Prometheus

This article is about the Greek mythological figure. For other uses, see Prometheus (disambiguation).

Prometheus depicted in a sculpture by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam, 1762 (Louvre)

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Greek: Προμηθεύς, pronounced [promɛːtʰeús]) is a Titan, culture hero, and trickster figure who is credited with the creation of man from clay, and who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity (theft of fire), an act that enabled progress and civilization. He is known for his intelligence and as a champion of mankind.

The punishment of Prometheus as a consequence of the theft is a major theme of his mythology, and is a popular subject of both ancient and modern art. Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, sentenced the Titan to eternal torment for his transgression. The immortal Prometheus was bound to a rock, where each day an eagle, the emblem of Zeus, was sent to feed on his liver, which would then grow back to be eaten again the next day. (In ancient Greece, the liver was thought to be the seat of human emotions.) In some stories, Prometheus is freed at last by the hero Heracles (Hercules).

In another of his myths, Prometheus establishes the form of animal sacrifice practiced in ancient Greek religion. Evidence of a cult to Prometheus himself is not widespread. He was a focus of religious activity mainly at Athens, where he was linked to Athena and Hephaestus, other Greek deities of creative skills and technology.

In the Western classical tradition, Prometheus became a figure who represented human striving, particularly the quest for scientific knowledge, and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences. In particular, he was regarded in the Romantic era as embodying the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy: Mary Shelley, for instance, gave The Modern Prometheus as the subtitle to her novel Frankenstein (1818).

Etymology

The ancients believed that the name Prometheus derived from the Greek pro (before) + manthano (intelligence) and the agent suffix -eus, thus meaning "Forethinker". Plato contrasts Prometheus with his dull-witted brother Epimetheus, "Afterthinker". Writing in late antiquity, the Latin commentator Servius explains that Prometheus was so named because he was a man of great foresight (vir prudentissimus), possessing the abstract quality of providentia, the Latin equivalent of Greek promētheia (ἀπὸ τής πρόμηθείας).

Modern scientific linguistics suggests that the name derived from the Proto-Indo-European root that also produces the Vedic pra math, "to steal," hence pramathyu-s, "thief", cognate with "Prometheus", the thief of fire. The Vedic myth of fire's theft by Mātariśvan is an analog to the Greek account. Pramantha was the tool used to create fire.

Mythology

Hesiod

The Prometheus myth first appeared in the late 8th-century BC 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.

In the trick at Mecone, a sacrificial meal marking the "settling of accounts" between mortals and immortals, Prometheus played a trick against Zeus (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.

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. Prometheus, however, stole back fire in a giant fennel-stalk and restored it to humanity. This further enraged Zeus, who sent Pandora, the first woman, to live with humanity.

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."

Prometheus, in eternal punishment, is chained to a rock in the Caucasus, Kazbek Mountain, where his liver is eaten daily by an eagle, only to be regenerated by night, due to his immortality. The liver is also a regenerative organ. The eagle, a symbol of Zeus Himself. Years later, the Greek hero Heracles (Hercules) slays the eagle and frees Prometheus from his chains.

Hesiod revisits the story of Prometheus in the Works and Days (lines 42–105). Here, the poet expands upon Zeus's reaction to the theft of fire. 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 sent Pandora in retaliation. Despite Prometheus' warning, Epimetheus accepted 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". Pandora shut the lid of the jar too late to contain all the evil plights that escaped, but foresight remained in the jar, giving humanity hope.

Angelo Casanova, 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 is interpreted by Casanova as a post-Hesiodic interpolation.

Aeschylus

Prometheus Bound, perhaps the most famous treatment of the myth to be found among the Greek tragedies, is traditionally attributed to the 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus. 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.

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 wanted to obliterate the human race, but that he somehow stopped him.

Heracles freeing Prometheus from his torment by the eagle (Attic black-figure cup, c. 500 BC)

Moreover, Aeschylus anachronistically and artificially injects Io, another victim of Zeus's violence and ancestor of Heracles, into Prometheus' story. Finally, just as Aeschylus gave Prometheus a key role in bringing Zeus to power, he also attributed to him secret knowledge that could lead to Zeus's downfall: Prometheus had been told by his mother Gaia of a potential marriage that would produce a son who would overthrow Zeus. Fragmentary evidence indicates that Heracles, as in Hesiod, frees the Titan in the trilogy's second play, Prometheus Unbound. It is apparently not until Prometheus reveals this secret of Zeus's potential downfall that the two reconcile in the final play, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer or Prometheus Pyrphoros, a lost tragedy by Aeschylus.

