Age of Fable or Beauties of Mythology

by Thomas Bulfinch

  to know what this jar contained; and one day she slipped off the cover and looked in.

  Forthwith there escaped a multitude of plagues for hapless man, - such as gout,

  rheumatism, and colic for his body, and envy, spite, and revenge for his mind, - and

  scattered themselves far and wide. Pandora hastened to replace the lid; but, alas! the

  whole contents of the jar had escaped, one thing only excepted, which lay at the

  bottom, and that was hope. So we see at this day, whatever evils are abroad, hope

  never entirely leaves us; and while we have that, no amount of other ills can make us

  completely wretched.

  Another story is, that Pandora was sent in good faith, by Jupiter, to bless man;

  that she was furnished with a box, containing her marriage presents, into which every

  god had put some blessing. She opened the box incautiously, and the blessings all

  escaped, hope only excepted. This story seems more probable than the former; for

  how could hope, so precious a jewel as it is, have been kept in a jar full of all manner

  of evils, as in the former statement?

  The world being thus furnished with inhabitants, the first age was an age of

  innocence and happiness, called the Golden Age. Truth and right prevailed, though

  not enforced by law, nor was there any magistrate to threaten or punish. The forest

  had not yet been robbed of its trees to furnish timbers for vessels, nor had men built

  fortifications round their towns. There were no such things as swords, spears, or

  helmets. The earth brought forth all things necessary for man, without his labor in

  ploughing or sowing. Perpetual spring reigned, flowers sprang up without seed, the

  rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey distilled from the oaks.

  Then succeeded the Silver Age, inferior to the golden, but better than that of

  brass. Jupiter shortened the spring, and divided the year into seasons. Then, first,

  men had to endure the extremes of heat and cold, and houses became necessary.

  Caves were the first dwellings, and leafy coverts of the woods, and huts woven of

  twigs. Crops would no longer grow without planting. The farmer was obliged to sow

  the seed, and the toiling ox to draw the plough.

  Next came the Brazen Age, more savage of temper and readier to the strife of

  arms, yet not altogether wicked. The hardest and worst was the Iron Age. Crime burst

  in like a flood; modesty, truth, and honor fled. In their places came fraud and cunning,

  violence, and the wicked love of gain. Then seamen spread sails to the wind, and the

  trees were torn from the mountains to serve for keels to ships, and vex the face of

  ocean. The earth, which till now had been cultivated in common, began to be divided

  off into possessions. Men were not satisfied with what the surface produced, but must

  dig into its bowels, and draw forth from thence the ores of metals. Mischievous iron,

  and more mischievous gold, were produced. War sprang up, using both as weapons;

  the guest was not safe in his friend's house; and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law,

  brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, could not trust one another. Sons wished

  their fathers dead, that they might come to the inheritance; family love lay prostrate.

  The earth was wet with slaughter, and the gods abandoned it, one by one, till Astraea

  ^* alone was left, and finally she also took her departure.

  [Footnote *: The goddess of innocence and purity. After leaving earth, she was

  placed among the stars, where she became the constellation Virgo - the Virgin.

  Themis (Justice) was the mother of Astraea. She is represented as holding aloft a pair

  of scales, in which she weighs the claims of opposing parties.

  It was a favorite idea of the old poets, that these goddesses would one day

  return, and bring back the Golden Age. Even in a Christian Hymn, the Messiah of

  Pope, this idea occurs.

  "All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail,

  Returning Justice lift aloft her scale,

  Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend,

  And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend."

  See, also, Milton's Hymn to the Nativity, stanzas xiv. and xv]

  Jupiter, seeing this state of things, burned with anger. He summoned the gods to

  council. They obeyed the call, and took the road to the palace of heaven. The road,

  which any one may see in a clear night, stretches across the face of the sky, and is

  called the Milky Way. Along the road stand the palaces of the illustrious gods; the

  common people of the skies live apart, on either side. Jupiter addressed the assembly.

  He set forth the frightful condition of things on the earth, and closed by announcing his

  intention to destroy the whole of its inhabitants, and provide a new race, unlike the first,

  who would be more worthy of life, and much better worshippers of the gods. So saying

  he took a thunderbolt, and was about to launch it at the world, and destroy it by burning;

  but recollecting the danger that such a conflagration might set heaven itself on fire, he

  changed his plan, and resolved to drown it. The north wind, which scatters the clouds,

  was chained up; the south was sent out, and soon covered all the face of heaven with a

  cloak of pitchy darkness. The clouds, driven together, resound with a crash; torrents of

  rain fall; the crops are laid low; the year's labor of the husbandman perishes in an hour.

