|
|
Prometheus & his Gift of Fire
Prometheus, the creator of mankind is among the seven Titans. His name translates into "knowing afore hand" and is connected to the Sanskrit name Promanthas, which belongs to the Vedic family of fire worshiping priests of Agni (god of fire). His father was either the Titan Eurymedon, or possibly Iapetus by the nymph Clymene. His brothers were Atlas, Menoetius and Epimetheus (which means hindsight).
According to myth Athene had taught him astronomy, mathematics, navigation, architecture, medicine, metallurgy and other useful arts which he intern passed on to mankind.Zeus was becoming quite agitated with mans increasing powers and talents. He was angry with Prometheus, because he had wanted to exterminate the whole race of man but did not because of Prometheus's pleas. It happened one day that a dispute took place at Sicyon as to which parts a sacrificial bull be offered to the gods and which portions be reserved for men. Prometheus was acting as arbiter and flayed and jointed the beast, he sewed it's hide to form two open mouthed bags and filled each with what he had cut. One bag contained all of the flesh, but it was hidden under the stomach, the second had all the bones but they were concealed under a thick layer of fat(still the divine portion). He offered to Zeus to choose one of the bags, where upon he choose the one holding the fat and bones. As punishment Zeus withheld giving fire to man kind.
Athene helped to sneak Prometheus into Olympus via a back stairs admittance. He lit a torch at the fiery chariot of the Sun and then broke from it a piece of glowing charcoal, which he thrust into the pithy hollow of a giant fennel-stalk. He put out the torch he stole and gave fire to mankind.
Angered by the theft Zeus bids the gods mold a woman as a Greek gift for man. Hesiod has said that He bade Hephaestus
with all speed mix earth and water, and liken in countenance to the immortal goddesses the fair, lovely beauty
of a maiden. then he bade Athena teach her how to weave the highly wrought web, and golden Aphrodite to shed around
her head grace, and painful desire, and cares that waste the limbs; but endure her with a dog-like mind and tricky
manners he charged the messenger Hermes... they obeyed Zeus...and the herald of the gods placed within her a winning
voice; and this woman he called Pandora, because all who dwelt in the Olympian mansions bestowed on her a gift,
a mischief to inventive men."
In some other versions it is Prometheus whom Zeus commissions to "make" out of clay a woman . The four
winds and the gods had breathed every necessary charm and skill, including Hermes gift of lying and flattery. She
was sardonically destined not to be a wife for Prometheus but for his brother Epimetheus as a gift. Her name was
Pandora (Gr. 'pan + dora' "all gifts") The most beautiful woman ever created. Prometheus is said to have
warned his brother before hand not to accept any gifts from Zeus. Having refused the present Zeus was more miffed
than ever and had Prometheus bound naked to a pillar in the Caucasian mountains where vultures picked and tore
at his liver all day, by night it would grow whole again and so his torture would repeat each following day. Zeus
excused his savage like ways by fabricating a lie that Prometheus had a secret love affair on Olympus with Athene.
Epimetheus was shocked at his brothers fate and then married Pandora..She opened the package that Prometheus had
warned his brother about. Its contents came flying out like a swarm of flying insects. (to this very day we often
associate the word "bug" with illness) The box contained all the vices of mankind, sickness, insanity,
passion, old age, and labor. Hope alone remained in the container as the sole, sad solace for mankind.
Aeschylus a Greek writer in the fifth century wrote seventy (some say it was ninety) dramas, which only seven remain. Three are minor works, the most well known one is the Prometheus Bound; the greatest make up the Orestia trilogy. Fragments have survived of Prometheus Unbound by Aeschylus it is thought that there is also a satyr play called Prometheus the Fire Bringer...
During the beginning of the play Prometheus is chained to the rock at Caucasus by Hephaestos at the command of Zeus.
Hephaestos speaks :
"High-throughted son of Themis,
who is sage!
Thee loath I loath must rivet fast in chains
Against his rocky height unclomb by man,
Where never human voice nor face shall find
Out thee who lov'st them; and thy beauty's flower,
Scorched in the sun's clear heat shall fade away.
