106 THE MYTHS OF CREATION: THE GODS
- Aeschylus has Themis as the mother of Prometheus, sometimes identified as Ge-
Themis, to show that she is a goddess of earth, who possesses oracular power and is
associated with justice. The name Prometheus means "forethinker," or "the one who
plans ahead"; Epimetheus means "afterthinker," or "the one who plans too late."
Prometheus is often called merely "the Titan," since he is the son of the Titan Iapetus. - An early name of Sicyon.
- The name suggests a link with the typical conception of the fertility mother-goddess.
- He was worshiped by the potters in Athens alongside Hephaestus, with whom he
has several attributes in common. - For a comparison of Eve with Pandora and female deities throughout the ages, see
John A. Phillips, Eve: The History of an Idea (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). - Aeschylus even manages to characterize the brutish Kratos, the unreasonable and
monstrous henchman of a tyrannical Zeus. Kratos is the willing and anxious sup-
porter of a new regime rooted in force, the one thing he can understand; to him force-
ful power is the key to all: "Everything is hard except to rule the gods. For no one
except Zeus is free." - Any interpretation of Aeschylus' tragedy is difficult since precise details in the out-
come as conceived by Aeschylus are unknown. We have the titles and fragments of
three additional plays on the Prometheus legend attributed to Aeschylus: Prometheus
the Fire-Bearer, Prometheus Unbound, and Prometheus the Fire-Kindler. This last may be
merely another title for Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, or possibly it was a satyr play be-
longing either to the Prometheus trilogy itself or to another trilogy on a different
theme. We cannot even be sure of the position of the extant Prometheus Bound in the
sequence. - Io is the daughter of Inachus, whose family appears in the legends of Argos; see
pp. 516-517. - Versions other than that of Aeschylus have Zeus attempt to deceive Hera by trans-
forming Io into a cow, which Hera asked to have for herself. - The Egyptians identified Epaphus with Apis, the sacred bull, and Io with their god-
dess Isis. See p. 516. - Chiron possibly dies for Prometheus and bestows his immortality upon Heracles.
- This is Ovid's version of a tale about a werewolf that appears elsewhere in the Greek
and Roman tradition. The name Lycaon was taken to be derived from the Greek word
for wolf. The story may reflect primitive rites in honor of Lycaean Zeus performed
on Mt. Lycaeus. - The Flood Myth, ed. Alan Dundes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pro-
vides a fascinating collection of writings by authors in a variety of disciplines who
analyze the motif of the flood throughout the world. For parallels in Near Eastern
mythology see the Additional Reading to this chapter. - That is, nymphs of the Corycian cave on Mt. Parnassus.
- Hellen had three sons: Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus. Xuthus in turn had two sons: Ion
and Achaeus. Thus eponyms were provided for the four major divisions of the Greeks
on the basis of dialect and geography: Dorians, Aeolians, Ionians, and Achaeans. The
names Greeks and Greece came through the Romans, who first met a group of Hel-
lenes called the Graioi, participants in the colonization of Cumae just north of Naples. - W. Burkert, "Oriental and Greek Mythology: The Meeting of Parallels," in Jan Brem-
mer, ed., Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 10^10 (the