Prometheus

Prometheus is a foundational figure in Greek myth and thought. He is a trickster, who has been compared with similarly devious characters in other cultures and mythologies. Traditionally the son of the Titan Iapetus, he is most well-known for his theft of fire from Zeus. He is particularly closely aligned with the fortunes of the human race, for good or for ill. As such he provided a pivot around which social ideas could turn, and he underwent a number of significant literary reimaginings and reinterpretations. By contrast, his role in cult is highly circumscribed. In Hesiod, his attempt to trick Zeus out of the decent portion of meat provides an aetiology of sacrifice. The subsequent theft of fire (which Zeus removes from the world as punishment) is an attempt to ameliorate the lot of humanity in the harsh world of Zeus’s regime. Fire is important here both in its own right and by standing for crafts and technology more generally. Prometheus is punished by being chained to a pillar for an eagle to peck at his liver on a daily basis. The human race is punished through the figure of Pandora, sent to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus, and the jar of miseries that she allows to escape into the world. The narratives in which Prometheus is embedded in this period, and further narratives with which they are associated, are primarily stories of decline in both economic and moral terms. By the 5th century, these ideas are challenged, not least through more materialist thinking and through increased reflection on society and economics, and out of this a more progressive version of the Prometheus myth is articulated, where the fire stands less for the act of survival than for technological and social advancement. This version requires a revaluation of the roles of both Prometheus and Zeus. This tradition is best represented by the tragedy Prometheus Bound, which survives under the name of Aeschylus, but similar versions are found elsewhere, including Plato’s Protagoras (which may reflect the Sophist’s own teaching in some way) and Diodorus Siculus (again drawing on an earlier source). A third tradition features Prometheus not as the helper (or provider of bad advice) but as the creator of mankind out of clay. This is particularly associated with the fable tradition, and is found in Ovid and Lucan, but there may be traces of it already in Plato’s Protagoras. Reception of Prometheus in later centuries can draw on any of these three strands, or combinations thereof, although the most conspicuous and fertile sources for later interpretations have been the roles of Prometheus as creator or as supporter, teacher, and martyr for humanity.