Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Deucalion and Pyrrha

In the age of bronze humans, Zeus, the ruler of the world, kept hearing about the evil deeds of this generation, so he decided to pretend to be a mortal and descend to the world to check.After he came to the ground, he found that the situation was much more serious than the legends said.One day, towards midnight, he entered the hall of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, who was not only inhospitable but also brutal.Zeus showed himself to be a god with miraculous omens.People knelt down and worshiped him.But Lycaon didn't take it seriously, and laughed at their devout prayers. "Let us test it," said he, "and see if he is a mortal or a god!" So he secretly resolved to kill his visitor in the middle of the night when he was fast asleep.Before this he first quietly killed a hostage, a poor man sent by the Molossians.Lycaon had his limbs chopped off, and they were boiled in boiling water, and the rest was roasted over the fire, and served as supper to strangers.Seeing all this, Zeus was enraged, jumped up from the table, and summoned a cloud of vengeful anger, which was thrown into the palace of the unrighteous king.The king was terrified and wanted to flee outside the palace.

But his first cry became a shriek; the skin of his body became rough and hairy;Since then, Lycaon has become a bloodthirsty wolf. Zeus returned to St. Olympus out.He consulted with the gods and decided to eradicate this generation of shameful people.He was about to punish the whole earth with lightning, but he was worried that heaven would be affected and the axis of the universe would be burned.So, he gave up the idea of ​​brutal revenge, put down the lightning hammer forged by the one-eyed eye, and decided to rain down on the ground and wipe out human beings with floods.At this time, all the winds except the south wind were locked in the cave of Aeolus.Nanfeng accepted the order and flapped his wet wings straight to the ground.Nan Feng's terrible face was as black as the bottom of a pot, and his beard was heavy, as if the sky was covered with dark clouds.Torrents flowed from his white hair, mist covered his forehead, and floods poured from his chest.The south wind rose in the air, grasping the thick cloud tightly with his hands, and squeezing it hard.Suddenly, thunder rumbled and it rained heavily.The storm destroyed the crops in the field.The hopes of the farmers were dashed, and a whole year of hard work was in vain.

The younger brother of Zeus, Poseidon, the god of the sea, was not willing to be lonely, and hurried to help destroy it. He called all the rivers and said: "You should set off a storm, swallow the houses, and break the dams!" They all obeyed his orders.Poseidon went into battle in person, holding the trident in his hand, and hit the ground to open the way for the flood.The river is surging and Penghe is unstoppable.The flood flooded the fields like a raging beast, knocking down the pagodas, temples, and houses.The rising waters soon covered the palace, and the steeple of the church was caught in the whirlpool.In an instant, water and land could not be distinguished, and the whole land was covered with a vast ocean, boundless.

Facing the torrential flood, human beings desperately search for a way to save their lives.Some climbed to the top of the mountain, and some drove wooden boats and sailed on the submerged roofs.The water went all the way over the vineyards, and the bottom of the boat swept over the trellises.The fish struggled among the branches, and the wild boars fleeing all over the mountains were swallowed by the waves and drowned.Groups of people were swept away by the flood, and those who survived were later starved to death on the bare mountaintops.At Phocis, the two peaks of a high mountain rise above the water, and this is Mount Parnassus.Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, was warned by his father in advance and built a big ship.When the flood came, he and his wife Pyrrha sailed to Parnassus.Neither man nor woman was created more virtuous nor godly.Zeus took revenge on mankind by summoning floods to submerge the earth.He looked down on the world from the sky, and saw only a poor pair of people floating on the water among thousands of people. This couple was kind and believed in gods.Zeus calmed down his anger.He called the north wind, and the north wind drove away the dark clouds and thick mist, and the sky was bright again.Seeing this, Poseidon, who is in charge of the sea, also lowered his trident, causing the billowing waves to recede, the sea water retreated tamely under the high embankment, and the river returned to the river bed.Treetops emerged from the deep water, their leaves covered with mud.The mountains reappeared, the plains stretched, and the land recovered.

Deucalion looked around, the land was barren and muddy, as dead as a tomb.Seeing all this, he couldn't help but shed tears, and said to his wife Pila: "Honey, I looked into the distance, and there was not a living person. The two of us are the only human beings left on the earth, and the others have been killed. The flood has engulfed us, but it is very difficult for us to survive. Every cloud I see scares me. Even if all danger is over, what can we two alone do in this desolate world How about it? Oh, if only my father, Prometheus, would have taught me the ability to create human beings and the technique of giving souls to clay figurines, that would be great!" After hearing his words, his wife was also very sad, and the two couldn't help crying .They had no idea, so they came to the half-abandoned altar, knelt down, and begged the goddess Themis: "Goddess, please tell us how to create a generation of human beings that has perished. Ah, help the sunken world to regenerate Bar!"

"Depart from my altar," answered the Goddess' voice, "put on your veil, undo your girdle, and throw your mother's bones behind you!" The two people were very surprised and inexplicable when they heard the mysterious words.Pyrrha was the first to break the silence, saying: "Excuse me, noble goddess. I have to go against your will, because I cannot throw away the remains of my mother, and do not want to offend her ghost!" But Deucalion's heart suddenly became clear, and he suddenly understood, so he comforted his wife and said: "If my understanding is correct, then the goddess' order did not tell us to do disrespectful things. The earth is our benevolent mother." , the stone must be her bones. Pyrrha, we should throw the stone behind us!"

Having said that, the two were still skeptical, and they thought it might be a good idea to give it a try.So they turned around, covered their heads, loosened their belts, and threw the stones behind them as ordered by the goddess.A kind of miracle happened: the stone suddenly stopped being hard and brittle, but became soft, huge, and gradually formed.The shape of a person begins to emerge, but it is not yet fully formed, like a rough outline that an artist has just carved out of marble.The wet soil on the stones turned into pieces of muscle, the solid and hard stones turned into bones, and the lines between the stones became human veins.Strangely, the stones thrown by Deucalion turned into men, while the stones thrown by his wife Pyrrha turned into women.To this day, humans do not deny their origin and provenance.This is a strong, hard-working and industrious generation.

Humans forever remember what substance they are made of.