Gods and Heroes; or, The Kingdom of Jupiter

by R. E. Francillon

I have something to say about this story, which you may not quite understand now, but which you will, some day, when you read it again. Think how Man is made of dead common clay, but with one spark of Heavenly Fire straight from the sky. Think how Woman is made, with less clay, but with more of the Heavenly Fire. Think of that “Afterthought,” which saved Hope when there was nothing else to be saved, and think of the Pain sent to gnaw the heart of Prometheus, who used all his cleverness to make himself great in wrong-doing.

You will be glad to hear that, a long time afterwards, the greatest and best man in all Mythology came and killed the vulture, and set Prometheus free. You will read all about it in time. But I want you to know and remember the man’s name. It was Hercules.

PART III.—THE GREAT FLOOD; OR, THE STORY OF DEUCALION.

PROMETHEUS turned out to be quite right in saying that men would give more trouble to Jupiter than the Titans or the Giants, or anything that had ever been made. As time went on, men became more and more wicked every day.

Now there lived in Thessaly, on the banks of a river, a man and his wife, named Deucalion and Pyrrha. I think they must have been good people, and not like all the other men and women in the world. One day, Deucalion noticed that the water in the river was rising very high. He did not think much of it at the time, but the next day it was higher, and the next higher still. At last the river burst its banks, and spread over the country, sweeping away houses and drowning many people.

Deucalion and Pyrrha escaped out of their own house just in time, and went to the top of a mountain. But, to their terror, the waters still kept on spreading and rising, until all the plain of Thessaly looked like a sea, and the tops of the hills like islands.

“The water will cover the hills soon,” said Deucalion, “and then the mountains. What shall we do?”

Pyrrha thought for a moment, and then said:—

“I have heard that there is a very wise man on the top of Mount Caucasus who knows everything. Let us go to him, and perhaps he will tell us what to do and what all this water means.”

So they went down the other side, and went on and on till they reached the great Caucasian mountains, which are the highest in all Europe, and are always covered with snow. They climbed up to the highest peak, and there they saw a man, chained to the ice, with a vulture tearing and gnawing him. It was Prometheus, who had made the first man.