he
Silver Race who first built houses for shelter. They lived through a
span of life that was longer than our span, but it was not long enough
to give wisdom to them. Children were brought up at their mothers'
sides for a hundred years, playing at childish things. And when they
came to years beyond a hundred they quarreled with one another, and
wronged one another, and did not know enough to give reverence to the
immortal gods. Then, by the will of Zeus, the Silver Race passed away
as the Golden Race had passed away. Their spirits stay in the
Underworld, and they are called by men the blessed spirits of the
Underworld.

And then there was made the third race--the Race of Bronze. They were a
race great of stature, terrible and strong. Their armor was of bronze,
their swords were of bronze, their implements were of bronze, and of
bronze, too, they made their houses. No great span of life was theirs,
for with the weapons that they took in their terrible hands they slew
one another. Thus they passed away, and went down under the earth to
Hades, leaving no name that men might know them by.

Then the gods created a fourth race--our own: a Race of Iron. We have
not the justice that was amongst the men of the Golden Race, nor the
simpleness that was amongst the men of the Silver Race, nor the stature
nor the great strength that the men of the Bronze Race possessed. We
are of iron that we may endure. It is our doom that we must never cease
from labor and that we must very quickly grow old.

But miserable as we are to-day, there was a time when the lot of men
was more miserable. With poor implements they had to labor on a hard
ground. There was less justice and kindliness amongst men in those days
than there is now.

Once it came into the mind of Zeus that he would destroy the fourth
race and leave the earth to the nymphs and the satyrs. He would destroy
it by a great flood. But Prometheus, the--Titan god who had given aid
to Zeus against the other Titans--Prometheus, who was called the
Foreseer--could not consent to the race of men being destroyed utterly,
and he considered a way of saving some of them. To a man and a woman,
Deucalion and Pyrrha, just and gentle people, he brought word of the
plan of Zeus, and he showed them how to make a ship that would bear
them through what was about to be sent upon the earth.

Then Zeus shut up in their cave all the winds but the wind that brings
rain and clouds. He bade this wind,