Prometheus

For other uses, see Prometheus (disambiguation).

Prometheus, by Gustave Moreau

In Greek mythology, 'Prometheus (Ancient Greek, Προμηθεύς, "forethought") is the Titan chiefly honored for stealing fire from the gods in the stalk of a fennel plant and giving it to mortals for their use.

Worship

Prometheus had a small shrine in the Kerameikos, or potter's quarter, of Athens, not far from Plato's Academy.

I) Athens, chief city of Attika (Southern Greece)

"In the Akademia [outside Athens] is an altar to Prometheus, and from it they run to the city carrying burning torches. The contest is while running to keep the torch still alight; if the torch of the first runner goes out, he has no longer any claim to victory, but the second runner has. If his torch also goes out, then the third man is the victor. If all the torches go out, no one is left to be the winner."

II) Argos, chief city of Argolis (Southern Greece)

The Argives possessed a tomb of Prometheus, who honoured him as a dead hero.

(III) Opous, chief city of Lokris (Central Greece)

"As to the tomb of Prometheus, their account seems to me to be less probable than that of the Opuntians [who also claimed a grave] , but they hold to it nevertheless." [1]

Myth

Prometheus was a son of Iapetus by Clymene (one of the Oceanids). He was a brother of Atlas, Menoetius, and Epimetheus, but he surpassed all in cunning and deceit. He held no awe for the gods, and he ridiculed Zeus, though he fought alongside the gods against the other Titans. Prometheus, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, is credited with the creation of man "in godlike image" from clay; in others, this role is assigned to Zeus.[2] When he and his brother Epimetheus set out to make creatures to populate the earth under the orders of Cronos, Prometheus carefully crafted a creature after the shape of the gods: a man. According to the myths, a horrendous headache overcame Zeus and no healer of the realm was able to help the Lord of the Gods. Prometheus came to him and declared that he knew how to heal Zeus, taking a rock from the ground Prometheus proceeded to hit Zeus in the head with it. From out of Zeus' head popped the Goddess Athena, with her emergence Zeus' headache disappeared. Some myths attribute Hephestus to the splitting of the head rather than Prometheus.

Prometheus and Epimetheus journeyed to Earth from Olympus, they ventured to the Greek province of Boitia and made clay figures. Athena took the figures and breathed life into them, the figures that Prometheus had created became Man and honored him. The figures that his brother Epimetheus had created became the beasts, which turned and attacked him.

Zeus was angered by the brothers' actions, he forbade the pair from teaching Man the ways of civilization, Athena chose to cross Zeus and taught Prometheus so that he might teach Man.

For their actions, Zeus demanded a sacrifice from Man to the Gods to show that they were obedient and worshipful. The gods and mortal man had arranged a meeting at Mecone where the matter of division of sacrifice was to be settled. Prometheus slew a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, skillfully covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones artfully with shining fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose. Zeus, seeing through the trick, realised that in purposefully getting tricked he would have an excuse to vent his anger on mortal man, and thus chose the pile of bones (many sources say that Zeus did not, in fact, see through this trick). This also gives a mythological explanation of the practice of sacrificing only the bones to the gods, while man gets to keep the meat and fat.

Zeus in his wrath denied men the secret of fire. Prometheus felt sorry for his creations, and watched as they shivered in the cold and winter's nights. He decided to give his most loved creation a great gift that was a "good servant and bad master". He took fire from the hearth of the gods by stealth and brought it to men in a hollow wand of fennel, or ferule that served him instead of a staff. Thus mankind was warm. To punish Prometheus for this hubris (and all of mankind in the process), Zeus devised "such evil for them that they shall desire death rather than life, and Prometheus shall see their misery and be powerless to succor them. That shall be his keenest pang among the torments I will heap upon him." Zeus could not just take fire back, because a god or goddess could not take away what the other had given.

Zeus was enraged because the giving of fire began an era of enlightenment for Man, and had Prometheus carried to Mount Caucasus, where an eagle by the name of Ethon (offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna) would pick at his liver; it would grow back each day and the eagle would eat it again. In some stories, Zeus has Prometheus tortured on the mountain because he knows the name of the person who, according to prophecy, will overthrow the king of the gods. This punishment was to last 30,000 years. About 12 generations later, Heracles (known as Hercules in Roman mythology), passing by on his way to find the apples of the Hesperides as part of the Twelve Labours, freed Prometheus, in a bargain he had agreed with Zeus in exchange for Chiron's immortality, by shooting the eagle with an arrow. Zeus did not mind this time that Prometheus had again evaded his punishment, as the act brought more glory to Heracles, who was Zeus's son. Prometheus was invited to return to Olympus, though he still had to carry with him the rock to which he was chained.