Prometheus Bound also includes two mythic innovations of omission. The first is the absence of Pandora's story in connection with Prometheus' own. Instead, Aeschylus includes this one oblique allusion to Pandora and her jar that contained Hope (252): "[Prometheus] caused blind hopes to live in the hearts of men." Second, Aeschylus makes no mention of the sacrifice-trick played against Zeus in the Theogony.

These innovations reflect the play's thematic reversal of the Hesiodic myth. In Hesiod, the story of Prometheus (and, by extension, of Pandora) serves to reinforce the theodicy of Zeus: he is a wise and just ruler of the universe, while Prometheus is to blame for humanity's unenviable existence. In Prometheus Bound, this dynamic is transposed: Prometheus becomes the benefactor of humanity, while every character in the drama (except for Hermes, a virtual stand-in for Zeus) decries the Olympian as a cruel, vicious tyrant.

Other authors

Creation of humanity by Prometheus as Athena looks on (Roman-era relief, 3rd century AD)

Prometheus watches Athena endow his creation with reason (painting by Christian Griepenkerl, 1877)

Some two dozen other Greek and Roman authors retold and further embellished the Prometheus myth into the 4th century AD. The most significant detail added to the myth found in, e.g., Sappho, Plato, Aesop and Ovid — was the central role of Prometheus in the creation of the human race. According to these sources, Prometheus fashioned humans out of clay. In the dialogue Protagoras, Protagoras asserts that the gods created humans and all the other animals, but it was left to Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus to give defining attributes to each. As no physical traits were left when the pair came to humans, Prometheus decided to give them fire and other civilizing arts.

Although perhaps made explicit in the Prometheia, later authors such as Hyginus, the Bibliotheca, and Quintus of Smyrna would confirm that Prometheus warned Zeus not to marry the sea nymph Thetis. She is consequently married off to the mortal Peleus, and bears him a son greater than the father — Achilles, Greek hero of the Trojan War. Pseudo-Apollodorus moreover clarifies a cryptic statement (1026–29) made by Hermes in Prometheus Bound, identifying the centaur Chiron as the one who would take on Prometheus' suffering and die in his place.

Reflecting a myth attested in Greek vase paintings from the Classical period, Pseudo-Apollodorus places the Titan (armed with an axe) at the birth of Athena, thus explaining how the goddess sprang forth from the forehead of Zeus.

Other minor details attached to the myth include: the duration of Prometheus' torment; the origin of the eagle that ate the Titan's liver (found in Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus); Pandora's marriage to Epimetheus (found in Pseudo-Apollodorus); myths surrounding the life of Prometheus' son, Deucalion (found in Ovid and Apollonius of Rhodes); and Prometheus' marginal role in the myth of Jason and the Argonauts (found in Apollonius of Rhodes and Valerius Flaccus).

Anecdotally, the Roman fabulist Phaedrus attributes to Aesop a simple etiology for homosexuality, in Prometheus' getting drunk while creating the first humans and misapplying the genitalia.

Religious cult

Despite his importance to the myths and imaginative literature of ancient Greece, the religious cult of Prometheus during the Archaic and Classical periods seems to have been limited. Writing in the 2nd century AD, the satirist Lucian points out that while temples to the major Olympians were everywhere, none to Prometheus is to be seen.

Heracles freeing Prometheus, relief from the Temple of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias

Athens was the exception. The altar of Prometheus in the grove of the Academy was the point of origin for several significant processions and other events regularly observed on the Athenian calendar. For the Panathenaic festival, arguably the most important civic festival at Athens, a torch race began at the altar, which was located outside the sacred boundary of the city, and passed through the Kerameikos, the district inhabited by potters and other artisans who regarded Prometheus and Hephaestus as patrons. The race then traveled to the heart of the city, where it kindled the sacrificial fire on the altar of Athena on the Acropolis to conclude the festival. These footraces took the form of relays in which teams of runners passed off a flaming torch. According to Pausanias (2nd century AD), the torch relay, called lampadedromia or lampadephoria, was first instituted at Athens in honor of Prometheus. By the Classical period, the races were run by ephebes also in honor of Hephaestus and Athena. Prometheus' association with fire is the key to his religious significance and to the alignment with Athena and Hephaestus that was specific to Athens and its "unique degree of cultic emphasis" on honoring technology. The festival of Prometheus was the Prometheia. The wreaths worn symbolized the chains of Prometheus.

Pausanias recorded a few other religious sites in Greece devoted to Prometheus. Both Argos and Opous claimed to be Prometheus' final resting place, each erecting a tomb in his honor. The Greek city of Panopeus had a cult statue that was supposed to honor Prometheus for having created the human race there.

