were the descendants of some god, is a modification of the belief that all men are descended from, or created by, gods.
(2) Origin of gods and men from the ocean. (Homer, Il., xiv. 246.)
(3) Origin from the earth itself. This conception may well be the oldest. According to Hesiod (Op. 107) the gods and men are born together, and to Homer (h. Ap. 336) their common parents are the earth-born Titans; in Pindar (Nem. vi. i) the mother of gods and men is the earth. The ancestors of various Greek races were αὐτόχθονες (see Preller-Robert, vol. i., p. 79).
(4) It was commonly thought that the first men were born of ash-trees or oaks. In Hesiod (Op. 145) Zeus makes the third or Bronze Age ἐκ μελιᾶν, the particular tree being perhaps suggested by the fact that the spear, appropriate to the violence of the age, was of ash-wood. So Hesych. μελίας καρπ́ος· τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος (Palaeph. 36, schol. on Il., xxii. 126). The Homeric οὐ γὰρ ἀπὸ δρυός ἐσσι παλαιφάτον οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης (Od. xix. 163) may ultimately be connected with this idea; of Plato, Ap. 34d, and other exx. in Leaf on Il. l.c. The Roman poets also made use of the legend (see Virgil, Aen., viii. 314, Juvenal, vi, 12).
(5) Birth from stones. The story of Deucalion and Pyrrha is familiar; it occurs first in Hesiod, fr. 35, and Pindar (Ol. ix. 44), and frequently in later literature. This, however, does not refer to an original creation of man, but belongs to the group of myths concerning the Flood.
(6) The myth of Prometheus. In Hesiod, Prometheus is only the giver of fire, and Hephaestus is the creator of the first woman; but it has been thought that this points to an original myth in which all human beings were created by Prometheus (see Norden in Fleckheisen's Jahrb., xix. suppl. 1893, p. 453). But the earliest certain
