Deukalion and Pyrrha
It is said that Prometheus
took the
ash of the Titans and of Zagreus and created the
first human being. This myth explains the fact that the humans have good and bad habits:
the bad ones come from the Titans and the good ones from Zagreus.
However, the human race of Prometheus was not the first human race
that existed.
The first humans created by the gods were the golden
generation. They lived during the time of
Kronus
and didn't know any pain, worries or poverty.
They lived in harmony with their nature till one day they slept in and became small gods.
After, the gods formed the silver
generation. It was totally different from the first one, not just from
their figure, but also from their behavior. They
grew 100 years and as soon that they got adult
they left their homes and died soon. Stupidity and unbridled
desire were their undoing.
Zeus, who took on the
ruler ship, created a third human
generation out of ore. This time the descendants were really cruel and
thought only about war and fights. They ended up killing each
other quite fast and didn't survive that long.
So Zeus
formed a fourth one. It was noble and fair and it was called the Heroes
generation. This were the heroes of the
prehistory that were seen later as half gods, like Heracles and Achilles.
But also them didn't survived that long: they died either in the
battle in front of the seven doors of Thebes, in the battle of Troy
or in other adventures. The last human generation is called the iron one. These
people were worked hard but had a lot of troubles and at the end they
got just illnesses and death.
As Zeus listened this he went down
to the earth in a human body. Then he saw that the people were living and acting
even worse as what he thought, and decided to put an end to it.
With the help of his brother Poseidon, Zeus started an unbelievable
rain. Poseidon destroyed then all dikes with his trident, letting the
rivers go their way freely. The humans tried to escape this catastrophe
but just two persons managed to survive in a small boat: Deukalion, the son
of Prometheus, and Pyrrha,
his wife. They both drifted alone
in a small boat on a flood that buried the earth. Here we can see once
more the different similarities between many fairy tales and religious
myhts. The myth of Deukalion and Pyrra is the Greek version
of Noah's Ark.
As Zeus saw these two innocent
creatures drifting on the sea, he showed understanding and stopped the flood.
At that point they saw themselves helpless and unable to continue, alone
as they were in the whole world. So
they asked the goddess Themis what should they
do.
Themis
advised them that they should cover their heads and throw the bones
of their mother behind them...
an advice after all, but they didn't understand
at all what she wanted to say with that. After a while of
hard thinking they
understood the meaning and followed the advice: they took some stones -which are the bones of their mother earth-
and threw them over their shoulders. Then something incredible happened,
and the stones
lost their hardness and transformed into humans.
Out of the stones Deukalion threw behind him appeared
men,
and women out of Pyrrha's stones.
.
The Beginning / Gods of the Olympus / Smaller Gods
