Assignment 2: Myth-Making Final
Part I: Myth
There was once a deity that existed before time. Often referred to as Terra, she was known for creating a planet that was full of plants and water. Her planet was called Earth and it was unoccupied for many centuries. Wanting her planet to flourish, she gifted land to a magical being named Phineas, who originally occupied a planet called Oxin. Phineas inhabited Terra’s land for some time but slowly grew to hate it as he was the only being occupying it. Not wanting to upset Terra for hating the land she gave him, he created creatures out of the Earth to keep him company. He called his creations humans and over time, they began to multiply. They used Earth’s resources to develop their way of life and Phineas was excited to see how his creations adapted to land he once hated. As a gift, he wanted them to possess fire from his home planet, an element only the supreme being, Zion, possessed. This fire was capable of extraordinary things. Its powers were endless, and Phineas saw it as a powerful element his creations can thrive on. He went back to Oxin to ask Zion if he could spare some fire for his creations. But Zion hated humans and thought they were a waste of space. He rejected Phineas’ request, which angered the being. Determined for fire, Phineas snuck into Zion’s territory at night and stole the fire he was not allowed to have. When he returned to Earth, it is said that Zion’s daughter, Aneta, appeared in the stolen fire. Knowing he was in the wrong, the being apologized to her for what he has done. Instead of punishing the being, the goddess did something unexpected. She warned Phineas, saying, “be careful with what you consider a gift, it may damage what you love the most.” Aneta vanished, leaving Phineas staring at the fire in his hand. Contemplating over what the being told him, he stood still on Earth’s surface and transformed into one of his creations to test how the fire reacted to their touch. Right away, Phineas felt the hotness of the fire burn his human skin. His human body reacted to the fire and he dropped the burning fire on Terra’s precious land. Quickly transforming back, Phineus tried to collect the fire he dropped. But it was too late. The fire lit up the dark land and it was bright enough to be seen from Oxin. Zion was now aware of Phineas’ deception and as a punishment, he got his son Hyde to curse the fire, making it impossible to put out. The curse made the fire grow to heights no being could imagine. It consumed everything it touched, emitting deadly amounts of heat and gas. All life on Earth felt the burning effects of the cursed fire. The waters even got hot enough to cook anything living in it. Phineus’ humans either burnt to a crisp or suffocated from the gasses emitted from the fire. Life was dying everywhere and Phineus was now ashamed, for he has caused this destruction on Earth. Terra, sensing the chaos, moved her land in a way that stopped the fire from consuming more life. Using all her might, she tore her land in half and shoved the fire deep within it. Many refer to this phenomenon as “global warming." It is prophesized that this event may occur again since the fire still burns to this day. Lately, humans have been quite greedy, and they continue to dig away at the Earth. It is only a matter of time until they dig far enough to reach the fire and unleash its deadly effects onto the Earth once again.
Part II: Analysis
My myth is centred around global warming, so I wanted to create a myth that explained some of its effects. The effects my myth mainly focuses on is rising temperatures. The machines we have created release a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and Earth’s atmospheric temperatures have slowly begun to increase due to this. The rising of Earth's temperatures can be called global warming and I wanted to create a narrative that explained the origins of this phenomenon. So, I used the myth of Prometheus as inspiration for this myth.
Prometheus is a titan known for aiding mankind and stealing fire from Zeus. In Hesiod's Theogony and Apollodorus Library, Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and gives it to humans. When Zeus sees the stolen fire among humans, he punishes Prometheus by getting his son, Hephaistos, to nail him to Mount Caucasus. There, an eagle ate out his liver daily until he was later freed by Heracles (Hes. Theog. 522-530; Apollod. Library, 1.7.1-1.7.3). As punishment for humans, he got Hephaistos to create a woman named Pandora and made her extremely beautiful to hide the evil that was inside her (Hes. Works and Days. 77-125). In my myth, the characters and settings represent people and places in the ancient myth. Oxin is supposed to represent Olympus, Zion is supposed to represent Zeus, Hyde is supposed to represent Hephaistos, and Phineas is supposed to represent Prometheus. Just like Prometheus, Phineas stole fire from Zion and took it back to humans. I wanted to stay true to what Prometheus has done in ancient sources, so I stuck to the narrative of him stealing fire. How humans came into being differ slightly from the myth I have created. In my myth, humans were only created to keep Phineas company while he inhabited a land given to him by Terra. This account is different from ones like Plato’s Protagoras. In Plato’s Protagoras, humans were created when it was the right time. Before they were created, gods were the only thing that existed. When it reached a certain time, the gods formed them within the earth by using a mixture of fire and earth. To guide them into the light, the gods ordered the titans Epimetheus and his brother Prometheus to help distribute and furnish the species with certain capabilities (Pl. Prt, 320c). In this account, humans are created when it was the right time, whereas, in my account, they were created to keep Phineas company. I also made Phineas the creator of humans instead of the gods, as referenced in Plato’s Protagoras, to exaggerate the bond he had with humans. Hyde has the same role as Hephaistos, where he is ordered by Zion to punish Phineas for stealing fire by cursing the fire he stole. This is similar to how Zeus got Hephaistos to nail Prometheus to Mout Caucasus in the Theogony, and how he created Pandora as a punishment for humans in Works and Days. Hyde and Hephaistos both contributed to giving out punishments, although their punishments are not exactly the same. I decided to base my myth on Prometheus because he gave humans fire, which allowed them to do a lot of stuff. I think of this as the start of industrialization because humans can now use fire to do a lot of things they never used to do. Fire jumpstarted a lot of development and for that, I decided to base my myth on Prometheus since he gave humans the ability to have fire.
