Indiana's James Baldwin, though largely self-educated, began teaching at 24. After several years he became superintendent of graded schools in Indiana, a post he held for 18 years. As well as editing school books, he started writing too. After the publication in 1882 of The Story of Siegfried, he went on to write more than 50 others. His influence was widely felt, because of all the school books in use in the United States, at one time over half had been written or edited by him. So far as I know, none of his books are in print today so we have decided to republish selections here, starting with his Old Greek Stories, which, though written for children, make good reading even today..
James Baldwin's The Story of Prometheus Old Greek Stories, the Myths Retold...
The story of Prometheus, the creator and benefactor of mankind, has always fascinated us, especially how he stole fire for us from the Olympian Gods. So too, the story of Pandora, with her Jar of Hope. The stories of the cosmic gods have shaped our culture, our literature, our art and even our religion. They are a portion of our heritage from the distant past, and they form perhaps as important a part of our intellectual life as they did of that of the people among whom they originated. This is the second of a series of Old Greek Stories by James Baldwin, which will be added to in weeks ahead.
I. How Fire Was Given to Men
In those old, old times, there lived two brothers who were not like
other men, nor yet like those Mighty Ones who lived upon the mountain
top. They were the sons of one of those Titans who had fought against
Jupiter and been sent in chains to the strong prison-house of the Lower
World.
The name of the elder of these brothers was Prometheus, or Forethought;
for he was always thinking of the future and making things ready for
what might happen tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or it may be in
a hundred years to come. The younger was called Epimetheus, or
Afterthought; for he was always so busy thinking of yesterday, or last
year, or a hundred years ago, that he had no care at all for what might
come to pass after a while.
For some cause Jupiter had not sent these brothers to prison with the
rest of the Titans.
Prometheus did not care to live amid the clouds on the mountain top. He
was too busy for that. While the Mighty Folk were spending their time in
idleness, drinking nectar and eating ambrosia, he was intent upon plans
for making the world wiser and better than it had ever been before.
He went out amongst men to live with them and help them; for his heart
was filled with sadness when he found that they were no longer happy as
they had been during the golden days when Saturn was king. Ah, how very
poor and wretched they were! He found them living in caves and in holes
of the earth, shivering with the cold because there was no fire, dying
of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another–the most
miserable of all living creatures.
“If they only had fire,” said Prometheus to himself, “they could at least warm themselves and cook their food; and after a while they could learn to make tools and build themselves houses. Without fire, they are worse off than the beasts.”
Then he went boldly to Jupiter and begged him to give fire to men, so that they might have a little comfort through the long, dreary months of winter.
“Not a spark will I give,” said Jupiter. “No, indeed! Why, if men had fire they might become strong and wise like ourselves, and after a while they would drive us out of our kingdom. Let them shiver with cold, and let them live like the beasts. It is best for them to be poor and ignorant, that so we Mighty Ones may thrive and be happy.”
Prometheus made no answer; but he had set his heart on helping mankind, and he did not give up. He turned away, and left Jupiter and his mighty company forever.
As he was walking by the shore of the sea he found a reed, or, as some
say, a tall stalk of fennel, growing; and when he had broken it off he
saw that its hollow center was filled with a dry, soft pith which would
burn slowly and keep on fire a long time. He took the long stalk in his
hands, and started with it towards the dwelling of the sun in the far
east.
“Mankind shall have fire in spite of the tyrant who sits on the mountain
top,” he said.
He reached the place of the sun in the early morning just as the
glowing, golden orb was rising from the earth and beginning his daily
journey through the sky. He touched the end of the long reed to the
flames, and the dry pith caught on fire and burned slowly. Then he
turned and hastened back to his own land, carrying with him the precious
spark hidden in the hollow center of the plant.
He called some of the shivering men from their caves and built a fire
for them, and showed them how to warm themselves by it and how to build
other fires from the coals. Soon there was a cheerful blaze in every
rude home in the land, and men and women gathered round it and were warm
and happy, and thankful to Prometheus for the wonderful gift which he
had brought to them from the sun.
