Next came the hills, and at last the level plain spread clear and dry. Earth was restored.

Deucalion looked around. The land lay ravaged and silent as the tomb. At the sight, tears ran down his cheeks, and he said to Pyrrha: “My only and beloved companion, in all directions, as far as eye can reach, I see no living thing. We two are the only humans left on earth; all the rest have been drowned in the flood. And we, indeed, are not yet sure of our life. I tremble at every cloud. And even if all danger were past, what should two lonely people do on the abandoned earth? Oh, how I wish my father Prometheus had taught me the art of creating men and breathing spirit into shapes of clay!”

So he spoke, and in their solitude both he and his wife began to weep. Then they fell on their knees before a half-ruined altar of Themis and pleaded with the immortal goddess. “Tell us, goddess, how we may recreate the vanished race of man. Oh, help the world to live again!”

“Go from my altar,” said a voice. “Veil your heads, loosen the garments from your limbs, and cast the bones of your mother behind you.”

Long they pondered over these mysterious words. Pyrrha was the first to break the silence. “Forgive me, great goddess,” she said, “if I shudder and do not obey you, for I hesitate to offend my mother’s shade by scattering abroad her bones.”

But Deucalion’s mind was suddenly illumined as by a flash of light. He calmed his wife with soothing words. “Unless I am much mistaken,” he said, “the command of the gods never bids us do wrong. The earth is our mother, and her bones are the stones. It is the stones, Pyrrha, that we are to cast behind us!”

Nonetheless both were very doubtful about this explanation of the command of Themis. Yet—so they thought—there is no harm in trying. So they went to one side, veiled their heads, loosened the clasps of their garments as they had been told, and flung stones backward over their shoulders. And a miracle happened: the stones no longer remained hard and brittle. They became supple, and grew, and took on shape. Human forms stood out, not very distinctly at first, but rather like the first rough outline an artist hews from marble. Whatever was earthen and moist about the stones changed to flesh, and what was firm and hard was transformed to bones, while the veins turned into human veins. So, in a very short time, with the help of the gods, the stones cast by the man became men, those by the woman, women.

The human race does not deny its origin. It is a sturdy race, well-fitted for a life of toil, and it never forgets the stuff from which it was made.

ZEUS AND IO

INACHUS, king of the Pelasgians, the hereditary monarch of an age-old dynasty, had a beautiful daughter called Io. Zeus, the lord of Olympus, once happened to see her as she was tending her father’s flocks in the meadows of Lerna, and love for her leaped up in the god like a flame. Disguised as a mortal, he came to tempt her with sweet, seductive words.

“How happy will he be who one day calls you his own! Yet there is no mortal worthy of you, you who are fit to be the bride of the ruler of the gods. I am he! I am Zeus! No, do not run away! See, it is burning noon. Come with me to that shady grove, over there to the left, which invites us with its coolness.