Most of my myth centers around Prometheus, but the outcomes of the myth are not the same. Phineas drops the fire he stole, which sort of expands on Prometheus’ act of stealing fire from Zeus. Phineas’ punishment differs from Prometheus, however. Instead of being nailed to a mountain, Zion gets Hyde to curse the fire, making it impossible to be put out. Phineas’ punishment is now watching his creations suffer from the effects of the fire. Some effects include excessive heat that can burn things easily and toxic gas that slowly kills. I decided not to make Phineas’ punishment like Prometheus’ because I wanted to combine the punishment Zeus gave to humans, which was Pandora. In Hesiod Works and Days, Pandora was created as a punishment for Prometheus’ theft of fire (Hes. Works and Days, 75-76). Hesiod uses this as an explanation to why life is hard for humans. Instead of incorporating Pandora into my myth, I try to symbolize the same “evilness” she supposedly represented by making the fire cursed to never be put out. This fire made life on earth difficult to maintain. The part where he shapeshifts into his creation is completely made up for narrative purposes. I also changed how the fire was discovered among humans. Instead of alluding to how Zion saw the stolen fire among humans, he saw the fire glow in the darkness when Phineas dropped it. This is different than how Zeus saw fire among humans in ancient sources.
I referenced another goddess in my myth. Aneta is supposed to represent Athena, her name is Athena backwards without the ‘h.’ I included a brief encounter with her during Phineas’ journey back to Earth, just to give him a reason to drop the fire. Their interaction made him stop and think. Due to his contemplation, he drops the fire, which sets off a chain reaction. The reason I referenced Athena as inspiration for Phineas and Aneta’s interactions was because Athena is the goddess of wisdom, one of Zeus’ daughters, and is known for coming down and guiding people on their journey. In book 1 of the Iliad, she is ordered by Hera to appear in front of Achilles to stop him from killing Agamemnon (Hom. Il.1.198-222). In my version, the character she represents, Aneta, is not sent by anyone to warn Phineas, which is different than how Athena was sent by Hera to warn Achilles in the Iliad. However, just like how she appears to Achilles to help him complete his destiny, Aneta appears to Phineas to try and warn him about the fire, which does not work out.
Terra was also created to represent Gaia. Since my myth is centred around global warming, I thought she would be the right being to include. Terra is a deity that existed before time. She was known for creating the planet Earth, which is sort of a nod to how Gaia is the Earth itself. In accounts like Hesiod’s Theogony, you can see Gaia being referenced as the Earth itself. According to the Theogony, Gaia, the earth, came into being after Chaos, which is the Abyss (Hes. Theog. 116-117). This makes her a primordial being. I alluded to this fact by saying, “There was once a deity that existed before time.” Gaia was always known for creating something and in accounts like Nonnus, Dionysiaca, she is “unbegotten and self-delivered." (Nonnus, Dion. 29. 243). I wanted to include this aspect of Gaia in my myth to connect Terra with being a primordial being, similarly to Gaia. Instead of following Gaia’s narrative and making Terra the Earth itself, I made her a being that created the planet.
Overall, my myth is trying to say how global warming was a phenomenon that was caused by the fire Phineas dropped on the Earth. Since Phineas stole the fire from Zion, the fire was cursed to never be put out. What it did to the Earth is what I called global warming since it created effects that can relate to global warming and quite literally, warm up the Earth. I say the phenomenon can occur again in the future because humans continue to consume the Earth. This brings them further to where the fire is hidden. If uncovered, the “global warming” phenomenon can occur again and produce the same deadly effects it produced in the past. This alludes to how we continually consume the Earth's resources, further damaging the planet the more we produce. I used ancient beings like Prometheus, Pandora, Zeus, Hephaistos, Athena, and Gaia as inspiration to help create this myth.
Work Cited
Apollodorus. 2016. Library. Translated by Stephen M. Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephan Brunet. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company
Hesiod. 2016. Theogony. Translated by Stephen M. Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephan Brunet. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Hesiod. 2016. Works and Days. Translated by Stephen M. Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephan Brunet. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Homer. 2011. The Iliad of Homer. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. The University of Chicago Press.
Nonnus. 1940. Dionysiaca. Translated by Rouse, W.H.D. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Plato. 2016. Protagoras. Translated by Stephen M. Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephan Brunet. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.