Encyclopedia
In
Greek mythology,
Prometheus, or Satan' 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
As a Titan of craft, Prometheus had a small shrine in the Keramikon, or potter's quarter, of
Athens, not far from
Plato's Academy.
I) ATHENS Chief City of Attika
"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
The Argives possessed a tomb of Prometheus, who honoured him as a dead hero.
III) OPOUS Chief City of Lokris
"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."
Myth
Prometheus was a son of Iapetus by Clymene . He was a brother of
Atlas, Menoetius, Logan, 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 was the creator of man. When he and 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.
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. Man went to Prometheus to inquire which parts belonged to Zeus and the Gods, and which parts belonged to Man. At Prometheus instructions, Man sacrificed an ox and placed the sacrifice into two bags. In the first bag the bones were placed with the fat from the ox placed on top to conceal them. In the second bag the meat was placed with the intestines on top to conceal them as well. Prometheus called for Zeus to choose which portion of the sacrifice he and the other Gods demanded. Zeus chose the bag with the fat on top, giving the Gods the bones of the ox as their sacrifice.
This angered Zeus and he 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 , 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 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 , 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 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 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. However, there is no actual evidence of actual borrowing between these two cultures. Old Testament scholarship and that of the contemporary cultures 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 ANE culture.
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.
...
, 525-456 BC, a play
...
, 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 is a novel [i] by Mary Shelley [i]. ...
, 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: The 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 a DC Comics villain of the Justice League of America
- Prometheus Books – a secular humanist publishing house founded in 1969 by Paul Kurtz
- Prometheus – Luigi Nono
...
, 1992, the "Prometeo" Suite
- 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
- Promethea is a comic book [i] series created by Alan Moore [i] and J.H. Williams III [i] with Mick Gray [i] ...
– Alan Moore & J.H. Williams III, 1998, a comic series - – Emperor, 2001, a black metal concept album
- "Prometheus & Bob" stop-motion animation short on the TV show, KaBlam!
- Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson [i] is a guide book of how to get from here to there, an amalgam [i] ...
– Robert Anton Wilson, 1983, a psychology guide book - Prometheus – name adopted by Equality 7-2521 in Ayn Rand's novella Anthem
- 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.
- Prometheus and, his brother, Epimetheus have been employed as 'archetypes' for introversion and extraversion by Carl G. Jung. [See: "The Type Type Problem in Poetry," found in his Psychological Types, Vol. 6 of the Collected Works, 166-288.]
- Prometheus is extensively parodied in Terry Pratchett's Discworld is a series [i] of thirty-four fantasy novels, a number of short stories, and ...
series. This is mainly through the fondly remembered Fingers-Mazda, commonly labeled the world's first thief who stole fire from the gods but was unable to fence it because it was too hot, but also through the Troll folk hero and demigod Monolith, who stole the secret of rock from the gods long before the appearance of Mazda. Apparently the secret of rock is that if you pick one up you can hit someone with it, a fact jealously guarded by the gods. In The Last Hero, Cohen the Barbarian attempts to finish what the thief started by 'returning fire to the gods', that is, destroying them. - In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the main character, Walter Lee Younger, is called "Prometheus" by his sister's suitor, George Murchison. The title is an insult, perhaps George's way of telling Walter that his ego, evidenced by his belief that he will be a successful businessman, is unwarranted. George also knows that Walter will never comprehend the allusion, which is an insult toward Walter in its own right.
- Rockefeller Center in New York City is a virtual shrine to Prometheus. His golden statue stands at the head of the central fountain, with lines from Aeschylus
...
inscribed below.
...
in Joseph Heller's novel
Catch-22 is a Promethean character. This is symbolized by the liver complaint that keeps him in the hospital, as well as by the American military that tries to have him killed.
- NASA's nuclear power and propulsion technology development program for the exploration of the *outer planets is called Project Prometheus.
- In the anime series Macross , Prometheus is the name given to one of the aircraft carriers that make up the arms of the SDF-1 Macross.
- In the City of Heroes comic, Prometheus is discovered to be the real living god who sacrificed himself to grant humanity fire. The Freedom Phalanx go before him to request his aid in granting their powers back, but Prometheus has grown bitter to humanity for forgetting him and dismissing him as a myth. On top of this, he sees The Statesman as a reincarnation of Zeus, and despises him more than anything else in the world.
