348The world was restored. 348When Deucalion saw it empty, and the desolate lands keeping deep silence, with tears welling up he addresses Pyrrha thus: 'O sister, O wife, O only woman left alive, whom common race and descent from brothers, then marriage joined to me, and now dangers themselves join, of all the lands that the setting and the rising sun see, we two are the whole crowd; 355the sea possesses the rest. 356Even now this assurance of our life is not certain enough; 357the clouds still terrify my mind. 358What would your feelings be now, poor woman, if you had been snatched from the fates without me? 359in what way could you bear your fear alone?
360with whom to comfort you would you grieve? 361For I (believe me), if the sea held you too, would follow you, my wife, and the sea would hold me too. 363O, if only I could restore the peoples by my father's arts and pour souls into moulded earth! 365Now the mortal race survives in us two (so it has seemed good to the gods), and we remain as patterns of mankind.' 367He had spoken, and they wept. 367They resolved to pray to the heavenly power and seek help through the sacred lots. 369There is no delay: together they approach the waters of Cephisus, which, though not yet clear, were already cutting their familiar channel.
371Then, when they had sprinkled the waters they drew on their clothes and heads, they turn their steps to the shrine of the holy goddess, whose gables were pale with foul moss, and whose altars stood without fires. 375When they touched the steps of the temple, each fell forward on the ground and in fear kissed the cold stone, and so they said: 'If deities, won over by just prayers, relent, if the anger of the gods is turned aside, tell us, Themis, by what art the loss of our race may be repaired, and bring help, most gentle one, to a drowned world.' 381The goddess was moved and gave an oracle: 'Depart from the temple, veil your heads, loosen your girded garments, and throw the bones of your great mother behind your back.' 384They were long dumbfounded, and Pyrrha first breaks the silence with her voice and refuses to obey the goddess's commands, and with fearful lips asks her pardon, and fears to injure her mother's shade by throwing her bones.
388Meanwhile they go over again the words of the oracle given, obscure in their dark mysteries, and turn them over within themselves and between each other. 390Then the son of Prometheus soothes the daughter of Epimetheus with calm words and says, 'Either my shrewdness deceives me, or oracles are holy and urge no sin. 393The great mother is the earth; the stones in the earth's body, I think, are called bones; 394these we are ordered to throw behind our backs.' 395Although the Titan's daughter was moved by her husband's interpretation, still her hope is in doubt: so much do both distrust the heavenly warnings. 397But what harm will it do to try?
398They depart, veil their heads, ungird their tunics, and throw the stones as ordered behind their footsteps. 400The stones (who would believe this, unless antiquity stood as witness?) began to lay aside their hardness and their stiffness, to soften by degrees and, softened, to take on shape. 403Soon, when they had grown and a gentler nature had come to them, a certain human form could be seen, though not distinct, but like figures begun in marble, not finished enough and most like rough statues. 407Yet whatever part of them was moist with some juice and earthy was turned to the use of a body; 409what is solid and cannot bend is changed into bones; 410what was just now a vein remained under the same name; 411and in a short space, by the will of the gods, the stones thrown by the man's hands took on the appearance of men, and woman was restored from the woman's throwing.
414Hence we are a hard race, experienced in toil, and we give proof of the origin from which we were born.