Prometheus

Weather: a tad chilly but unbelievably beautiful.
Listening to: IIO - "At the End"

Prometheus

Well, I thought Titanomachia (the battle of the Olympians and Titans in Greek mythology) would illicit some interesting thoughts, and i was right. Prometheus, meaning forsight in Greek, was one of the Titans that defended against Zeus and his siblings during the Titanomachia. His story is pretty well known and as it turns out a little misrepresented in popular accounts. Prometheus, as most people know, was the god who stole fire from the Olympians and brought it to humanity. Now most stories say that this made Zeus so mad he had Prometheus chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains where a bird of prey ate his liver each day and each night it regrew to be eaten again. Pretty horrible.

Well, this may not be the act that got Prometheus chained up and tortured daily. After bringing fire to humanity, Prometheus taught humans how to offer burnt sacrifices to the gods. The thinking was that to appease Zeus, from whome fire was stolen, sacrifices would be offered. What seems to have really irritated Zeus was that Prometheus offered the least appetizing portions of sacrificed animals to the gods. Zeus took this as an insult and that's when Prometheus got spirited away to the Caucasus to be served to eagles or hawks with onions.

So, was it the stealing of the gods' fire that got Prometheus in such a mess or was it simply his failure to properly apologize or atone for the act? The romantic version of the story is usually warped into some tragic tale of a brave maverick who dared to challenge the powers that be and was martyred for it... the same as Icarus who couldn't follow his incredibly brilliant father's flying instructions and got too close to the sun. Prometheus as a humanist revolutionary doesn't work so well. It seems that Zeus was going to overlook this fire business as long as people were going to use it respecfully... the shoddy sacrifice pushed him over the top.

Hmmmmm.... well, it just goes to show that getting destroyed for your beliefs isn't necessarily romantic and certainly not clever. As in many Greek myths this is designed to show us something about our hero which we are to avoid. Prometheus shows hubris in his defiance. Remember that he is a Titan, not an Olympian. His name means "forsight" and it is this gift which is supposed to have shown him who would win the Titanomachia and convinced him to defect to Zeus's side. But afterwards he seems to get ahead of his gift. A classic Titan. He thinks an awful lot of himself, and that is probably the sin for which he is chained up. So I suppose we can say it's OK to steal the fire of the gods as long as you do it respectfully?