there are a number of diverse, sometimes contradictory, explanations of how mankind came to be. Yet once again it is often Hesiod who enlightens us about these early ideas of humanity’s origins.

THE FIVE RACES OF MAN

Hesiod is the first ancient author to speak of earlier races of men who lived in happier times than the present ('Works and Days' 109–201). He identifies five races altogether, four of which are named after metals decreasing in value, just as the races themselves deteriorate in happiness and peace. First of all, in the time of Kronos, the gods created a Golden Race who lived a life of blissful ease, the ‘Golden Age’ (112–20):

"They lived like gods, with carefree hearts, remote from toil and grief. Nor did wretched old age beset them, but always with vigour in their hands and feet they took their joy in feasting, far from all ills, and they died as though overcome by sleep. All good things were theirs, for the fruitful earth of its own accord put forth its plentiful harvest without stint, while they enjoyed a life of peace and ease in abundance, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods".

In time this Golden Race passed away and became beneficent spirits (daimones) who wander the earth, protecting mortals from harm.

The gods then created the Silver Race of men, inferior both in mind and body to the Race of Gold. These men took a hundred years to grow up, and then were foolish and aggressive and neglectful of the gods. By this time Zeus had replaced Kronos as lord of the universe, so he put an end to the Silver Race and created the Race of Bronze out of ash trees. Their armour, their weapons, their tools, even their houses were made of bronze, and they themselves were so dedicated to warfare and slaughter that they exterminated themselves through their relentless violence.

Zeus then created a fourth and non-metallic race, the Race of Heroes. These were the mighty mortals who lived in the ‘Heroic Age’ and fought nobly at Thebes and Troy – and who are the subjects of our Greek myths. Some were so glorious that they were rewarded with a life after death in a paradise at the far ends of the earth, called by Hesiod the Islands of the Blest (p. 111).

Fifth and finally came the Race of Iron. This is Hesiod’s world, and our own: ‘And men never rest from toil and misery by day, nor from perishing by night; and the gods lay harsh trouble upon them’ (176–8). And things are only ever going to get worse...

PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA

Another tradition credited the creation of mankind to the Titan Prometheus, son of Iapetos and Klymene (p. 34). ‘Prometheus moulded men out of earth and water,’ says Apollodorus (1.7.1); and although there is no reference to this story in our extant sources before the fourth century BC, it may well have been much older. When the traveller Pausanias visited Panopeus in Phokis, he saw two huge rocks, apparently smelling of human flesh, which were said to have been formed from the left-over clay after Prometheus had fashioned the human race (10.4.4).

What is certain, however, is that Prometheus was from early times seen as the champion and benefactor of mankind, as Hesiod once again bears witness ('Theogony' 521–616). When gods and men were once about to share a meal at Mekone (later Sikyon), it was Prometheus’ task to divide up a great ox and set out two portions of food, one for the gods and one for mortals. He produced, on the one hand, a choice selection of succulent meats unappealingly covered with the ox’s stomach, and, on the other, a pile of bones, dressed in a layer of appetizing fat. Zeus was to choose the gods’ portion, and although Hesiod defends the great god’s wisdom by saying that he was not deceived, nevertheless Zeus still chose the fat-covered bones. From that day forward, men always took the best meat from sacrifices for themselves and burned the bones for the gods.

Zeus was angry at this trick and he punished mankind by withholding from them the gift of fire. So Prometheus stole fire from heaven and carried it secretly down to earth in a hollow fennel stalk (the white pith of which burns slowly and so makes it possible to carry fire from one place to another).

Once again Zeus was full of wrath, so he decided to balance this blessing of fire by giving men a bane to plague their lives: woman, a beautiful evil (kalon kakon, 585). Before this time men had lived lives free from toil and sickness, but now the first woman would change this forever. Hesiod gives a more detailed description of her creation, and of all the troubles she caused, in his 'Works and Days' (47–105). (We should, however, bear in mind when reading her story that Hesiod had no very high opinion of women: elsewhere in the work (373–5) he says, ‘Don’t be deceived by a wheedling, sweet-talking woman, flaunting her body, she’s only after your barn. Anyone who trusts a woman is trusting a cheat.’)

This first woman’s name was Pandora (‘Allgifts’), and she is the nearest thing the Greek tradition has to the biblical Eve. She was created out of earth and water by the smith-god Hephaistos. Athene dressed and adorned her, and taught her domestic crafts, Aphrodite showered beauty and grace over her, and Hermes put in her breast a nature of cunning and deceit. Then Zeus sent his beautiful but treacherous creation to Prometheus’ brother, the gullible Titan Epimetheus, who forgot that Prometheus had warned him never to take any gift offered by Zeus.

