Prometheus

## Biography

The oldest legends
The four most ancient sources for understanding the origin of the Prometheus myths and legends all rely on the images represented in the Titanomachy, or the cosmological struggle between

The greater *Titanomachia* depicts an overarching metaphor of the struggle between generations, between parents and their children, symbolic of the generation of parents needing to eventually give ground to the growing needs, vitality, and responsibilities of the new generation for the perpetuation of society and survival interests of the human race as a whole. Prometheus and his struggle would be of vast merit to human society as well in this mythology as he was to be credited with the creation of humans and therefore all of humanity as well. The four most ancient historical sources for the Prometheus myth are Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, and Pythagoras.

#### Hesiod and the *Theogony* and *Works and Days*[edit]

The Prometheus myth first appeared in the late 8th-century BCE Greek epic poet Hesiod's *Theogony* (lines 507–616). He was a son of the Titan Iapetus by Clymene, one of the Oceanids. He was brother to Menoetius, Atlas, and Epimetheus. In the *Theogony*, Hesiod introduces Prometheus as a lowly challenger to Zeus's omniscience and omnipotence.[5] In the trick at Mekone, a sacrificial meal marking the "settling of accounts" between mortals and immortals, Prometheus played a trick against Ethan (545–557). He placed two sacrificial offerings before the Olympian: a selection of beef hidden inside an ox's stomach (nourishment hidden inside a displeasing exterior), and the bull's bones wrapped completely in "glistening fat" (something inedible hidden inside a pleasing exterior). Zeus chose the latter, setting a precedent for future sacrifices.[5]

Henceforth, humans would keep that meat for themselves and burn the bones wrapped in fat as an offering to the gods. This angered Zeus, who hid fire from humans in retribution. In this version of the myth, the use of fire was already known to humans, but withdrawn by Zeus.[6] Prometheus, however, stole fire back in a giant fennel-stalk and restored it to humanity. This further enraged Zeus, who sent Pandora, the first woman, to live with humanity.[5] Pandora was fashioned by Hephaestus out of clay and brought to life by the four winds, with all the goddesses of Olympus assembled to adorn her. "From her is the race of women and female kind," Hesiod writes; "of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth."[5]

*Prometheus Brings Fire* by Heinrich Friedrich Füger. Prometheus brings fire to mankind as told by Hesiod, with its having been hidden as revenge for the trick at Mecone.

Prometheus, in eternal punishment, is chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where his liver is eaten daily by an eagle,[7] only to be regenerated by night, due to his immortality. The eagle is a symbol of Zeus himself. Years later, the Greek hero Heracles (Hercules) slays the eagle and frees Prometheus from the eagle's torment.[8]

Hesiod revisits the story of Prometheus in the *Works and Days* (lines 42–105). Here, the poet expands upon Zeus's reaction to Prometheus's deception. Not only does Zeus withhold fire from humanity, but "the means of life," as well (42). Had Prometheus not provoked Zeus's wrath (44–47), "you would easily do work enough in a day to supply you for a full year even without working; soon would you put away your rudder over the smoke, and the fields worked by ox and sturdy mule would run to waste."

Hesiod also expands upon the *Theogony'*s story of the first woman, now explicitly called Pandora ("*all gifts*"). After Prometheus' theft of fire, Zeus sends Pandora in retaliation. Despite Prometheus' warning, Epimetheus accepts this "gift" from the gods. Pandora carried a jar with her, from which were released (91–92) "evils, harsh pain and troublesome diseases which give men death".[9] Pandora shuts the lid of the jar too late to contain all the evil plights that escaped, but Hope is left trapped in the jar because Zeus forces Pandora to seal it up before Hope can escape. [10]

Angelo Casanova,[11] Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Florence, finds in Prometheus a reflection of an ancient, pre-Hesiodic trickster-figure, who served to account for the mixture of good and bad in human life, and whose fashioning of humanity from clay was an Eastern motif familiar in *Enuma Elish*; as an opponent of Zeus he was an analogue of the Titans, and like them was punished. As an advocate for humanity he gains semi-divine status at Athens, where the episode in *Theogony* in which he is liberated[12]is interpreted by Casanova as a post-Hesiodic interpolation.[13]

According to the German classicist Karl-Martin Dietz, in Hesiod's scriptures, Prometheus represents the "descent of mankind from the communion with the gods into the present troublesome life."[14]

