80 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS
mountain where he was struck down. A great part of vast earth was burned by
the immense conflagration and melted like tin heated by the craft of artisans in
open crucibles, or like iron which although the hardest of all is softened by blaz-
ing fire and melts in the divine earth through the craft of Hephaestus. Thus the
earth melted in the flame of the blazing fire. And Zeus in the rage of his anger
hurled him into broad Tartarus.
From Typhoeus arise the winds that blow the mighty rains; but not Notus,
Boreas, and Zephyr^3 who brings good weather, for they are sprung from the gods
and a great benefit for mortals. But the others from Typhoeus blow over the sea
at random; some fall upon the shadowy deep and do great harm to mortals, rag-
ing with their evil blasts. They blow this way and that and scatter ships and de-
stroy sailors. Those who encounter them on the sea have no defense against their
evil. Others blowing over the vast blossoming land destroy the lovely works of
mortals born on earth, filling them with dust and harsh confusion.^4The attempt of the giants Otus and Ephialtes to storm heaven by piling
the mountains Olympus, Ossa, and Pelion upon one another is sometimes
linked to the battle of the giants or treated as a separate attack upon the power
of Zeus. In fact there is considerable confusion in the tradition concerning de-
tails and characters in the battle of the giants (Gigantomachy) and the battle
of the Titans (Titanomachy). Both conflicts may be interpreted as reflecting
the triumph of the more benign powers of nature over the more wild powers
or of civilization over savagery. Historically, it is likely that they represent
the fact of conquest and amalgamation when, in about 2000 B.c., the Greek-
speaking invaders brought with them their own gods, with Zeus as their chief,
and triumphed over the deities of the existing peoples in the peninsula of
Greece.THE CREATION OF MORTALS
Various versions of the birth of mortals existed side by side in the ancient world.
Very often they are the creation of Zeus alone, or of Zeus and the other gods.
Sometimes immortals and mortals spring from the same source. A dominant tra-
dition depicts Prometheus as the creator of man; and sometimes woman is cre-
ated later and separately through the designs of Zeus.
After describing the creation of the universe and animal life out of the ele-
ments of Chaos, Ovid tells about the birth of mortals, depicting the superiority
and lofty ambition of this highest creature in the order of things (Metamorphoses- 76-88); Ovid's "man" (homo) epitomizes the human race.
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Until now there was no animal more godlike than these and more capable of
high intelligence and able to dominate all the rest. Then man was born; either
the creator of the universe, originator of a better world, fashioned him from di-
vine seed, or earth, recently formed and separated from the lofty aether, retained
seeds from its kindred sky and was mixed with rain water by Prometheus, the
son of Iapetus, and fashioned by him into the likeness of the gods who control