Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/120

98 waters subside: the only surviving pair inquire of the gods how they may again people the desert earth. They are ordered, with veiled heads, to throw behind them the bones of their great mother. Half doubtful as to the meaning of the oracle, they throw behind them stones, which are immediately changed into men and women, and the earth spontaneously produces the rest of the animal creation. Apollodorus relates the matter thus:—"When Zeus determined to destroy the brazen race, Deucalion, by the advice of Prometheus, made a great ark,, and put into it all necessary things, and entered it with Pyrrha. Zeus then, pouring down heavy rains from heaven, overwhelmed the greater part of Greece, so that all men perished except a few who fled to the highest mountains. He floated nine days and nights in the sea of waters, and at last stopped on Mount Parnassus. Then Zeus sent Hermes to ask him what he wished, and he solicited that mankind might be made again. Zeus bade him throw stones over his head, from which men should come, and said that those cast by Pyrrha should be turned into women." Stephanus of Byzantium says that the tradition was that after the surface of the earth became dry, Zeus ordered Prometheus and Athene to make images of clay in the form of men and when they were dry, he called the winds and made them breathe into each, and rendered them vital: and thus the earth after the Flood was repeopled. Diodorus says, "In the Deluge, which happened in the time of Deucalion, almost all flesh died." The Chinese begin their dynasties with Jao, the last of the old race, whose words are thus recorded in the Schu-Kiug:—"The mighty waters of the flood spread themselves out, and overflowed, and drowned everything. The mountains disappeared in the deep, and the hills were buried beneath them. The foaming billows seemed to threaten heaven. All people were drowned." An ancient inscription, which the Chinese attribute to Yu, the third patriarch after the Flood, and which at least dates from before Christ, refers to this event:—"The illustrious Emperor Jao said, sighing, 'Companions and counsellors! The great and little territories up to the mountain's