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CREATION. 575
Bible makes two separate actions, Adam/s creation coming first,
and Eve s being performed afterwards and in a different manner. 1
So, by Hesiod s account, there already existed men descended
from the gods themselves, when the first woman Pandora, the all-
gifted, fair and false, was formed out of earth and flood (p. 571).
It is difficult to arrive at the exact point of view in the Hesiodic
poems. In the Theogony, there ascend out of chaos first Graia
(earth) the giantess, then Erebus (corresp. to Niflheim) and
Night ; but Gaia by herself brought forth Uranus (sky) and seas
and mountains, then other children by Uranus, the last of them
Kronus the father of Zeus and ancestor of all the gods. As
the Edda has a Buri and Borr before 03inn, so do Uranus and
Kronus here come before Zeus ; with Zeus and 03inn begins the
race of gods proper, and Poseidon and Hades complete the fra
ternal trio, like Vili and Ye. The enmity of gods and titans is
therefore that of ases and giants ; at the same time, there is just
as much resemblance in the expulsion of the titans from heaven
(Theog. 813) to the fall of the rebel angels into the bottomless
pit ; so that to the giant element in the titans we may add a
daemonic. When the Works and Days makes the well-known*
five races fill five successive ages, the act of creation must needs
have been repeated several times ; on which point neither the
poem itself nor Plato (Cratyl. 397-8, Steph.) gives sufficient
information. First came the golden race of blissful daimones,
next the silver one of weaker divine beings, thirdly, the brazen
one of warriors sprung from ash-trees, fourthly,
the race of
heroes, fifthly, the iron one of men now living. The omission
of a metal designation for the fourth race is of itself enough to
make the statement look imperfect. Dimmest of all is the second
race, which also Plato passes over, discussing only daemons, heroes
and men : will the diminutive stature of these shorter-lived genii
warrant a comparison with the wights and elves of our own
mythology ? In the third race giants seem to be portrayed, or
fighters of the giant sort, confronting as they do the rightful
1 The rabbinic myth supposes a first woman, Lilith, made out of the ground
like Adam. [The Bible, we know, has two different accounts of man s creation :
the first (Elohistic) in Gen. 1, 27, male and female created he them ; the second
(Jehovistic) in Gen. 2, 7, formed man of the dust, and in vv. 21. 22, took one of
his ribs, . . . and the rib ... made he a woman. The first account seems to
imply simultaneous creations. TKANS.]