In Greek art

Prometheus' torment by the eagle and his rescue by Heracles were popular subjects in vase paintings of the 6th to 4th centuries BC. He also sometimes appears in depictions of Athena's birth from Zeus' forehead. There was a relief sculpture of Prometheus with Pandora on the base of Athena's cult statue in the Athenian Parthenon of the 5th century BC.

Comparative mythology

The two most prominent aspects of the Prometheus myth have parallels within the beliefs of many cultures throughout the world; see creation of man from clay and theft of fire.

In Georgian mythology, Amirani is a culture hero who challenged the chief god, and like Prometheus was chained on the Caucasian mountains where birds would eat his organs.

Some Gnostics identified Prometheus with Lucifer, with the theft of fire from heaven embodied by the fall of Lucifer "the Light Bearer".

The Literary Post-renaissance tradition

Mythological narrative of Prometheus by Piero di Cosimo (1515)

See also: Prometheus in popular culture

The myth of Prometheus has been a favorite theme of Western art and literature in the post-renaissance and post-enlightenment tradition, and occasionally in works produced outside the West.

Literature

For the Romantic era, Prometheus was the rebel who resisted all forms of institutional tyranny epitomized by Zeus — church, monarch, and patriarch. The Romantics drew comparisons between Prometheus and the spirit of the French Revolution, Christ, the Satan of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the divinely inspired poet or artist. Prometheus is the lyrical "I" who speaks in Goethe's Sturm und Drang poem "Prometheus" (written c. 1772–74, published 1789), addressing God (as Zeus) in misotheist accusation and defiance. In Prometheus Unbound (1820), a four-act lyrical drama, Percy Bysshe Shelley rewrites the lost play of Aeschylus so that Prometheus does not submit to Zeus (under the Latin name Jupiter), but instead supplants him in a triumph of the human heart and intellect over tyrannical religion. Lord Byron's poem "Prometheus" also portrays the Titan as unrepentant. Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus", in reference to the novel's themes of the over-reaching of modern humanity into dangerous areas of knowledge.

Goethe and the Prometheus-Ganymede poems from 1772-1774

"Prometheus" is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in which a character based on the mythic Prometheus addresses God (as Zeus) in a romantic and misotheist tone of accusation and defiance. The poem was written between 1772 and 1774. It was first published fifteen years later in 1789. It is an important work as it represents one of the first encounters of the Prometheus myth with the literary Romantic movement identified with Goethe and with the Sturm und Drang movement.

The poem has appeared in Volume II of Goethe's poems (in his Collected Works) in a section of Vermischte Gedichte (assorted poems), shortly following the Harzreise im Winter. It is immediately followed by "Ganymed", and the two poems and written as informing each other according to Goethe's plan in their actual writing. Prometheus (1774) was originally planned as a drama but never completed by Goethe, though the poem is inspired by it. Prometheus is the creative and rebellious spirit rejected by God, and who angrily defies him and asserts himself; Ganymede, by direct contrast, is the boyish self who is both adored and seduced by God. As a high Romantic poet and a humanist poet, Goethe presents both identities as contrasting aspects of the Romantic human condition.

The poem offers direct biblical connotations for the Prometheus myth which was unseen in any of the ancient Greek poets dealing with the Prometheus myth in either drama, tragedy, or philosophy. The intentional use of the German phrase "Da ich ein Kind war..." ("When I was a child"): the use of Da is distinctive, and with it Goethe directly applies the Lutheran translation of Saint Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, 13:11: "Da ich ein Kind war, da redete ich wie ein Kind..." ("When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things"). Goethe's Prometheus is significant for the contrast it evokes with the biblical text of the Corinthians rather than for its similarities.

Prometheus among Kafka and the Modern Poets

Prometheus (1909) by Otto Greiner

Franz Kafka (d. 1924) wrote a short piece on Prometheus, outlining what he saw as the four aspects of his myth:

According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.
According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.
According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.
There remains the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.

The British poet Ted Hughes titled a 1973 collection of poems Prometheus On His Crag. The Nepali poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota (d. 1949) wrote an epic entitled Prometheus (प्रमीथस).

