as between
Prometheus and Elenko. Each possessed immeasurable stores, hitherto
inaccessible to the other. How trifling seemed the mythical lore which
Elenko had gleaned as the minister of Phoebus to that now imparted by
Prometheus! The Titan had seen all, and been a part of all that he had
seen. He had bowed beneath the sceptre of Uranus, he had witnessed his
fall, and marked the ocean crimson with his blood. He remembered hoary
Saturn a brisk active Deity, pushing his way to the throne of Heaven, and
devouring in a trice the stone that now resists his fangs for millenniums.
He had heard the shields of the Corybantes clash around the infant Zeus; he
described to Elenko how one day the sea had frothed and boiled, and
undraped Aphrodite had ascended from it in the presence of the gazing and
applauding amphitheatre of cloud-cushioned gods. He could depict the
personal appearance of Cybele, and sketch the character of Enceladus. He
had instructed Zeus, as Chiron had instructed Achilles; he remembered
Poseidon afraid of the water, and Pluto of the dark. He called to mind and
expounded ancient oracles heretofore unintelligible: he had himself been
told, and had disbelieved, that the happiest day of his own life would be
that on which he should feel himself divested of immortality. Of the
younger gods and their doings he knew but little; he inquired with interest
whether Bacchus had returned in safety from his Indian expedition, and
whether Proserpine had a family of divine imps.

Much more, nevertheless, had Elenko to teach Prometheus than she could
learn from him. How trivial seemed the history of the gods to what he now
heard of the history of men! Were these indeed the beings he had known
"like ants in the sunless recesses of caves, dwelling deep-burrowing in the
earth, ignorant of the signs of the seasons," to whom he had given fire and
whom he had taught memory and number, for whom he had "brought the horse
under the chariot, and invented the sea-beaten, flaxen-winged chariot of
the sailor?" And now, how poorly showed the gods beside this once wretched
brood! What Deity could die for Olympus, as Leonidas had for Greece? Which
of them could, like Iphigenia, dwell for years beside the melancholy sea,
keeping a true heart for an absent brother? Which of them could raise his
fellows nearer to the source of all Deity, as Socrates and Plato had raised
men? Who could portray himself as Phidias had portrayed Athene? Could the
M