  Jupiter, not satisfied with his own waters, calls on his brother Neptune to aid him with

  his. He lets loose the rivers, and pours them over the land. At the same time, he

  heaves the land with an earthquake, and brings in the reflux of the ocean over the

  shores. Flocks, herds, men, and houses are swept away and temples, with their sacred

  enclosures, profaned. If any edifice remained standing, it was overwhelmed, and its

  turrets lay hid beneath the waves. Now all was sea, sea without shore. Here and there

  an individual remained on a projecting hill-top, and a few, in boats, pulled the oar where

  they had lately driven the plough. The fishes swim among the tree-tops; the anchor is let

  down into a garden. Where the graceful lambs played but now unwieldy sea calves

  gambol. The wolf swims among the sheep, the yellow lions and tigers struggle in the

  water. The strength of the wild boar serves him not, nor his swiftness the stag. The

  birds fall with weary wing into the water, having found no land for a resting-place. Those

  living beings whom the water spared fell a prey to hunger.

  Parnassus alone, of all the mountains, overtopped the waves; and there

  Deucalion, and his wife Pyrrha, of the race of Prometheus, found refuge - he a just man,

  and she a faithful worshipper of the gods. Jupiter, when he saw none left alive but this

  pair, and remembered their harmless lives and pious demeanor, ordered the north winds

  to drive away the clouds, and disclose the skies to earth, and earth to the skies.

  Neptune also directed Triton to blow on his shell, and sound a retreat to the waters. The

  waters obeyed, and the sea returned to its shores, and the rivers to their channels.

  Then Deucalion thus addressed Pyrrha: "O wife, only surviving woman, joined to me first

  by the ties of kindred and marriage, and now by a common danger, would that we

  possessed the power of our ancestor Prometheus, and could renew the race as he at

  first made it! But as we can
not, let us seek yonder temple, and inquire of the gods what

  remains for us to do." They entered the temple, deformed as it was with slime, and

  approached the altar, where no fire burned. There they fell prostrate on the earth, and

  prayed the goddess to inform them how they might retrieve their miserable affairs. The

  oracle answered, "Depart from the temple with head veiled and garments unbound, and

  cast behind you the bones of your mother." They heard the words with astonishment.

  Pyrrha first broke silence: "We cannot obey; we dare not profane the remains of our

  parents." They sought the thickest shades of the wood, and revolved the oracle in their

  minds. At length Deucalion spoke: "Either my sagacity deceives me, or the command is

  one we may obey without impiety. The earth is the great parent of all; the stones are her

  bones; these we may cast behind us; and I think this is what the oracle means. At least,

  it will do no harm to try." They veiled their faces, unbound their garments, and picked up

  stones, and cast them behind them. The stones (wonderful to relate) began to grow

  soft, and assume shape. By degrees, they put on a rude resemblance to the human

  form, like a block half finished in the hands of the sculptor. The moisture and slime that

  were about them became flesh; the stony part became bones; the veins remained veins,

  retaining their name, only changing their use. Those thrown by the hand of the man

  became men, and those by the woman became women. It was a hard race, and well

  adapted to labor, as we find ourselves to be at this day, giving plain indications of our

  origin.

  The comparison of Eve to Pandora is too obvious to have escaped Milton, who

  introduces it in Book IV. of Paradise Lost: -

  "More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods

  Endowed with all their gifts, and O, too like

  In sad event, when to the unwiser son

  Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she insnared

  Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged

  On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire."

  Prometheus and Epimetheus were sons of Iapetus, which Milton changes to

  Japhet.

  Prometheus has been a favorite subject with the poets. He is represented as the

  friend of mankind, who interposed in their behalf when Jove was incensed against them,

  and who taught them civilization and the arts. But as, in so doing, he transgressed the

  will of Jupiter, he drew down on himself the anger of the ruler of gods and men. Jupiter

  had him chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where a vulture preyed on his liver,

  which was renewed as fast as devoured. This state of torment might have been brought

  to an end at any time by Prometheus, if he had been willing to submit to his oppressor;

  for he possessed a secret which involved the stability of Jove's throne, and if he would

  have revealed it, he might have been at once taken into favor. But that he disdained to

  do. He has therefore become the symbol of magnanimous endurance of unmerited

  suffering, and strength of will resisting oppression.

  Byron and Shelley have both treated this theme. The following are Byron's lines:

  -

  "Titan! to whose immortal eyes

  The sufferings of mortality,

  Seen in their sad reality,

  Were not as things that gods despise,

  What was thy pity's recompense?

  A silent suffering, and intense;

  The rock, the vulture, and the chain;

  All that the proud can feel of pain;

  The agony they do not show,

  The suffocating sense of woe.

  "Thy godlike crime was to be kind;

  To render with thy precepts less

  The sum of human wretchedness,

  And strengthen man with his own mind.

  And, baffled as thou wert from high.

  Still, in thy patient energy

  In the endurance and repulse

  Of thine impenetrable spirit,

  Which earth and heaven could not convulse,

  A mighty lesson we inherit."

