Stole fire from the gods and carried it down in a hollow fennel stalk
Taken from Hephaestus's forge, or from the wheel of the sun
Myth · Greek
Prometheus
Greek mythology — Titan, champion of humankind
The Titan whose name means "forethought", the trickster who took the side of mortals against Zeus. He cheated the gods of the best of the sacrifice, stole fire back after Zeus withheld it, and was chained to a rock in the Caucasus where an eagle ate his liver every day for centuries. Aeschylus made him the archetype of defiance; Shelley and Mary Shelley made him the emblem of the modern age.
How to spot them
- ▸Chained to a crag with an eagle at his side; a stalk of fennel; the torch
- ▸Quiz clue: 'forethought', 'Iapetus', 'Mecone', 'the Caucasus', 'the eagle and the liver'
- ▸A Titan who backed the Olympians and then defied them
- ▸His brother's name means 'afterthought'
Stories & episodes
Chained to a rock while an eagle tore out his liver, which grew back each night
A punishment designed to be endless because he was immortal
Tricked the king of the gods into choosing bones wrapped in glistening fat
The division at Mecone, which fixed why the Greeks burned the bones and ate the meat
Moulded the first human beings out of clay and water
A later tradition, with Athena breathing life into the figures
Freed at last by a passing hero who shot the eagle
Heracles, on his way to the apples of the Hesperides
Knew which goddess would bear a son greater than his father
The secret about Thetis, which bought his release and married her off to a mortal
The subject of a tragedy in which the hero cannot move and never repents
Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, staged with the protagonist pinned to the rock throughout
Quick-fire facts
- •A Titan, son of Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene; brother of Atlas, Menoetius and Epimetheus
- •Epimetheus ('afterthought') accepted Pandora, the trap his brother had warned him against
- •Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days give the trick at Mecone and the theft of fire
- •Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound is the surviving play of a trilogy; the others are lost
- •Zeus's revenge on mankind for the fire was Pandora and her jar
- •Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (1820) reverses Aeschylus by refusing reconciliation with the tyrant
- •Mary Shelley subtitled Frankenstein 'The Modern Prometheus'
- •Element 61, promethium, is named after him; so is Saturn's moon Prometheus
- •Beethoven's ballet The Creatures of Prometheus (1801) supplied the theme of the Eroica finale
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Sources
- Hesiod — Theogony and Works and Days The sacrifice at Mecone, the theft of fire and the making of Pandora
- Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — Prometheus