Metamorphoses - Book I:75

Yet a holier living creature, more able to think high thoughts,

which could hold dominion over the rest, was still to be found.

So Man came into the world. Maybe the great artificer

made him of seed divine in a plan for a better universe.

Maybe the earth that was freshly formed and newly divorced

from the heavenly ether retained some seeds of its

kindred element -

earth, which Prometheus, the son of Iapetus, sprinkled with

raindrops

and moulded into the likeness of gods who govern the universe.

Where other animals walk on all fours and look to the ground,

man was given a towering head and commanded to stand

erect, with his gave uplifted to gaze on the stars of heaven.

Thus clay, so lately no more than a crude and formless substance,

was metamorphosed to assume the strange new figure of Man.