  Byron also employs the same allusion, in his ode to Napoleon Bonaparte: -

  "Or, like the thief of fire from heaven,

  Wilt thou withstand the shock?

  And share with him - the unforgiven -

  His vulture and his rock?"

  Chapter III: Apollo, Daphne, Pyramus, Thisbecephalus, Procris

  The slime with which the earth was covered by the waters of the flood produced

  an excessive fertility, which called forth every variety of production, both bad and good.

  Among the rest, Python, an enormous serpent, crept forth, the terror of the people, and

  lurked in the caves of Mount Parnassus. Apollo slew him with his arrows - weapons

  which he had not before used against any but feeble animals, hares, wild goats, and

  such game. In commemoration of this illustrious conquest he instituted the Pythian

  games, in which the victor in feats of strength, swiftness of foot, or in the chariot race,

  was crowned with a wreath of beech leaves; for the laurel was not yet adopted by

  Apollo as his own tree.

  The famous statue of Apollo called the Belvedere represents the god after this

  victory over the serpent Python. To this Byron alludes in his Childe Harold, iv. 161: -

  "The lord of the unerring bow,

  The god of life, and poetry, and light,

  The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow

  All radiant from his triumph in the fight.

  The shaft has just been shot; the arrow bright

  With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye

  And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might,

  And majesty flash their full lightnings by,

  Developing in that one glance the Deity."

  Apollo And Daphne.

  Daphne was Apollo's first love. It was not brought about by accident, but by the

  malice of Cupid. Apollo saw the boy playing with his bow and arrows; and being himself

  elated with his recent victory over Python, he said to him, "What have you to do with

  warlike weapons, saucy boy? Leave them for my hands worthy of them. Behold the

  conquest I have won by means of them over the vast serpent who stretched his

  poisonous body over acres of the plain! Be content with your torch, child, and kindle up

  your flames, as you call them, where you will, but presume not to meddle with my

  weapons."

  Venus's boy heard these words, and rejoined, "Your arrows may strike all things

  else, Apollo, but mine shall strike you." So saying, he took his stand on a rock of

  Parnassus, and drew from his quiver two arrows of different workmanship, one to excite

  love, the other to repel it. The former was of gold and sharp pointed, the latter blunt and

  tipped with lead. With the leaden shaft he struck the nymph Daphne, the daughter of the

  river god Peneus, and with the golden one Apollo, through the heart. Forthwith the god

  was seized with love for the maiden, and she abhorred the thought of loving. Her delight

  was in woodland sports and in the spoils of the chase. Many lovers sought her, but she

  spurned them all, ranging the woods, and taking no thought of Cupid nor of Hymen. Her

  father often said to her, "Daughter, you owe me a son-in-law; you owe me

  grandchildren." She, hating the thought of marriage as a crime, with her beautiful face

  tinged all over with blushes, threw her arms around her father's neck, and said, "Dearest

  father, grant me this favor, that I may
always remain unmarried, like Diana." He

  consented, but at the same time said, "Your own face will forbid it."

  Apollo loved her, and longed to obtain her; and he who gives oracles to all the

  world was not wise enough to look into his own fortunes. He saw her hair flung loose

  over her shoulders, and said, "IF so charming in disorder, what would it be if arranged?"

  He saw her eyes bright as stars; he saw her lips, and was not satisfied with only seeing

  them. He admired her hands and arms, naked to the shoulder, and whatever was

  hidden from view he imagined more beautiful still. He followed her; she fled, swifter than

  the wind, and delayed not a moment at his entreaties. "Stay," said he, "daughter of

  Peneus; I am not a foe. Do not fly me as a lamb flies the wolf, or a dove the hawk. It is

  for love I pursue you. You make me miserable, for fear you should fall and hurt yourself

  on these stones, and I should be the cause. Pray run slower and I will follow slower. I

  am no clown, no rude peasant. Jupiter is my father, and I am lord of Delphos and

  Tenedos, and know all things, present and future. I am the god of song and the lyre. My

  arrows fly true to the mark; but alas! an arrow more fatal than mine has pierced my

  heart! I am the god of medicine, and know the virtues of all healing plants. Alas! I suffer

  a malady that no balm can cure!"

  The nymph continued her flight, and left his plea half uttered. And even as she

  fled she charmed him. The wind blew her garments, and her unbound hair streamed

  loose behind her. The god grew impatient to find his wooings thrown away, and, sped

  by Cupid, gained upon her in the race. It was like a hound pursuing a hare, with open

  jaws ready to seize, while the feebler animal darts forward, slipping from the very grasp.

  So flew the god and the virgin - he on the wings of love, and she on those of fear. The

  pursuer is the more rapid, however, and gains upon her, and his panting breath blows

  upon her hair. Her strength begins to fail, and, ready to sink, she calls upon her father,