It was not long until they learned to cook their food and so to eat like
men instead of like beasts. They began at once to leave off their wild
and savage habits; and instead of lurking in the dark places of the
world, they came out into the open air and the bright sunlight, and were
glad because life had been given to them.
After that, Prometheus taught them, little by little, a thousand things.
He showed them how to build houses of wood and stone, and how to tame
sheep and cattle and make them useful, and how to plow and sow and reap,
and how to protect themselves from the storms of winter and the beasts
of the woods. Then he showed them how to dig in the earth for copper and
iron, and how to melt the ore, and how to hammer it into shape and
fashion from it the tools and weapons which they needed in peace and
war; and when he saw how happy the world was becoming he cried out:
“A new Golden Age shall come, brighter and better by far than the old!”
II. How Diseases and Cares Came Among Men
Things might have gone on very happily indeed, and the Golden Age might
really have come again, had it not been for Jupiter. But one day, when
he chanced to look down upon the earth, he saw the fires burning, and
the people living in houses, and the flocks feeding on the hills, and
the grain ripening in the fields, and this made him very angry.
“Who has done all this?” he asked.
And some one answered, “Prometheus!”
Pandora's Box, by Marta Dahlig
“What! that young Titan!” he cried. “Well, I will punish him in a way
that will make him wish I had shut him up in the prison-house with his
kinsfolk. But as for those puny men, let them keep their fire. I will
make them ten times more miserable than they were before they had it.”
Of course it would be easy enough to deal with Prometheus at any time,
and so Jupiter was in no great haste about it. He made up his mind to
distress mankind first; and he thought of a plan for doing it in a very
strange, roundabout way.
In the first place, he ordered his blacksmith Vulcan, whose forge was in
the crater of a burning mountain, to take a lump of clay which he gave
him, and mold it into the form of a woman. Vulcan did as he was bidden;
and when he had finished the image, he carried it up to Jupiter, who
was sitting among the clouds with all the Mighty Folk around him. It was
nothing but a mere lifeless body, but the great blacksmith had given it
a form more perfect than that of any statue that has ever been made.
“Come now!” said Jupiter, “let us all give some goodly gift to this
woman;” and he began by giving her life.
Then the others came in their turn, each with a gift for the marvelous
creature. One gave her beauty; and another a pleasant voice; and another
good manners; and another a kind heart; and another skill in many arts;
and, lastly, some one gave her curiosity. Then they called her Pandora,
which means the all-gifted, because she had received gifts from them
all.
Pandora was so beautiful and so wondrously gifted that no one could help
loving her. When the Mighty Folk had admired her for a time, they gave
her to Mercury, the light-footed; and he led her down the mountain side
to the place where Prometheus and his brother were living and toiling
for the good of mankind. He met Epimetheus first, and said to him:
“Epimetheus, here is a beautiful woman, whom Jupiter has sent to you to
be your wife.”
Prometheus had often warned his brother to beware of any gift that
Jupiter might send, for he knew that the mighty tyrant could not be
trusted; but when Epimetheus saw Pandora, how lovely and wise she was,
he forgot all warnings, and took her home to live with him and be his
wife.
Pandora was very happy in her new home; and even Prometheus, when he saw
her, was pleased with her loveliness. She had brought with her a golden
casket, which Jupiter had given her at parting, and which he had told
her held many precious things; but wise Athena, the queen of the air,
had warned her never, never to open it, nor look at the things inside.
“They must be jewels,” she said to herself; and then she thought of how
they would add to her beauty if only she could wear them. “Why did
Jupiter give them to me if I should never use them, nor so much as look
at them?” she asked.
The more she thought about the golden casket, the more curious she was
to see what was in it; and every day she took it down from its shelf and
felt of the lid, and tried to peer inside of it without opening it.
“Why should I care for what Athena told me?” she said at last. “She is
not beautiful, and jewels would be of no use to her. I think that I will
look at them, at any rate. Athena will never know. Nobody else will
ever know.”
