From Bulfinch's Mythology: Prometheus and Pandora - anthology.

« The world being thus furnished with inhabitants, the first age was an age of innocence and happiness, called the Golden Age. Truth and right prevailed, though not enforced by law, nor was there any magistrate to threaten or punish.

The forest had not yet been robbed of its trees to furnish timbers for vessels, nor had men builtfortifications round their towns.

There were no such things as swords, spears, or helmets.

The earth brought forth all things necessary for man, without his labour inploughing or sowing.

Perpetual spring reigned, flowers sprang up without seed, the rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey distilled from the oaks. Then succeeded the Silver Age, inferior to the golden, but better than that of brass.

Jupiter shortened the spring, and divided the year into seasons.

Then, first, men had to endure the extremes of heat and cold, and houses became necessary.

Caves were the first dwellings, and leafy coverts of the woods, and huts woven of twigs.Crops would no longer grow without planting.

The farmer was obliged to sow the seed, and the toiling ox to draw the plough. Next came the Brazen Age, more savage of temper, and readier to the strife of arms, yet not altogether wicked.

The hardest and worst was the Iron Age. Crime burst in like a flood; modesty, truth, and honour fled.

In their places came fraud and cunning, violence, and the wicked love of gain.

Then seamen spread sails to the wind,and the trees were torn from the mountains to serve for keels to ships, and vex the face of the ocean.

The earth, which till now had been cultivated in common, beganto be divided off into possessions.

Men were not satisfied with what the surface produced, but must dig into its bowels, and draw forth from thence the ores of metals.Mischievous iron, and more mischievous gold, were produced.

War sprang up, using both as weapons; the guest was not safe in his friend's house; and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, could not trust one another.

Sons wished their fathers dead, that they might come to the inheritance;family love lay prostrate.

The earth was wet with slaughter, and the gods abandoned it, one by one, till Astræa alone was left, and finally she also took her departure. Jupiter, seeing this state of things, burned with anger.

He summoned the gods to council.

They obeyed the call, and took the road to the palace of heaven.

The road,which any one may see in a clear night, stretches across the face of the sky, and is called the Milky Way.

Along the road stand the palaces of the illustrious gods; thecommon people of the skies live apart, on either side.

Jupiter addressed the assembly.

He set forth the frightful condition of things on the earth, and closed byannouncing his intention to destroy the whole of its inhabitants, and provide a new race, unlike the first, who would be more worthy of life, and much betterworshippers of the gods.

So saying he took a thunderbolt, and was about to launch it at the world, and destroy it by burning; but recollecting the danger that such aconflagration might set heaven itself on fire, he changed his plan, and resolved to drown it.

The north wind, which scatters the clouds, was chained up; the south wassent out, and soon covered all the face of heaven with a cloak of pitchy darkness.

The clouds, driven together, resound with a crash; torrents of rain fall; the crops arelaid low; the year's labour of the husbandman perishes in an hour.

Jupiter, not satisfied with his own waters, calls on his brother Neptune to aid him with his.

He letsloose the rivers, and pours them over the land.

At the same time, he heaves the land with an earthquake, and brings in the reflux of the ocean over the shores.

Flocks,herds, men, and houses are swept away, and temples, with their sacred enclosures, profaned.

If any edifice remained standing, it was overwhelmed, and its turrets layhid beneath the waves.

Now all was sea, sea without shore.

Here and there an individual remained on a projecting hilltop, and a few, in boats, pulled the oar wherethey had lately driven the plough.

The fishes swim among the tree-tops; the anchor is let down into a garden.

Where the graceful lambs played but now, unwieldy seacalves gambol.

The wolf swims among the sheep, the yellow lions and tigers struggle in the water.

The strength of the wild boar serves him not, nor his swiftness thestag.

The birds fall with weary wing into the water, having found no land for a resting-place.

Those living beings whom the water spared fell a prey to hunger. Parnassus alone, of all the mountains, overtopped the waves; and there Deucalion, and his wife Pyrrha, of the race of Prometheus, found refuge—he a just man, andshe a faithful worshipper of the gods.

Jupiter, when he saw none left alive but this pair, and remembered their harmless lives and pious demeanour, ordered the northwinds to drive away the clouds, and disclose the skies to earth, and earth to the skies.

Neptune also directed Triton to blow on his shell, and sound a retreat to thewaters.

The waters obeyed, and the sea returned to its shores, and the rivers to their channels.

Then Deucalion thus addressed Pyrrha: 'O wife, only surviving woman,joined to me first by the ties of kindred and marriage, and now by a common danger, would that we possessed the power of our ancestor Prometheus, and couldrenew the race as he at first made it! But as we cannot, let us seek yonder temple, and inquire of the gods what remains for us to do.' They entered the temple,deformed as it was with slime, and approached the altar, where no fire burned.

There they fell prostrate on the earth, and prayed the goddess to inform them how theymight retrieve their miserable affairs.

The oracle answered, 'Depart from the temple with head veiled and garments unbound, and cast behind you the bones of yourmother.' They heard the words with astonishment.

Pyrrha first broke silence: 'We cannot obey; we dare not profane the remains of our parents.' They sought thethickest shades of the wood, and revolved the oracle in their minds.

At length Deucalion spoke: 'Either my sagacity deceives me, or the command is one we may obeywithout impiety.

The earth is the great parent of all; the stones are her bones; these we may cast behind us; and I think this is what the oracle means.

At least, it willdo no harm to try.' They veiled their faces, unbound their garments, and picked up stones, and cast them behind them.

The stones (wonderful to relate) began to growsoft, and assume shape.

By degrees, they put on a rude resemblance to the human form, like a block half finished in the hands of the sculptor.

The moisture and slimethat were about them became flesh; the stony part became bones; the veins remained veins, retaining their name, only changing their use.

Those thrown by the handof the man became men, and those by the woman became women.

It was a hard race, and well adapted to labour, as we find ourselves to be at this day, giving plainindications of our origin. The comparison of Eve to Pandora is too obvious to have escaped [17th-century English poet John] Milton, who introduces it in Book IV.

of 'Paradise Lost': 'More lovely than Pandora, whom the godsEndowed with all their gifts; and O, too likeIn sad event, when to the unwiser sonOf Japhet brought by Hermes, she insnaredMankind with her fair looks, to be avengedOn him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.'. »