Night shall come up with shadow, and sun
Disperse with retrickt beams the morning frosts;
But through all dangers sense a present woe
Shall vex thee sore, because with none of them
There comes a hand to free. Such fruit is plucked
from love of man!....For Zeus is stern,
And new-made kings are cruel."
-As Prometheus hangs helpless on the crag he hurls a defiance to Olympus, and tells proudly the steps which he
brought civilization to the primitive men who till till then
" Lived like silly ants beneath
the ground
In hollow caves unsunned. There came to them
No steadfast sign of winter, nor of spring
Flower-perfumed, nor of summer full of fruit;
But blindly and lawlessly they did all things,
Until I taught them how the stars do rise
And set in mystery, and devised for them
Number, the inducer of philosophies,
The synthesis of letters, and besides,
The artificer of all things, memory
That sweet muse-mother. I was first to yoke
The servile beasts...
And none but I originated ships....
And I,
Who did devise for mortals all these arts,
Have no device left now to save myself."
The entire earth is in mourning with him." There is a cry in the waves of the sea as they fall together, and groaning in the deep; a wail comes from the cavern of death." Every nation sends their condolences to the political prisoner, and tell him of that the suffering visits all: " Grief walks the earth, and sits down the feet of each by turns" Yet they do nothing to free him. Oceanus advice's him to yield, "seeing that who reigns, reigns cruelty instead of right" ; and the chorus of Oceanids ( daughters of the sea) wonder whether humanity deserves to be suffered for with such crucifixion. " Nay, thine was a helpless sacrifice, O beloved... Didst thou not see the race of men, how little in effort and energy, dreamers bound in chains?" Nevertheless they so admire him that when Zeus threatens to hurl him down to Tartarus they stay with him, and face with him the thunderbolt that blasts Prometheus into the abyss. But because Prometheus is a god he can not die, in the ending of the trilogy raised up from Tartarus to resume being bound to a mountain rock. Zeus then sends a vulture to him which gnaws out the titans heart. The heart grows by night as fast as the vultures consume it by day. In this way Prometheus suffers for thirteen generations of men.( Kind of makes one take the phrase "Eat your heart out" in a new light, no?) Then the kindly giant Heracles kills the vulture and persuades Zeus to release Prometheus. The Titan then repents and makes peace with Omnipotence, and places upon his finger the iron ring of necessity.
.Clay can become pottery only by the application of fire (l500-2200 degrees F.), Prometheus' work would be meaningless
without fire . Clay like man, is earthly and available everywhere, but fire comes from heaven in the form of lightening,
hence it is the property of Zeus, and its use must be regulated exclusively by the priestly guild of Zeus' temple.,Prometheus
needs more than clay if he is going to make durable pottery. A society like the Minion-Mycenaean ,which early in
the second millennium B.C. had created the complexities of organized administration , would understand the meaning
of his bestowed punishment.
Prometheus
By: Lord Byron
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
until it's voice is echoless.
II
Titan! to these the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture, where they can not kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for it's pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refused thee even the boon to die;
The wretched gift of eternity
Was thine-and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou disdst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightning trembled.
III
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee Man is part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funeral destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself - and equal to all woes,
And in a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd pecompense,
Triumph where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
Diodati, July 1816
A Dream with Prometheus
by: Jennifer H. Wright
Date: Wed May 26, 1999
Before I had fallen asleep I had asked the Greek pantheon for a vision/dream. This is what I saw -
In the dream I saw a ape like human figure with a sort of yeti-ish appearance. He spoke in a tongue that I could
not understand. This was Prometheus. There raised beside him was a celestial being with wings whom translated what
Prometheus was saying. I was shown an ancient temple that was carved with many beautiful and splendid images. Within
the temple there was an altar, stained red. He was focused on describing to me the images of a man and a woman
that there was now something missing that no longer is there or should have been. He spoke about the gift of fire.
I saw many pillars of fire that then were put out on the ground.
Sometime after this is where I woke up.
When I awoke from this dream I was not feeling very well. I woke up and was physically ill. This I believe may
have been a side effect from the vision. Any ways enough about that...