Prometheus

The choice Zeus is invited to make

At a place called Mekone, Prometheus kills an ox and lays out two portions. In one, the good meat and fat are hidden under the hide and stomach. In the other, bare bones sit under a bright layer of fat. Zeus is asked to choose which portion the gods will receive.

He takes the attractive one and uncovers the bones. The early Greek poet Hesiod says Zeus sees through the trick. Even so, the choice explains why mortals burn bones for the gods at a sacrifice and keep the meat for themselves. Prometheus has done more than steal food. By making Zeus choose badly in public, he has tried to fix the terms between humans and gods at the shared meal for all time.

Zeus answers by keeping fire from humans. Prometheus then hides an ember in the hollow stalk of a giant fennel plant and carries it back to them. Each move raises the stakes. A quarrel over a portion leads to the loss of fire, and the loss leads to theft from the ruler of Olympus.

Why is Prometheus bound?

In Hesiod, Prometheus is punished for using his cunning against Zeus. Twice he has matched wits with the king of the gods and kept something for mortals. Zeus chains him and sends an eagle to eat his liver. The liver grows back, so the punishment can go on. In the end the hero Heracles kills the bird, with Zeus’s approval.

Apollodorus, who retold the myths in a book called the Library, adds a place and an executioner. On Zeus’s orders, the god Hephaestus nails Prometheus to the Caucasus. The eagle comes back each day, and the liver grows again each night. When Heracles frees him, the centaur Chiron gives up his own immortality, and an olive branch stands in as a token of his bonds. Freedom still needs something to stand in the prisoner’s place.

The play Prometheus Bound, credited to the tragic poet Aeschylus, starts the conflict differently. The chained Titan says he once helped Zeus against the older gods, on the advice of Themis, also called Earth. Later he opposed the new ruler’s plan to destroy humans and start again. The trick at Mekone does not appear. He is punished for standing up to power, not for a trick at dinner.

What did mortals receive besides fire?

In the play, Prometheus’s gift grows into a whole plan for survival. Before him, mortals looked without seeing and heard without understanding. He teaches them number and writing, and the movements of the stars. He teaches them to use animals for work, to make medicines and to sail. Fire makes craft possible, but knowledge lets people plan ahead and organise their lives together.

The play also changes his parents. Hesiod makes Prometheus a son of Iapetus and Clymene. In the play he calls Themis his mother, and treats her as the same figure as Earth. Each version suits the character it builds: the cunning son of Iapetus in one poem, and the far-seeing ally of an older order in the other.

Neither account cancels the other. In Hesiod, Prometheus sets up the sharing of the sacrifice by a trick. In the tragedy, he stands against a ruler who would wipe out mortals. Both share one point, the limit that Zeus enforces. Human progress may go on, but the giver cannot act against the rule of the gods without being made an example.

The flame carried from the Academy

Athens remembered Prometheus through a race, not through chains. The travel writer Pausanias saw his altar in the Academy at Athens. From that altar, runners raced into the city carrying burning torches. The winner was the runner who reached the end with his flame still alight. Speed without fire counted for nothing, and if every torch went out, nobody won.

The rite turned the theft around. Prometheus had carried fire away from the gods in secret. The runners of Athens carried it openly from his altar, under rules that made keeping it alight the whole test. The flame could enter the city’s worship only if a runner moved fast enough without putting it out.