Download Chapter Five, Lecture Two

Chapter Five, Lecture Two
Origin of Mortals
The Five Races and Universal
Flood
The Five Races
• Not compatible with the Pandora stories
• Different source
• The descent into the wretched, modern
age
A Work in Progress: The Races of Man (the
stages through which gods created mortals)
A. The Golden Race
1. Man created during the age of Cronus were
fashioned from gold an lived a life full of laughter,
dancing and other pleasures
2. Lived free from pain, cares, miseries, sorrows,
fears and death. Did not grow old or age.
3. Beautiful world filled with everything they wanted
4. Lived in peace, free from aggression, no
weapons, no threat of retribution, laws or judges
5. They were mortal and did die but could not
perpetuate the race because there were NO
WOMEN
6. When their race died out, they became the holy
spirits of the earth
7. Later ages protected mortals from injustice and
bestowed wealth upon men
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
- Robert Frost
B. The Silver Race
1. During the age of Zeus, a second race of mortals was
fashioned
2. By this time seasons were in place, so the earth was
not in perpetual beauty, and men had to cultivate
fields, build houses, etc
3. Still no women, the men remained infantile,
spending 100 years maturing as babies
4. Adulthood was brief because these mortals were
move by greed and lust for power and committed
reckless acts of violence against one another
5. The gods of Olympus were offended because no
sacrifices were made to honor them
6. Zeus destroyed this race, and their spirits became the
spirits of the Underworld
C. The Bronze Race
1. These mortals were fashioned from ash trees
2. Mighty and violent race formed by Zeus who were
much more aggressive than even those in the Silver
Age
3. All weapons, tools, and even homes were forged in
bronze
4. Fighting brother against brother, they killed
themselves
5. Nameless, they sank down to the icy palace of
Hades, lord of the Underworld
D. The Race of Heroes
1. This race was also created by Zeus.
2. However, they were braver and more just by far
3. They were a godlike race.
4. They are called half-gods.
5. For most of the heroes, death was the end.
6. But for some, Zeus created a new way of living at the
very end of the earth.
7. They remained in Isle of the Blessed.
8. Cronus rules as their king.
9. Oedipus, Odysseus, and Achilles are included in this race.
Odysseus and Achilles
E. The Iron Race
1. The human race came here and was the basest race of
all
2. Gave evil free reign over the earth
3. Modesty gave way to shamelessness; truth to deceit;
righteousness to violence and vice
4. Men were abetted by the creation of women to scheme,
cheat or kill to fulfill their greed
5. Life was full of constant work, day and night with no rest
from pain or labor
6. Property was cordoned off
7. Men went to war against each other; gold their aim, iron
their weapon
Women abetting men
World War II
8. Hosts attacked their guests, guests plundered their hosts;
no civility was practiced
9. Brother killed brother; sons pushed their fathers towards
death
10. Poets agreed that this is the age in which we were born
11. This race banished justice, loyalty and piety from the
world
The Five Races
Golden Age :
Cronus ; lived like gods / died as passing
into a dream / now guardian angels
Bronze Age :
Dumber / live at home a hundred years /
violence / killed for being irreverent / earth
spirits
Bronze-equipped warriors from ash trees /
killed each other off
Heroic Age :
Legendary heroes of Homer / better than
before, temporary interruption of decline
Silver Age :
Iron Age :
Current age / justice gradually will be
completely abandoned
The Five Races
• Hesiod’s world “blown apart” by the
alphabet
• Later, the Age of Cronus was seen as a
Golden Age because it fit chronologically
with the Golden Race of the five races.
The Universal Flood
Ziusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah
• The earliest flood (Sumerian)
• Thousands of years earlier than the
biblical texts
• Mankind is progressing, and the gods
decide to exterminate them
• We’re not told why
• Enki (Prometheus) decides to save one:
Ziusudra
Ziusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah
• Tells him to build a boat
• Ziusudra survives the seven-day flood and
sacrifices to Utu (the sun god) after it.
Ziusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah
• The Babylonian variation of the Sumerian
flood
• Humankind proves too fruitful and too noisy,
god can’t sleep
• Various plagues, drought, and famine fail to
check their growth, so Enlil (storm god)
decides to send a flood
Ziusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah
• But Ea (Enki) warns one “very wise man,”
Atrahasis ( = Ziusudra)
• Instructs him to build a boat and save his
family and all kinds of animals
Ziusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah
• A flood of seven days and nights kills off
humanity
• But the gods, deprived of their smoke,
begin to starve
• They gather around Atrahasis’s sacrifice
and breathe the pleasant smoke — even
Enlil (who demanded the flood) is pleased
Ziusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah
• To check population, measures are taken
to increase infant mortality and decrease
the fertility rate of women:
– some would be barren
– ritual chastity
– demons to kill some of the newborn.
Etiological explanation of still births and barren
women.
Noah
• Yahweh destroys humans because of their
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wickedness and moral failure
Only Noah, his family, and two of each animal
survive.
Yahweh will never again destroy the human race
with water, but they must not kill another man
or drink an animal’s blood
Etiological no blood, feelings on homicide, and
the special relationship between Yahweh and the
Hebrews
Deucalion and Pyrrha
Greek Flood Story
• Not in Hesiod
• Perhaps he didn’t know about it — i.e., the
story hadn’t made its way into the Greek
world yet in 8th/7th c. BCE
• Source is the Roman Ovid (1c. BCE)
Greek Flood Story
• Zeus investigates the alleged wickedness
of humankind
• In disguise, comes to the house of Lycaon
(“wolf”), king of Arcadia
• Lycaon planned to test whether the visitor
was divine (as some of his people
thought).
Greek Flood Story
• Feed him human flesh and see whether he
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notices
Zeus (of course) knows, and turns Lycaon into a
wolf (“lycanthropy”)
First he wants to destroy the world with fire
Changes his mind to a flood because he is afraid
of setting the entire world on fire and destroying
it. He only wants to destroy humans.
Greek Flood Story
• Only Deucalion (son of Prometheus) and
Pyrrha survive on a raft (in a wooden
chest)
• They land on Mt. Parnassus (Delphi), near
a small temple to Themis
• Zeus relents and Poseidon orders the rains
to stop and the flood to recede
Greek Flood Story
• How to repopulate the earth?
• “Toss the bones of your mighty mother over
your shoulders.”
• Deucalion understands the riddle
• Stones are the bones of the “mother” (mother
earth)
• Stone race is tough and enduring
Deucalion ahd Pyrrha repeople the
world with stones
Plato’s Aristophanes story
• Humans were hermaphrodites-having both parts
• round with a front and back that had genitals
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and faces
attacked the gods and the gods were afraid of
being defeated.
Zeus sliced each one in half (Splitapart)
Apollo fixed and made male and female
Spend life looking for your other half
Themes
• Humans came from earth, making Earth mother
• Glorify local male nobility who claimed
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succession
Human world did not arise all at once
Some fall broke intimacy between humans and
gods.
Male dominance-women responsible for all
wickedness/sin in world
marriage
End