The Aesthetic Post-Renaissance tradition

Classical music, opera, and ballet

Works of classical music, opera, and ballet directly or indirectly inspired by the myth of Prometheus include:

• Beethoven, The Creatures of Prometheus (1801), ballet.
• Franz Liszt, Prometheus (1850), Symphonic Poem No. 5 (S.99).
• Hugo Wolf, Prometheus (Bedecke deinen Himmel, Zeus, 1889), part of his Goethe-lieder for voice and piano, later arranged for orchestra and voice.
• Alexander Scriabin, Prometheus: Poem of Fire, Opus 60 (1910), for orchestra.
• Gabriel Fauré, Prométhée (1910)
• Carl Orff, Prometheus (1968), opera using Aeschylus' original Greek Prometheia.
• Charles-Valentin Alkan, Grande sonate 'Les quatre âges' (1847), 4th movement entitled "Prométhée enchaîné" (Prometheus Bound)

In painting

• 
  Chained Prometheus (1611–12), by Peter Paul Rubens
• 
  Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan (1623), by Dirck van Baburen
• 
  Prometheus (1868), by Gustave Moreau
• 
  Prometheus (1927), by José Clemente Orozco, at Pomona College

In landscape painting

• 
  Prometheus Chained on the Snowy Peaks of the Caucasus by Francesco Foschi (1710–1780)
• 
  Prometheus Bound by Thomas Cole (1801–1848)

In sculpture

• 
  Paul Manship, 1933 (Rockefeller Center)
• 
  Jacques Lipchitz, 1943 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• 
  Menashe Kadishman, 1980–87 (Meyerhoff Art Education Center, Tel Aviv)

Science

Prometheus by Theodoor Rombouts (1597–1637)

The myth of Prometheus, with its theme of invention and discovery, has been used in science-related names and as a metaphor for scientific progress.

• The cloned horse Prometea, and Prometheus, a moon of Saturn, are named after this Titan, as is the asteroid 1809 Prometheus.
• The name of the sixty-first element, promethium, is derived from Prometheus.
• The Prometheus Society is a High IQ society. The name of its magazine, Gift of Fire, is explained by the ancient association of fire with mental gifts.
• Prometheus Books, a publishing company for scientific, educational, and popular books, especially those relating to secular humanism or scientific skepticism, takes its name from the myth.
• The Prometheus Award is given by the Libertarian Futurist Society for Libertarian science fiction.
• In 1983 Robert Anton Wilson published a non-fiction book called Prometheus Rising (which was followed by Quantum Psychology)
• Scientific and medical literature about liver regeneration often alludes to Prometheus and the devouring and daily regrowth of his liver. Some think the myth even indicates that the ancient Greeks knew about the liver’s remarkable capacity for self-repair. The Greek word for liver, hēpar, hepat- (ἧπαρ, cf. English "hepatitis", "hepatology", etc.) is derived from the verb hēpaomai (ἠπάομαι), meaning "mend, repair". While others doubt the significance to Greek medical knowledge, Prometheus's name is associated with biomedical companies involved in regenerative medicine.

See also

• Olympic flame
• Prometheism, a political project in Poland named for Prometheus.

References

• Alexander, Hartley Burr. The Mythology of All Races. Vol 10: North American. Boston, 1916.
• Beall, E.F., Hesiod's Prometheus and Development in Myth, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1991), pp. 355–371
• Dougherty, Carol. Prometheus. Taylor & Francis, 2006. ISBN 0-415-32406-8, ISBN 978-0-415-32406-9
• Erdoes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz, edds. American Indian Myths and Legends. New York, 1984.
• Fortson, Benjamin. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
• Judson, Katharine B. Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest. Chicago, 1912.
• Lamberton, Robert. Hesiod, Yale University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-300-04068-7
• Swanton, John. "Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians." Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88: 1929.
• Verdenius, Willem Jacob, "A Commentary on Hesiod: Works and Days, Vv. 1–382", Brill, 1985, ISBN 90-04-07465-1
• West, M.L., "Hesiod, Theogony, ed. with prolegomena and commentary", Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966
• West, M.L., "Hesiod, Works and Days, ed. with prolegomena and commentary", Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978
• Westervelt, W.D. Legends of Maui – a Demigod of Polynesia, and of His Mother Hina. Honolulu, 1910.
• Williamson, George S. The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago, 2004).

Further reading

• Fernandes, Ângela, "Human values and spiritual values: Traces of Prometheus in Portuguese literature and criticism", in journal Neohelicon, Akadémiai Kiadó, co-published with Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Volume 34, Number 1 / June, 2007, pp. 41–49
• Kerényi, Carl, (Translated by Ralph Manheim) "Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence", Princeton University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-691-01907-X

External links

• Theoi Text, Theogony
• Theoi Text, Works and Days
• Theoi Mythology, Prometheus
• Theoi Mythology, Pronoea
• GML, Prometheus
• Messagenet, Prometheus
• Prometheus, a poem by Noevel (French)
• Prometheus, a poem by Byron
• Book "Prometheus Bound" (free download – two volumes about 600 pages)