Epimetheus, charmed by this vision of loveliness, welcomed Pandora with open arms and took her as his bride, and in so doing condemned mankind to a lifetime of suffering. For Pandora brought with her as dowry a pithos, a great jar in which were stored sorrows and diseases and hard labour. When she opened the lid of her jar (usually now referred to as ‘Pandora’s Box’), these poured out and spread over all the earth, and mortals have never since been free of them. Only hope remained in the jar, still in man’s own control, to be some kind of consolation for all the troubles that Pandora had let loose on the world.

As for Prometheus, Zeus punished him too for his gift of fire to mankind: he had him chained to a cliff in the Caucasian Mountains and he sent an eagle, offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna, to prey on him. Every day the eagle tore out Prometheus’ liver, which every night grew whole again so that his torment might continue. Long ages passed before this daily agony ended, when Zeus allowed his mightiest son, Herakles, to shoot the eagle and release the Titan (p. 208).

The chaining of Prometheus is dramatized in the tragedy Prometheus Bound, traditionally said to be by Aeschylus, which was the first (and only extant) play in a Prometheus trilogy. Here Zeus is depicted as a brutal tyrant, and Prometheus is represented as having done more for mankind than simply bring them fire: he has taught mortals many useful and civilizing skills, including architecture, agriculture, writing, medicine, the domestication of animals, the use of ships, mining for metals and divination.

Prometheus is chained to his crag by an unwilling Hephaistos, at the bidding of Kratos (‘Power’) and Bia (‘Might’), yet despite all his sufferings he regrets none of his deeds, and continues to cry heroic defiance at Zeus, fearless of his thunderbolts (1041–53):

‘Let the twisted fork of lightning fire be flung
against me: let the high air be stirred
with thunderclaps and the convulsive fury
of the winds: let earth to the roots of her foundations
shake before the blasting storm: let it confound
the waves of the sea and the paths of the heavenly stars
in a wild turmoil, and let him raise
my body high and dash it whirling down
to murky Tartaros. He cannot make me die.’

At the end of the play Zeus hurls Prometheus down to Tartaros, rock and all.

We know something of the second play, Prometheus Freed, from fragments. Herakles killed the eagle, and Prometheus was reconciled with Zeus and set free in exchange for an important secret told him by Themis: that the Nereid Thetis was destined to bear a son greater than his father. At that time Zeus was pursuing Thetis, so this knowledge saved him from having by her a son who would overthrow him, the very fate that he had inflicted on his own father, Kronos. Zeus gave up his pursuit and Thetis was later married off to Peleus, and the fruit of their union was Achilles, a son who was indeed greater than his father.

THE GREAT FLOOD

Another tradition has Prometheus as the originator of mankind in another sense, when his son, Deukalion, and Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, became the sole survivors of the Great Flood – a myth that in one form or another appears in a number of cultures across the world.

In the Greek version, Zeus decided to destroy the human race with the Flood because of mankind’s wickedness. Sometimes his decision was put down to the specific iniquity of the family of Lykaon, one of the earliest kings of Arcadia. Some said that Lykaon tried to trick Zeus by setting before him the cooked flesh of a human child, and Zeus responded by blasting his family with thunderbolts and by transforming Lykaon himself into a wolf (lykos), so his story becomes one version of the were wolf tradition. Others said that it was Lykaon’s sons who were wicked, and who set before Zeus the flesh of a murdered child, and it was this which inspired Zeus to send the Great Flood.

Prometheus knew of Zeus’s intention, so he warned Deukalion, telling him to build a large chest and stock it with food. Endless rain brought the Flood, and Deukalion and Pyrrha floated in their chest for nine days and nine nights until at last the rain ceased and the chest came ashore on Mount Parnassos, above Delphi. They disembarked and made a thank-offering to Zeus for their preservation. Now, as the only mortals left alive, it was their task to repopulate an empty world, so on Zeus’s instructions, brought to them by Hermes, they picked up stones from the earth and threw them over their shoulders. Deukalion’s stones were transformed into men and Pyrrha’s into women. The human race had begun afresh.