To punish man for the offenses of Prometheus, Zeus told Hephaestus (Vulcan) to "mingle together all things loveliest, sweetest, and best, but look that you also mingle therewith the opposites of each." So Hephaestus took gold and dross, wax and flint, pure snow and mud of the highways, honey and gall; he took the bloom of the rose and the toad's venom, the voice of laughing water and the peacocks squall; he took the seas beauty and its treachery, the dog's fidelity and the wind's inconstancy, and the mother bird's heart of love and the cruelty of the tiger. All these, and other contraries past number, he blended cunningly into one substance and this he molded into the shape that Zeus had described to him. She was as beautiful as a goddess and Zeus named her Pandora which meant "all gifted".

Zeus breathed upon her image, and it lived. Zeus sent her to wed Prometheus' brother, Epimetheus, and although Prometheus had warned his brother never to accept gifts from the Olympians, Epimetheus ("hind-thought", as opposed to "fore-thought") was love-stricken, and he and Pandora wed. The Gods adorned the couple with many wedding gifts, and Zeus presented them with a beautifully wrought box. When Pandora opened the box, all suffering and despair was unleashed upon mankind. Zeus had had his revenge.

As the introducer of fire and inventor of crafts, Prometheus was seen as the patron of human civilization. Uncertain sources claim he was worshipped in ancient Rome as well along with other gods.

He was the father of Deucalion with Pronoia who is often confused as Clymene because the both of them are often called by the same other name, Asia.

Comparative Perspectives

In mythography, Prometheus may be classed among the trickster gods, such as Loki in Norse mythology. Like Prometheus, Loki is a giant rather than a god, is associated with fire, and is punished by being chained to a rock, and tormented by an animal. Yet Loki is malevolent, while Prometheus is a benefactor to humanity. In addition, Prometheus is very intelligent and acts with forethought, unlike the rash Loki. The similarities between the two characters may be coincidental. The motif is believed, by some, to have been borrowed from the Nart sagas of the Caucasian peoples, but the analogies with Loki seem to reveal an older Indo-European source.

The Prometheus myth bears striking similarities to the Adamic myth of the fall of man. The Promethean fire and the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge can be considered semiotic synonyms; there are clear links between Pandora and Eve. In fact the euphemistic name for Satan's former angelic form, Lucifer — actually, a Latin name for the planet Venus — literally means "light bearer," which seems to hint at the image of Prometheus carrying the divine fire down to man. Of course, Satan was not called Lucifer until St. Jerome translated the Hebrew phrase heilel ben-schahar in the Latin Vulgate, many centuries after the account of the Fall of Man was written, making a Prometheus-Lucifer/Satan connection rather unlikely.

Such a reading seems to identify Yahweh as Zeus and the serpent/Satan as the Prometheus figure. This reading is problematic for Judeo-Christian readers, since it seems to suggest that Yahweh is jealous, vengeful and keen to restrict humankind, while presenting Satan as a Prometheus-like champion of humanity. Satanism uses Prometheus as a symbolic aspect of Satan. (see the article Satanism) However, there is no actual evidence of actual borrowing between these two cultures. Old Testament scholarship and that of the contemporary cultures (Hittitology, Assyriology, and Egyptology) show that the beginning of Genesis is modeled more in-line with Ancient Near Eastern myth, so if there is any borrowing, it would be more likely that the Greeks borrowed from an Ancient Near Eastern culture.

What remains of Prometheus today ? Prometheus continues to be the mythical founder of Western humankind, but is also shrouded in ambiguity: he was the one who continuously strove to invent new techniques, although he was also guilty of defying a “natural order”, a type of “mad savant” who acted without thinking of the consequences.

You can sense in him the liberation of humankind from the oppressive and obscurantist domination of the gods; but he is also the one who moved away from the “the golden age” of the human species. At a cost of great suffering, he placed priority on progress and knowledge over easy submission and wealth.

Promethean Myth in Culture

The cloned horse Prometea, and Prometheus, a moon of Saturn, are named after this Titan, as is the asteroid 1809 Prometheus. The story of Prometheus has inspired many authors through the ages, and the Romantics saw Prometheus as a prototype of the natural daemon or genius.

Sculpture of Prometheus in front of the GE Building at the Rockefeller Center (New York City, New York, USA).

