Chapter 5 Lecture Two of Two The Five Races of Men The Universal Flood Themes in Human Origins...

Chapter 5Lecture Two of Two

The Five Races of MenThe Universal Flood

Themes in Human Origins

©2012 Pearson Education Inc.

The Five Races

• Not compatible with the Pandora stories• Different source• The descent into the wretched, modern age


The Five Races

Golden Age : Cronus ; lived like gods / died as passing into a dream / now guardian angels

Silver Age : Dumber / live at home a hundred years / violence / killed for being irreverent / earth spirits

Bronze Age : Bronze-equipped warriors from ash trees / killed each other off

Heroic Age : Legendary heroes of Homer / better than before, temporary interruption of decline

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


Universal Flood

• Mesopotamia– Sumerians – 4000–2400– Akkadians – Semites – 2300– Babylonians – Hammurabi 1750

• “Terah was a man of Ur”


THE UNIVERSAL FLOODZiusudra, Athrahsis, and Noah


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



• Tells him to build a boat• Ziusudra survives the seven-day flood and

sacrifices to Utu (the sun god) after it.



• The Babylonian variation of the Sumerian flood

• Humankind proves too fruitful and too noisy• Various plagues and other ideas fail to check their

growth, so Enlil (storm god) decides to send a flood



• 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



• 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



• 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.


THE UNIVERSAL FLOODLycaon, Deucalion, and Pyrrha


Lycaon, Deucalion, and Pyrrha

• 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. BC

• Source is the Roman Ovid (1c. BC)



• 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).



• Feed him human flesh and see whether he 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



• Only Deucalion (son of Prometheus) and Pyrrha survive on a raft

• 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



• 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)• Most important of the children were eponymous

heroes of the Greeks


THEMES IN STORIES OF HUMAN ORIGINS


Themes

• No authoritative Greek account.• Men emerge like plants or are the product of

a craftsman god.• There are delays and restarts: it doesn't

happen all at once.• Gods and human have a common origin, but

something happens to cause a break.


Themes

• There is punishment for the offense.• The Greek accounts explain where Greeks

come from; it doesn't explain where people of other races come from.


End


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