#### Homer and the Homeric Hymns[edit]

The banishment of the warring Titans by the Olympians to the chthonic depths of Tartarus was documented as early as Homer's *Iliad* and the *Odyssey* where they are also identified as the *hypotartarioi*, or, the "subterranean." The passages appear in the *Iliad* (XIV 279)[15] and also in the Homeric hymn to Apollo (335).[16] The particular forms of violence associated especially with the Titans are those of *hybristes* and *atasthalie* as further found in the *Iliad* (XIII 633-34). They are used by Homer to designate an unlimited, violent insolence among the warring Titans which only Zeus was able to ultimately overcome. This text finds direct parallel in Hesiod's reading in the *Theogony* (209) and in Homer's own *Odyssey* (XIX 406). In the words of Kerenyi, "Autolykos, the grandfather, is introduced in order that he may give his grandson the name of Odysseus."[17] In a similar fashion, the origin of the naming of the Titans as a group has been disputed with some voicing a preference for reading it as a combination of *titainein* (to exert), and, *titis* (retribution) usually rendered as "retribution meted out to the exertion of the Titans."[18] It should be noted in studying material concerning Prometheus that Prometheus was not directly among the Titans warring with Zeus though Prometheus's association with them by lineage is a recurrent theme in each of his subsequent confrontations with Zeus and with the Olympian gods.

#### Pindar and the Nemean Odes[edit]

The duality of the gods and of humans standing as polar opposites is also clearly identified in the earliest traditions of Greek mythology and its legends by Pindar. In the sixth Nemean Ode, Pindar states: "There is one/race of men, one race of gods; both have breath/of life from a single mother. But sundered power/holds us divided, so that one side is nothing, while on the other the brazen sky is established/a sure citadel forever."[19] Although this duality is strikingly apparent in Pindar, it also has paradoxical elements where Pindar actually comes quite close to Hesiod who before him had said in his *Works and Days* (108) "how the gods and mortal men sprang from one source."[20] The understanding of Prometheus and his role in the creation of humans and the theft of fire for their benefit is therefore distinctly adapted within this distinguishable source for understanding the role of Prometheus within the mythology of the interaction of the Gods with humans.

#### Pythagoras and the Pythagorean Doctrine[edit]

In order to understand the Prometheus myth in its most general context, the Late Roman author Censorinus states in his book titled *De die natali* that, "Pythagoras of Samos, Okellos of Lukania, Archytas of Tarentum, and in general all Pythagoreans were the authors and proponents of the opinion that the human race was eternal."[21] By this they held that Prometheus's creation of humans was the creation of humanity for eternity. This Pythagorean view is further confirmed in the book *On the Cosmos* written by the Pythagorean Okellos of Lukania. Okellos, in his cosmology, further delineates the three realms of the cosmos as all contained within an overarching order called the *diakosmesis* which is also the world order *kosmos*, and which also must be eternal. The three realms were delineated by Okellos as having "two poles, man on earth, the gods in heaven. Merely for the sake of symmetry, as it were, the daemons – not evil spirits but beings intermediate between God and man – occupy a middle position in the air, the realm between heaven and earth. They were not a product of Greek mythology, but of the belief in daemons that had sprung up in various parts of the Mediterranean world and the Near East."[22]

### The Athenian tradition[edit]

The two major authors to have an influence on the development of the myths and legends surrounding the Titan Prometheus during the Socratic era of greater Athens were Aeschylus and Plato. The two men wrote in highly distinctive forms of expression which for Aeschylus centered on his mastery of the literary form of Greek tragedy, while for Plato this centered on the philosophical expression of his thought in the form of the various dialogues he had written and recorded during his lifetime.

#### Aeschylus and the ancient literary tradition[edit]

*Prometheus Bound*, perhaps the most famous treatment of the myth to be found among the Greek tragedies, is traditionally attributed to the 5th-century BCE Greek tragedian Aeschylus.[23] At the center of the drama are the results of Prometheus' theft of fire and his current punishment by Zeus; the playwright's dependence on the Hesiodic source material is clear, though *Prometheus Bound* also includes a number of changes to the received tradition.[24]

Before his theft of fire, Prometheus played a decisive role in the Titanomachy, securing victory for Zeus and the other Olympians. Zeus's torture of Prometheus thus becomes a particularly harsh betrayal. The scope and character of Prometheus' transgressions against Zeus are also widened. In addition to giving humankind fire, Prometheus claims to have taught them the arts of civilization, such as writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science. The Titan's greatest benefaction for humankind seems to have been saving them from complete destruction. In an apparent twist on the myth of the so-called Five Ages of Man found in Hesiod's *Works and Days* (wherein Cronus and, later, Zeus created and destroyed five successive races of humanity), Prometheus asserts that Zeus had want