Epimetheus (mythology)

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Epimetheus (mythology)

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Epimetheus (Greek:

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
) ("hindsight", literally "hind-thought," but in the manner of a fool looking behind, while running forward) was the brother of Prometheus

Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to human beings for their use....
("foresight", literally "fore-thought"), a pair of Titan

Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans ; were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary golden age. Their role as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Twelve Olympians, effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks borrowed from the Ancient Near East....
s who "acted as representatives of mankind" (Kerenyi 1951, p 207). They were the inseparable sons of Iapetus

Iapetus (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Iapetus, also Iapetos or Japetus , was a Titan , the son of Uranus and Gaia , and father of Atlas , Prometheus, Epimetheus , and Menoetius and through Prometheus, Epimetheus and Atlas an ancestor of the human race....
, who in other contexts was the father of Atlas

Atlas (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Atlas was the primordial Titan who supported the heavens. Atlas was the son of the Titan Iapetus and the Oceanid Asia or Klym?ne :...
. While Prometheus is characterized as ingenious and clever, Epimetheus is depicted as foolish.

According to Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
's use of the old myth in his Protagoras
Protagoras

Protagoras was a Pre-Socratic philosophy Ancient Greeks philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras , Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue....
, where he puts it in the mouth of the old philosopher, the twin Titans were entrusted with distributing the traits among the newly-created animals; Epimetheus was responsible for giving a positive trait to every animal, but when it was time to give man a positive trait, lacking foresight he found that there was nothing left.

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Encyclopedia

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek language

Prometheus

Titan (mythology)

Iapetus (mythology)

Atlas (mythology)

Plato

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
and gave it to man, and was punished for his impiety by being strapped to a mountain top and visited by an eagle who ate his liver every day. Since Prometheus was a Titan and therefore practically immortal, his liver grew back every day, so the eagle had to come back, keeping Prometheus in constant pain. As punishment to Man, Zeus created Pandora

Pandora

[Image:Pandora.jpg|right|thumb|300px|"The Creation of "[A]NESIDORA" on a white-ground kylix by the Tarquinia Painter, ca 460 BC In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman....
, the first woman, for Epimetheus, knowing that he would fall in love with her despite the warnings of his brother, the embodiment of foresight, who told him never to accept a gift from the Olympian gods

Twelve Olympians

The Twelve Olympians or younger gods, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal Greek Godss of the Greek pantheon , residing atop Mount Olympus, having supplanted the Titan or older gods in the greek mythogical narrative....
, with whom the primordial Titans, sprung from Mother Earth

Mother Earth

Mother Earth may refer to:*Mother Nature, a common metaphorical expression for the Earth and its biosphere as the giver and sustainer of life...
, were ever at odds.

In alternative versions, Prometheus is the one who fashions man from inert clay only to find his brother has used up the positive traits.

According to Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
, who related the tale twice, (Theogony, 527ff; Works and Days 57ff) Epimetheus and Pandora were married. Pandora had been given a covered pithos
Pithos

Pithos is the ancient Greek language word for a large storage jar of a characteristic shape. Originally used by western classical archaeologists to mean the jars uncovered by excavation in Crete and Greece, it has now been taken into the American English language as a general word for a storage jar from any cultural horizon....
, or storage jar, by Hermes

Hermes

Hermes is the messenger of the gods in Greek mythology. An Twelve Olympians, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of thieves and road travelers, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures, of invention, of general commerce, and of the cunni...
and was instructed never to open it. However, Hermes also gave her curiosity, so she opened it anyway, releasing all the misfortunes of mankind. The final thing released from Pandora's "Box" was Hope, a weak creature crushed at the bottom. As evil spread, Hope became stronger and was the only good thing that came from the jar. Pandora released evil onto the world and the will to look beyond it.

The daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora was Pyrrha

Pyrrha

In Greek mythology, Pyrrha was the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora and wife of Deucalion.When Zeus decided to end the Bronze Age with the great flood, Deucalion and his wife, Pyrrha, were the only survivors....
, who married Deucalion

Deucalion

In Greek mythology, Deucalion was a son of Prometheus and Pronoia. When the anger of Zeus was ignited against the hubris of the Pelasgians, Zeus decided to put an end to the Ages of Man with the Deluge #The flood of Deucalion....
and was one of the two who survived the deluge.

Epimetheus plays a key role in the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler is a France philosopher and Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. His best known work is Technics and Time, 1....
, and in particular in terms of his understanding of the relation between technogenesis and anthropogenesis. According to Stiegler, it is significant that Epimetheus is entirely forgotten in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
.