38 PROMETHEUS HELPS MANKIND
pick up stones and throw them
backward over their heads. They
did so and wherever Deukalion’s
stones landed, the bodies of living
men immediately took form; where
Pyrrha’s came to rest, women
sprang up out of the ground.A trick backfires
Unlike Appolodorus, Hesiod’s
genealogy incorporated mortal
humans almost from the beginning,
though he said little about their
origins. They were mentioned asexisting during the reign of Kronos,
but only incidentally, emerging into
the foreground only in the age of
the Olympian gods.
When Zeus summoned
humans for a meeting on the sort
of sacrifices they would have to
offer him, Prometheus intervened
on their behalf. Wrapping some
choice beef inside an ugly oxhide,
and a bundle of bones inside some
of the most delicious meat, he
offered Zeus the choice of which
sacrifices should be made to himthenceforth. Zeus appeared to have
fallen for the trick, asking for the
outwardly appealing bag of
bones—though Hesiod hints the
king of the gods may have chosen
this deliberately, to have an excuse
for hating humans.
Either way, Zeus was enraged.
Far from easing people’s plight
as he had intended, Prometheus’s
cunning made them victims of
Zeus’s rage. The angry god hid
the secret of fire from his human
subjects. This not only deprived
them of warmth and comfort but
also hindered human progress.Out in the cold
Without fire or the technologies
it makes possible, mortals existed
in a miserable state of subsistence.
They foraged for food in darkness,
damp, and cold, with only animal
skins for clothes, surviving on raw
roots, berries, and fruits (when they
were in season) and uncooked
carrion. They used twigs asThe Five Ages
Kronos’s reign may have been
unpleasant for the Titan’s
children but was, says Hesiod,
a “Golden Age” for mortal
humans. Sickness, war, and
discord were unknown; men
and women lived for centuries,
while trees and fields yielded
their produce freely through an
endless spring. The rise of Zeus
saw an immediate decline in
human fortunes. The men and
women of this “Silver Age” lived
only a hundred years, most of it
spent in an extended childhood;when they finally grew up, they
were foolish and quarrelsome.
An “Age of Bronze” came
next: its men were warriors,
who spent their short lives
squabbling and fighting. The
“Heroic Age” which followed
was an improvement on the
Bronze Age in the sense that its
perennial wars took on a noble
and epic character. This was
the age of Homer’s Trojan War,
and very different from Hesiod’s
“Iron Age” in which he himself
lived—and in which we all live
now—in fearfulness, scarcity,
misery, and toil.Mortal men and women sprung up
fully formed from the stones thrown by
Deukalion and Pyrrha and repopulated
the Earth, as shown in Peter Paul
Rubens’s 1636 painting.The stones which
Deucalion threw
became men;
the stones which
Pyrrha threw
became women.
LibraryUS_036-039_Prometheus.indd 38 01/12/17 4:14 pm
ANCIENT GREECE 39
Prometheus was punished by
the gods for giving humans fire. He
was chained to Mount Caucasus to
endure constant torture, as depicted
by Jacob Jordaens (1640).Prometheus fashions the
first man from clay ...... saves his son from
Zeus’s flood ...... and steals fire from
the gods.... tricks Zeus with false
sacrifices ...Prometheus is punished
for his defiance.rudimentary tools and old bones for
weaponry, in what could scarcely
qualify even as a “primitive”
existence. As they fought a daily
battle to stave off starvation, any
possibility of shaping their wider
destiny was unthinkable.Stolen fire
Prometheus came to humanity’s
rescue. He took some glowing
embers from a blaze built by the
gods high up on Mount Olympus
and, secreting this fire inside a
hollow fennel stalk, he carried it
down to the little encampments
where mortal men and women
shivered on the plains below. Soon,
“visible from afar,” fires twinkled
across the length and breadth of
the peopled world. In that moment,
human life was instantly and
permanently transformed.
Heat, warmth, light, and safety
from predatory beasts was just the
start. In no time at all, humankind
began to thrive—smelting metal,
fashioning fine jewelry and strong
tools, and blacksmithing all kinds
of weapons, from hoes andhammers to spears and swords.
Each new innovation opened
the way to others—suddenly,
humanity was progressing at
a breakneck pace.Harsh punishment
Zeus was enraged by Prometheus’s
theft of fire. Not only had he been
defied in the most public way,
but his power over humanity had
been significantly weakened. Zeus
decided that Prometheus deserved
an eternal and painful punishment.
He had the thief seized by his
henchmen, Bia (“Violence”) and
Kratos (“Power”), and carried to a
high mountain peak. Here, with the
help of Hephaestus, the blacksmith
god, they chained Prometheus to a
rock. An eagle flew down, tore at
his abdomen, then pulled out the
living, pulsing liver, and gorged on
it. Despite the agony of this torture,
it was no more than a beginning for
the rebellious Titan. Each night his
internal organs and his skin grew
back, ready to be attacked afresh
by the eagle the next day.
For centuries, Prometheus was
tied to the rock. He was finally
rescued from his torments by
Herakles, who found him while
hunting for the elusive apples of the
Hesperides. Prometheus would only
give Herakles the apples’ location
after he killed the eagle and set
Prometheus free. Prometheus
was not the only one punished
for stealing fire from the gods.
Zeus also inflicted his rage upon
humankind, instructing Hephaestus
to create the woman Pandora to
punish the humans by bringing
them hardship, war, and death. ■It stung anew Zeus,
high thunderer in his spirit,
and he raged in his heart
when he saw among men
the far-seen beam
of fire.
TheogonyUS_036-039_Prometheus.indd 39 30/11/17 4:55 pm