Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

All, save Deucalion and Pyrrha who – thanks to the perspicacity of Prometheus – survived the nine days of high water aboard their wooden chest, which floated safely on the flood. Like good survivalists they had kept their chest well provisioned with food, drink and a few useful tools and artefacts, so that when the deluge finally receded and their vessel was able to settle on Mount Parnassus they could survive in the post-diluvian mud and slime.fn6

When the world had dried enough for Pyrrha and Deucalion (who is said to have been eighty-two years old at this time) to travel safely down the mountainside, they made their way to Delphi, which lies in the valley below Parnassus. There they consulted the oracle of Themis, the prophetic Titaness whose special quality was an understanding of the right thing to do.

‘O Themis, Mother of Justice, Peace and Order, instruct us, we beseech you,’ they cried. ‘We are alone in the world now and too advanced in years to fill this empty world with offspring.’

‘Children of Prometheus and Epimetheus,’ the oracle intoned. ‘Hear my voice and do as I command. Cover your head and throw the bones of your mother over your shoulder.’

Not a word more could the perplexed couple induce the oracle to utter.

‘My mother was Pandora,’ said Pyrrha, sitting on the ground. ‘And I must presume she is drowned. Where could I find her bones?’

‘My mother is Clymene,’ said Deucalion. ‘Or, if you believe variant sources, she is the Oceanid Hesione. In either case they are both immortals and therefore alive and surely unwilling to give up their bones.’

‘We must think,’ said Pyrrha. ‘The bones of our mother. Can that have another meaning? Our mother’s bones. Maternal bones … Think, Deucalion, think!’

Deucalion covered his head with a folded cloth, sat down next to his wife, whose head was already covered, and pondered the problem with creased brow. Oracles. They always paltered and prevaricated. Moodily he picked up a rock and sent it rolling down the hillside. Pyrrha grabbed his arm.

‘Our mother!’

Deucalion stared at her. She had started slapping the ground with the palms of her hands. ‘Gaia! Gaia is mother of us all,’ she cried. ‘Our Mother Earth! These are the bones of our mother, look …’ She started to gather up rocks from the ground. ‘Come on!’

Deucalion got to his feet and scrabbled around, collecting rocks and stones. They made their way across the fields below Delphi, casting them over their shoulders as instructed, but not daring to look back until they had covered many stadia.

When they turned the sight that greeted them filled their hearts with joy.

From out of the ground where Pyrrha’s stones had landed sprang girls and women, hundreds of them, smiling and healthy and fully formed. From the earth where Deucalion’s stones had fallen boys and men grew up.

So it was that the old Pelasgians drowned in the Great Deluge, and the Mediterranean world was repopulated by a new race descended through Deucalion and Pyrrha from Prometheus, Epimetheus, Pandora and – most importantly of course – from Gaia.fn7

And that is who we are, a compound of foresight and impulse, of all gifts and of the earth.

Death

Our human race, now satisfactorily comprised equally of males and females, bred and spread about the world building cities and establishing nation states. Ships and chariots, cottages and castles, culture and commerce, merchants and markets, farming and finance, weapons and wheat. In short, civilization began. It was an age of kings, queens, princes and princesses, of hunters, warriors, shepherds, potters and poets. An age of empires, slaves, warfare, trade and treaties. An age of votive offerings, sacrifices and worship. Towns and villages chose their favourite gods and goddesses to be guardian deities, patrons and protectors. The immortals themselves were not shy to come down in their own forms, or in the forms of humans and animals, to have their way with such humans as appealed to them or to punish those that aggravated them and reward those that most fawned on them. The gods never tired of flattery.

Perhaps most importantly the plague of sorrows that had flown from Pandora’s jar ensured that from this point onwards humanity would have to face the inevitability of death in all its forms. Sudden death, slow lingering death, death by violence, death by disease, death by accident, death by murder and death by divine decree.