Deukalion and Pyrrha had several children of their own, most notably Hellen. He gave his name to the whole Greek race, for they called themselves Hellenes and their country Hellas. Hellen in turn was the father of three sons, Aiolos, Doros and Xouthos, from whom sprang the four main branches of the Greek people: Aiolos was the ancestor of the Aiolians, Doros of the Dorians, and the two sons of Xouthus, Ion and Achaios, of the Ionians and Achaians. It was traditionally said that Hellen divided the Greek lands among his three sons, and that Aiolos succeeded his father where he ruled in Thessaly, while Doros and Xouthos moved away and settled in different areas of Greece.

Of these descendants of Deukalion, it was Aiolos whose branch of the family was the most mythologically significant, for from him were descended many great heroes and heroines of legend. He himself had seven sons (Salmoneus, Kretheus, Athamas, Sisyphos, Deion, Magnes and Perieres) and five daughters (Kanake, Alkyone, Peisidike, Kalyke and Perimede).

Let us begin by tracing the story of a granddaughter of Aiolos, Tyro. She was the daughter of Salmoneus and (as so often happened with early – and beautiful – women) she lay with a god and bore great sons. Her grandson was Jason, the hero who led one of the most famous expeditions of the ancient world: the quest for the Golden Fleece.

TYRO AND HER SONS

Salmoneus left his father Aiolos’s house in Thessaly and founded a city in Elis called Salmone. He was a proud and arrogant man who thought himself the equal of Zeus. He ordered his people to make sacrifices to him and not to the god, and he even imitated Zeus’s thunder and lightning by dragging dried hides and bronze pots behind his chariot and by flinging lighted torches into the sky. He was not a popular ruler, for his people objected to having burning torches hurled among them by their king. But worse was to come, for Zeus retaliated by striking Salmoneus and his city with a genuine thunderbolt, and king and people were utterly destroyed.

Salmoneus’s daughter Tyro, however, had opposed her father’s presumptuous attempts to claim divine honours, so Zeus spared her and took her to her uncle, Kretheus, who was king of the Thessalian city of Iolkos. Kretheus welcomed her with pleasure and brought her up. Homer tells of her divine encounter in the Odyssey, where Tyro is one of the great heroines of legend whose shade Odysseus meets in Hades (11.238–55):

"She fell in love with the river, divine Enipeus,
most beautiful of rivers that flow upon the earth,
and she would haunt Enipeus’ lovely waters.
So the god who holds the earth, the Earth-shaker,
took his likeness, and lay with her at the mouth
of the swirling river, and a great dark wave,
a mountain of water, curved up and around them
and hid the god and the mortal women. He loosed
her virgin belt and drifted sleep upon her,
then when he had ended his act of love, the god
took her hand in his and said to her:
‘Be happy, lady, in this love of ours, and when
the year goes by you will bear splendid sons,
for love with a god is never without issue.
Take care of them and raise them. Now go home
and hold your peace. Tell nobody my name.
But I tell you, I am Poseidon, the Earth-shaker.’
He spoke, and plunged back into the swelling sea.
And she conceived, and bore Pelias and Neleus".

Homer tells us no more of Tyro’s story, so we turn to Apollodorus (1.9.7–11) for the continuation. Despite Poseidon’s injunction, Tyro did not bring up her twin sons: she bore them in secret and left them out in the countryside to die, then went back to Kretheus’ house. The babies were found and brought up by a horse-breeder. He gave them their names: Pelias, because of the livid (pelios) mark made on the infant’s face by a kick from a horse, and Neleus.

When they grew up they found their mother again, and discovered that for many years she had been treated with great cruelty by her foster-mother, Sidero. They went to punish Sidero, but she ran away into a sanctuary of Hera, and Pelias killed her on the very altar of the goddess (one of many acts of disrespect that would earn him Hera’s undying hatred). This recognition and revenge most likely formed the plot of one at least of Sophocles’ two lost tragedies named Tyro, where according to Aristotle in the Poetics (16) the recognition of mother and sons occurred by means of the box in which the infants had been abandoned.

Later the two brothers quarrelled and Pelias drove Neleus out of Iolkos. He took refuge with Aphareus, the king of Messenia, who gave him many of his coastal lands. Neleus settled in Pylos and made it one of the most flourishing cities in the Greek world.

Tyro’s sad story ends happily, for she married Kretheus and had by him three more sons, Aison, Pheres and Amythaon. Aison would become the father of Jason.

By Jenny March in "The Penguin Book of Classical Myths", Penguin Books, UK, 2009, excepts chapter 3. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.