- In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is a franchise of American science fiction [i] film [i]s and television series [i] ...
science fiction series, Prometheus is the name of the cargo ship that is the hub of the black market - In Star Trek, Starfleet operates a secret, experimental, highly advanced starship named the U.S.S. Prometheus.
- 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 the Battletech universe, primarily the MechWarrior/MechAssault video games, one of the Assault-Class mechs is called the Prometheus mech.
- There is a brand of Interactive Whiteboards called "Promethean"
- 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 video game , Prometheus is a series of Robots, designed to fight the human species to destroy it
- In the computer game Earthsiege 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. A person may consider Earthsiege and Starsiege separate universes, since Starsiege's back story conflicts in some areas from the Earthsiege storyline.
- In the movie Superman Returns, the evil Lex Luthor compares himself to Prometheus, saying that he wants to "bring fire to the people."
- In the science fiction series Babylon 5, the E.A.S. Prometheus, commanded by Captain Jankowski, fired the first shots in the Earth-Minbari war.
- In the SNES game Chrono Trigger, Prometheus is the true name for one of the party members, Robo.
- 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, confronting and thus shattering both learned and instinctual taboos.
- In Stanislaw Lem's sci-fi novel 'Solaris' psychologist Kelvin is sent to investigate an unresponsive space station orbiting a giant 'living' ocean/planet named Solaris. The capsule that takes him there is named the Prometheus. The ocean appears to be god-like, capable of producing immortal physical beings from the dark corners of the minds of the scientists trying desperately to contact it in some meaningful way. In Kelvin's case he wakes up to find his wife sitting by his bed, who had committed suicide many years before. The fall of man seems to be a chief theme: a theme of hubris and desire for that which is divine. In the greek Prometheus takes pity and brings divine fire, in Adam and Eve, Satan tempts Eve who in turn tempts Adam to taste divine knowledge. In Solaris there is no semi-divine character but man himself who brazenly attempts contact with a sentient being, science arrogantly believing contact with the divine to be easy and once achieved somehow meaningful.
- In the roleplaying game published in 2006 by White Wolf, Inc., the supernatural race prometheans, unnatural creatures made from the dead and animated through ritual and a divine fire known as Pyros, take their name from Prometheus. The legend of Prometheus is seen as a metaphor for the act of creating a promethean through Pyros in a similar way to how Prometheus brought the fire of the God's to mankind. Also in a similar way to how Zeus punished mankind for Prometheus' crimes, the prometheans are rejected by the natural world due to their artificial nature.
- In the Palladium Books role-playing game Rifts, an ancient, highly advanced race known as the Prometheans rule a planet called Phase World and have powers of space and time manipulation. The Prometheans are permanently out-of-phase with reality, limiting the effectiveness of weapons against them.
- In the Warhammer 40k universe, a substance called Promethium is used as fuel in flamethrower weapons and as a military-grade fuel. Also the Salamanders chapter of the first founding follow the PROMETHEAN CULT which believes strongly in fire and is based upon a world constantly changed bu volcanic activity, this is shown in the fighting style of the chapter with many flame based weapons.
- 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 as well as James Whale's film adaptation.
- At the beginning of Part Four, Chapter 3 of Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, the line "The Boy looked down at the body, spread-eagled like Prometheus, at the bottom of Frank's stairs." describing Pinkie looking at Spicer's dead body after he pushed him down the stairs.
- American Prometheus — a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
- The band The Fire Theft pays tribute to the myth of Prometheus in their name.
- Prometheus was the name of Earth's first interplanetary battlecruiser, built with the help of the Asgard, on the show Stargate SG-1. It was the only vessel of it class to be built. It was destroyed by an Ori orbital weapons platform. Throughout its time in service, it helped to prevent Earth's destruction/enslavement several times . It is succeded by the F-304 class, which includes the Daedalus, Odyssey, and Russian ship Korolev . See Daedalus class battlecruiser.
- Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus are key figures in the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler. Through these figures Stiegler comprehends the relation between anthropogenesis and technogenesis.
External links
Prometheus - A poem by Byron
References
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