Prometheus
"Prometheus is... the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives, to the best and noblest ends."
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From Greek and Roman Mythology by William Sherman Fox, 1916.
Prometheus
"Prometheus is... the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives, to the best and noblest ends."
These words of the poet Shelley give us a clear view of Prometheus in his relation to the thought and religion of the Greeks. He was a paradoxical character. In his one person he was both less than god and "more than god, being wise and kind.'' His figure was clear where it represented the moral aspirations of the Hellenes, obscure where it touched their formal religion; it had just those lines which their imagination could not resist and which made it an inexhaustible literary theme.
Prometheus ("Forethinker”)was generally held to be the son of the Titan lapetos and Gaia (or Themis), and was the brother of Atlas and Epimetheus ("Afterthinker")
The legends are by no means in agreement as to the name of his wife, who is variously called Kelaino, Pandora, Pyrrha, Asia, and Hesione, all of which, it is worth noting, are epithets of the Earth Goddess. His marriage was fruitful, and among his children were sometimes counted Deukalion, Chimaireus, Aitnaios, lo, and Thebe. In many of the myths Prometheus and Hephaistos are curiously allied in their relations to human culture.
Although a Titan, Prometheus had espoused the cause of Zeus, thus manifesting his native sympathy for law and order; but as he was essentially a nobler type than Zeus himself, he could not long maintain the allegiance. When the chief Olympian found mankind hopelessly faulty and planned to create a new race in its place, Prometheus broke with him and defiantly became sponsor of the human cause. This generous devotion is the source of his power in myth.
In Hesiod's Theogony the story runs that a conference of gods and men was held at Sikyon to determine the homage owed by men to the gods. Acting as priest, Prometheus sacrificed an ox and divided it into two parts, one of which consisted of flesh and other edible portions enveloped in the skin of the animal, while the second was composed of bones and entrails alluringly garnished with strips of rich fat.
It was the hope of Prometheus that Zeus would be misled by appearances and choose the poorer part, but to the Olympian the deceit was too plain, and, in order that he might have an excuse for punishing men, he deliberately took the bones and entrails, and withheld the gift of fire from men. Moved with pity, Prometheus stole some embers and brought them to mankind hidden in a hollow stalk.
In some myths it is said that he took the fire from the very hearth of Zeus; in others, from the workshop of Hephaistos and Athene on Lemnos; in still others, from the fiery chariot of the sun. Through this sublime theft men were enabled to lift the ban of Zeus, to begin life anew, and little by little to evolve the arts and crafts.
But Prometheus paid the penalty for his trespass on the divine rights of Zeus to the exclusive control of fire. Zeus had him chained to a crag (or pillar)in the range of Caucasus and appointed an eagle to gnaw at his vitals, consuming each day what had been restored during the night just past.
Despite his many sufferings the spirit of Prometheus was unquenched, for he was comforted with the foreknowledge that some day he would be released and that Zeus would be overthrown even as Ouranos and Kronos had fallen. In due time his shackles were broken by Herakles and he was brought back to Olympos to serve his fellow-gods with his gift of prophecy. In one odd version of the story the rocks sank with Prometheus into the gloomy depths of Tartaros.
The notion that man was shaped from clay was relatively late. By the fifth century B.C. the belief in this process was general, and by the fourth it was the rule to identify Prometheus as the artist. From clay he fashioned both men and beasts and into them passed emanations of the divine fire which became their souls. The human-like boulders at Panopeus in Phokia were pointed out as material left over by him in the process of making men.
The myth of Prometheus teaches that the Greeks regarded all natural fire as originally divine, that it was at once the strongest and the subtlest of the forces of nature and the most potent factor in the advance of humanity. In the legend can be detected a plea for the dignity of perseverance and toil and the promise that they will bring their own reward in the form of increased efficiency. The picture of the noble suffering of Prometheus is testimony that very early the Greeks had a clear idea of self-sacrifice.
Fox, William Sherwood. Greek and Roman Mythology. Marshall Jones Co., 1916.
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