Prometheus, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Prometheus, whose name signified "forethought," was a Titan of the second generation, son of Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, brother of Atlas and Epimetheus. He was the great benefactor of mankind in Greek myth, the Titan who, when Zeus had withdrawn fire from human beings as a punishment, stole it back from the gods (concealed in the hollow stalk of a fennel) and brought it down to the human race. Zeus's vengeance was twofold. Against mankind he sent the first woman, Pandora, fashioned by Hephaestus and gifted by all the gods, to bring with her the jar of evils (curiosity opening it, all the world's troubles flying out, only Hope remaining within when she shut it again). Against Prometheus himself Zeus contrived a torment of cosmic scope: the Titan was bound to a crag in the Caucasus mountains, where each day an eagle came and tore out his liver, which grew back each night, that the torture might be renewed. The torment lasted for many ages — by some accounts thirty thousand years — until at length Heracles, on his way to one of his labors, shot the eagle and freed the Titan with Zeus's tacit consent.

Beyond the fire-theft, Prometheus had two other notable deeds. Earlier, when the gods and mortals were to apportion the parts of the sacrificial ox, Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing the worse share — wrapping the bones in attractive fat, the meat in unappealing entrails — so that thereafter the gods received only the bones and fat (the smoke of which rose to them), while mortals kept the meat. And — most significantly in some traditions — Prometheus was held to be the actual creator of the human race, whom he had fashioned from clay (with Athena breathing life into them, in the older version; in some Hellenistic versions, with the soul-fire that he had stolen from heaven). Whether or not he was their maker, he was throughout their patron; the Athenians honored him as the patron of potters (whose art required fire) and held a torch-race in his honor at the Promethea festival.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

The principal sources are Hesiod, Theogony 507–616 and Works and Days 42–105 (the trickery, the fire-theft, and Pandora); Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound (a tragedy possibly by Aeschylus himself or by his school, mid-fifth century, surviving complete and one of the great extant Greek tragedies) treats the punishment with extraordinary depth; Plato, Protagoras 320c–322a, gives the Sophistic interpretation of Prometheus as the giver of practical arts. The creation-of-man-from-clay myth is most fully in later sources (Apollodorus 1.7.1, Ovid Metamorphoses 1.78–88) and may be a Hellenistic systematization of older fragmentary traditions. Prometheus's cult at Athens is documented by Pausanias and by inscriptions; the Promethea torch-race ran from his altar in the Academy to the city, and was the model for the Olympic torch-relay revived in the modern Games.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Child ofIapetusson of Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, brother of Atlas and Epimetheus
Sibling ofAtlasson of Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, brother of Atlas and Epimetheus
Sibling ofEpimetheusson of Iapetus and the Oceanid Clymene, brother of Atlas and Epimetheus
Rival ofZeusPrometheus tricked Zeus into choosing the worse share
Companion ofHeraclesHeracles, on his way to one of his labors, shot the eagle and freed the Titan
Companion ofAthenawith Athena breathing life into them, in the older version

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Titans and Their Children. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 1600–1100 BCE: Mycenaean palace tablets in Linear B record offerings and divine names, but little continuous myth.
c. 1100–800 BCE: Post-palatial oral traditions and changing cult landscapes precede the surviving alphabetic epics.
late 8th–7th centuries BCE: The Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiodic Theogony and Works and Days give influential but non-exclusive divine orders.
7th–6th centuries BCE: Homeric Hymns, lyric poetry, colonization, and local sanctuary traditions multiply regional narratives.
6th–5th centuries BCE: Orphic, Pythagorean, and mystery materials develop alternative cosmogonies and afterlife doctrines.
5th century BCE: Athenian tragedy and comedy recast heroic houses and divine justice for civic audiences.
4th century BCE: Philosophers, antiquarians, and local historians interpret or criticize inherited myth.
323–31 BCE: Hellenistic poets and scholars systematize variants across an enlarged Greek world.