Digital Webbing Presents #26, featuring "The Prometheus Effect"

• Prometheus Bound – Aeschylus, 525-456 BC, a play
• Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan – Dirck van Baburen, 1623, a painting
• Prometheus – Ludwig van Beethoven, Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus, op. 43
• Prometheus – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a poem
• Prometheus – Lord Byron, a poem
• Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus – Mary Shelley, 1818, a novel
• Prometheus Unbound – Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1819, a play with poetic dialogue
• Prometheus – Thomas Kibble Hervey, 1832, a poem
• Prometheus – Franz Liszt, Symphonic Poem No. 5
• Prometheus: Poem of Fire – Alexander Scriabin, 1910, an orchestral poem
• Prometheus Unbound – Granville Bantock, 1933, a work for brass band
• Prometheus – Carl Orff, 1968, an opera
• Prometheus Books – a secular humanist publishing house founded in 1969 by Paul Kurtz
• Prometheus – Luigi Nono, 1992, the "Prometeo" Suite
• Prometheus – Jean-Pierre Nouvel, 2004, a symphonic poem
• Prometheus – Tony Harrison, 1998, a feature film with poetic dialogue linking the myth to industrial decline
• Prometheus on his Crag – Ted Hughes, 1979, a series of poems reflecting on the Prometheus myth
• Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise – Emperor, 2001, a black metal concept album
• Prometheus Rising – Robert Anton Wilson, 1983, a psychology guide book
• Prometheus – name adopted by Equality 7-2521 in Ayn Rand's novella Anthem after he attempts to bring forbidden knowledge to the people.
• The independent comic book title, Digital Webbing Presents #26, featured a cover story by writer Ryan Scott Ottney and artist Joe Dodd, titled "The Prometheus Effect". The story used Prometheus as a Superman-figure who had to pay a great penance for using his amazing powers to help mankind. This story mirrors the original myth of Prometheus bringing fire to man, and ultimately suffering eternal punishment at the hands of Zeus.
• In Garth Nix's series of novels, The Keys to The Kingdom, "The Old One" is very similar to Prometheus. He is punished for 'interfering with the secondary realms' by being chained to a rock and haveing his eyes gouged out each day only for them to grow back by next morning. One of the characters mentions that the punishment had changed, and he used to have his liver eaten by an eagle.
• In Mark Jasobson's novel Gojiro Joseph Prometheus Brooks is the inventor of the A-bomb.
• In 'Two Gentlemen of Verona', one of Shakespeare's first plays, Prometheus is a main character. He was named this due to his two-sided, inconstant nature in the choice between two women
• In the computer game Earthsiege (and its subsequent sequels) Prometheus is the primary villain, and controller of the Cybrids. In the compendium included with the Starsiege game, it tells of Prometheus bringing a malevolent fire to humanity.
• In the movie Superman Returns, the evil Lex Luthor (played by Kevin Spacey) compares himself to Prometheus, saying that he wants to "bring fire to the people."
• Post-punk band the Pop Group's debut album, Y, included a song titled "Thief of Fire." The track is heavily informed by Promethean symbolism and the idea of bringing previously forbidden knowledge into the light of reason.
• Prometheus – the best-known persona of psychedelic trance musician Benji Vaughan
• The roleplaying game Promethean: The Created published in 2006 by White Wolf, Inc. features beings called "Prometheans", which are made from the dead and animated through ritual and a divine fire known as Pyros.
• In The X-Files episode The Post-Modern Prometheus, a modern-day geneticist has created a hideously deformed human. The title of the episode is an homage and reference to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) as well as James Whale's film adaptation.
• American Prometheus — biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. It received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.
• The band The Fire Theft pays tribute to the myth of Prometheus in their name.
• Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus are key figures in the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler. Through these figures Stiegler discusses the relation between anthropogenesis and technogenesis.
• In the novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, the main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is compared to Prometheus in that he brings a wealth of Martian knowledge to humans. He later shares a similar fate as his comparison.
• Prometheus Road by Bruce Balfour. Tom Elliot finds himself brought to finding a way to save his world from the "gods" — artificial intelligences — that rule his world. Using the titular "Prometheus Road" (a term for lucid dreaming) he must take the Jewel of Dreaming from the AIs and disrupt their reign.
• In Jasper Fforde's novels The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear Prometheus is getting married to Jack Spratt's daughter Pandora
• In the non-canon Star Trek novel I, Q written by the John de Lancie who portrayed the character Q it was revealed that Q spent several centuries chained up to a rock on Earth with animals and early humans tormenting him. He then said that primitive humans assumed he was some sort of god and that he was inspiration for both Prometheus and Loki.

External links

• Prometheus - A poem by Byron
• Prometheus & Biotechnology - A short article noting the similarities between Promethian legend and modern day biotechnology

References

• http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/prometheus.html
• http://messagenet.com/myths/bios/prometheus.html
• Hesiod, Theogony 510-616
• http://www.musiqueharmonie.fr/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=27

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