She opened the lid a very little, just to peep inside. All at once there
was a whirring, rustling sound, and before she could shut it down again,
out flew ten thousand strange creatures with death-like faces and gaunt
and dreadful forms, such as nobody in all the world had ever seen. They
fluttered for a little while about the room, and then flew away to find
dwelling-places wherever there were homes of men. They were diseases and
cares; for up to that time mankind had not had any kind of sickness, nor
felt any troubles of mind, nor worried about what the morrow might bring
forth.
These creatures flew into every house, and, without any one seeing them,
nestled down in the bosoms of men and women and children, and put an end
to all their joy; and ever since that day they have been flitting and
creeping, unseen and unheard, over all the land, bringing pain and
sorrow and death into every household.
If Pandora had not shut down the lid so quickly, things would have gone
much worse. But she closed it just in time to keep the last of the evil
creatures from getting out. The name of this creature was Foreboding,
and although he was almost half out of the casket, Pandora pushed him
back and shut the lid so tight that he could never escape. If he had
gone out into the world, men would have known from childhood just what
troubles were going to come to them every day of their lives, and they
would never have had any joy or hope so long as they lived.
And this was the way in which Jupiter sought to make mankind more
miserable than they had been before Prometheus had befriended them.
Prometheus—Friend and Benefactor of Mankind
III. How the Friend of Men Was Punished
The next thing that Jupiter did was to punish Prometheus for stealing
fire from the sun. He bade two of his servants, whose names were
Strength and Force, to seize the bold Titan and carry him to the topmost
peak of the Caucasus Mountains. Then he sent the blacksmith Vulcan to
bind him with iron chains and fetter him to the rocks so that he could
not move hand or foot.
Vulcan did not like to do this, for he was a friend of Prometheus, and
yet he did not dare to disobey. And so the great friend of men, who had
given them fire and lifted them out of their wretchedness and shown them
how to live, was chained to the mountain peak; and there he hung, with
the storm-winds whistling always around him, and the pitiless hail
beating in his face, and fierce eagles shrieking in his ears and tearing
his body with their cruel claws. Yet he bore all his sufferings without
a groan, and never would he beg for mercy or say that he was sorry for
what he had done.
Year after year, and age after age, Prometheus hung there. Now and then
old Helios, the driver of the sun car, would look down upon him and
smile; now and then flocks of birds would bring him messages from
far-off lands; once the ocean nymphs came and sang wonderful songs in
his hearing; and oftentimes men looked up to him with pitying eyes, and
cried out against the tyrant who had placed him there.
Then, once upon a time, a white cow passed that way,–a strangely
beautiful cow, with large sad eyes and a face that seemed almost human.
She stopped and looked up at the cold gray peak and the giant body which
was chained there. Prometheus saw her and spoke to her kindly:
“I know who you are,” he said. “You are Io who was once a fair and happy
maiden in distant Argos; and now, because of the tyrant Jupiter and his
jealous queen, you are doomed to wander from land to land in that
unhuman form. But do not lose hope. Go on to the southward and then to
the west; and after many days you shall come to the great river Nile.
There you shall again become a maiden, but fairer and more beautiful
than before; and you shall become the wife of the king of that land, and
shall give birth to a son, from whom shall spring the hero who will
break my chains and set me free. As for me, I bide in patience the day
which not even Jupiter can hasten or delay. Farewell!”
Poor Io would have spoken, but she could not. Her sorrowful eyes looked
once more at the suffering hero on the peak, and then she turned and
began her long and tiresome journey to the land of the Nile.
Ages passed, and at last a great hero whose name was Hercules came to
the land of the Caucasus. In spite of Jupiter’s dread thunderbolts and
fearful storms of snow and sleet, he climbed the rugged mountain peak;
he slew the fierce eagles that had so long tormented the helpless
prisoner on those craggy heights; and with a mighty blow, he broke the
fetters of Prometheus and set the grand old hero free.
“I knew that you would come,” said Prometheus. “Ten generations ago I
spoke of you to Io, who was afterwards the queen of the land of the
Nile.”
“And Io,” said Hercules, “was the mother of the race from which I am
sprung.”
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