CHAP. X.

OF THE FAMILY OF IAPETUS AND THE CREATION OF MAN.

Atlas-a great Astronomer-sustains the Heavens upon his Shoulders.-The Pleiades his Daughters.--Calypso. The Hesperides--their Garden.--Prometheus.-His affront to Jupiter.-His Man of Clay.He steals Fire from Heaven.-Vulcan makes a Woman, Pandora.-She is rejected by Prometheus.— Prometheus chained to Mount Caucasus.-Immortality given to Man, miscarries, because it is confided to an Ass.

THERE is a longer history annexed to the family of Iapetus, one of the brothers of Saturn, commonly called the Titans, than to that of any other branch of this race, except the progeny of Saturn himselfi.

Iapetus, who like Saturn married one of his sisters, by name Clymene, had by her four sons, Atlas, Mencetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus.

Atlas, for the part which he took in the war of the Titans against Jupiter, was condemned perpetually to support the weight of the heavens on his shoulders: this fabulous relation has been explained to mean, that he was a great astronomer, perhaps the first inventor of astronomy: in this explanation then we have an example of what was spoken of in the beginning, that the Gods worshipped by the ancients had once been

i Hes. The. 507 et seqq.; where may be found the whole account of this family, and of the Giants.

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men, and that they were deified after their deaths for their merits and services to mankind.

Atlas had one son, called Hesperus, and seven daughters, the Atlantides, by name Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope, Merope, Halcyone, and Celano: the eldest of these was the mother of Mercury: the children of Atlas imparted their names to several of the heavenly bodies: Hesperus is the evening star, and the seven daughters of Atlas gave names to the seven stars, commonly called the Pleiades.

Mythologists ascribe to Atlas another daughter named Calypso: she is famous for having detained Ulysses, king of Ithaca, on his return from the siege of Troy, seven years in the island of Ogygia her residence, by a sort of force: Calypso offered Ulysses,,if he would always remain with her, that, like a God, he should never die: but the love which Ulysses bore to his wife and his country was so great, as to determine him to refuse the splendid bribe.

Hesperus, the son of Atlas, had three daugh. ters, called the Hesperides: their names were Egle, Arethusa, and Hesperithusa: Juno committed to their care the precious trees which bore the apples that she had presented to her husband as a marriage-gift: the apples were of gold, and the orchard in which they grew was called, from the name of its guardians, the garden of the Hesperides: they were assisted in the discharge of this momentous office by a terrible dragon.

Mencetius was one of the Titan race which were cast down into hell.

Prometheus was, like the rest of his family, an

k Hom. Od. a. 13.

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CREATION OF MAN.

enemy to the progeny of Saturn: a dispute is said to have arisen, as to what part of the sacrifices offered by the subjects of Jupiter was to be considered as appropriated to the God at whose altar it was slain: for from the first institution of sacrifices, it was the custom for the victim to be amicably shared, according to a fixed rule, between the God and his worshipper.

Prometheus offered himself as umpire in this dispute: he was always regarded as the wisest, or rather as the craftiest and most wily, of the heavenly race he killed two bulls, and skilfully divided the flesh, the fat, the offal and the bones: he sewed up the flesh very neatly in the skin of one of the bulls, and the bones, inclosed in an envelop of fat, in the other: he then called upon Jupiter to look on the parcels, and to say which of them he chose for his own share: Jupiter de ceived by the fair appearance of the fat which peeped here and there through the apertures of the skin, chose that parcel, in preference to the other which contained all that was most wholesome and valuable of the two animals: this is an ugly story; and the part assigned in it to Jupiter is wholly unworthy of our idea of a God.

From this moment Jupiter became the bitter enemy of Prometheus, and to punish him and his race, withheld from them the use of the celestial element of fire: Prometheus, who surpassed the whole universe in mechanical skill and contrivance, formed a man of clay of such exquisite workmanship, that he wanted nothing but a liv ing soul to cause him to be acknowledged the paragon of creation: Minerva, the Goddess of arts, beheld the performance of Prometheus with approbation, and offered him any assistance in her

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power to complete his work: she conducted him to Heaven, where he watched his opportunity to carry off at the tip of his wand a portion of celestial fire, from the chariot of the sun with this he animated his image: and the man of Prometheus immediately moved, and thought, and spoke, and became every thing that the fondest wishes of his creator could ask.

Jupiter became still more exasperated than ever with this new specimen of Prometheus's ability and artifice: he ordered Vulcan, the great artificer of Heaven, to make a woman of clay, that should be still more consummate and beautiful of structure than Prometheus's man: with this alluring present Jupiter determined to tempt Prometheus to his ruin: all the Gods of the Saturnian race, eager to abet the project of their chief, gave her each one a several gift, from which ir cumstance she obtained the name of Pandora, all gifts: Venus gave her the power to charm; the Graces bestowed upon her symmetry of limb and elegance of motion; Apollo the accomplishments of vocal and instrumental music; Mercury the art of persuasive speech; Juno a multitude of rich and gorgeous ornaments; and Minerva the management of the loom and the needle: last of all, Jupiter presented her with a sealed box, which she was to bestow on whoever became her husband: thus prepared, he sent her to Prometheus by Mercury, as if he had intended him a compliment upon the wonders of his own performance: Prometheus however saw through the deceit, and rejected her: Mercury then presented her to Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother, who was less on his guard, received the seemingly an gelic creature with delight, and eagerly opened

the box she brought him; the lid was no sooner unclosed than a multitude of calamities and evils of all imaginable sorts flew out, which dispersed themselves over the world, and from that fatal moment have never ceased to afflict the human race. Hope only remained at the bottom, being all that is left us to relieve our sorrows, and render the labours and troubles of life capable of being endured.

Jupiter thus constantly failing in every indirect attempt of retaliation upon his redoubtable adversary Prometheus, at last proceeded to a more open hostility: he sent Vulcan and Mercury, who seizing upon this extraordinary personage, conveyed him by main force to Mount Caucasus, where, being chained to the rock, a vulture commissioned by Jupiter cowered upon his breast, continually preying upon his liver, which grew again as fast as it was devoured: how the unfortunate Prometheus was delivered from this punishment I shall have occasion to mention hereafter, [p. 226.]

The fable of Prometheus's man, and Pandora, the first woman, was intended to convey an allegorical sense: the ancients saw to how many evils the human race is exposed, how many years of misery many of them endure, with what a variety of diseases they are afflicted, how the great majority is condemned to perpetual labour poverty and ignorance, and how many vices are contracted by men, in consequence of which they afflict each other with a thousand additional evils, perfidy, tyranny, cruel tortures, murder and war: the views of the early ancients, in times of savage rudeness, and before the refinements of society were invented, were more me