Prometheus, a great culture-hero of Greek mythology, the son of the Titan Iapetus and of Clymene, brother of Atlas, Menæthus, and Epimetheus. Hesiod tells his history as follows: Once, under the reign of Zeus, when men and gods were disputing with one another at Mecone as to which portions of the victims at sacrifices were to be given to the gods, Prometheus, to outwit Zeus cut up an ox, and placed on one side the best parts covered with offal, on the other the bones covered with fat. Zeus was asked to choose, but, finding the deceit practised upon him, avenged himself on the mortals by withholding from them the fire necessary for the cooking of the meat; whereupon Prometheus stole it in a hollow fennel-stalk, and brought it to them. Zeus next caused Hephæstus to mould a virgin of wondrous beauty, Pandora (q.v.), whom Epimetheus was unwise enough to receive as a present from Hermes, and thus brought through her all imaginable ills upon humanity. Prometheus himself was chained to a rock, and an eagle sent to tear his liver by day, while Zeus caused it to grow anew during the night. At length Hercules killed the eagle, and by the permission of Zeus delivered the suffering Prometheus. Thus far Hesiod's legend. In the splendid tragedy of Æschylus, the Prometheus Vinctus, Prometheus is an immortal god, a friend of the human race, who does not shrink from opposing the evil designs of Zeus against mankind, and even from sacrificing himself for their salvation. He is the long-suffering hero, who, although overcome by Zeus's superior might, yet does not bend his mind. He takes from man the evil gift of foreseeing the future, but gives him the two infinitely superior gifts of hope and of fire; and he is the inventor of architecture, astronomy, writing, figures, medicine, navigation, the mystery of prophecy, the arts of metal-working, and all other arts which embellish and adorn life. For these boons conferred on the human race he is by Zeus's order chained to a rock in Scythia by Hephæstus, who fulfils this task reluctantly. Here he is visited by the Oceanides, by Io, and by Hermes, who endeavours to find out that which Prometheus alone knows, who will be the son of Zeus and his successor. Refusing to divulge this secret, he is struck by Zeus's lightning and hurled into Tartarus, whence he only re-issues after a time to undergo new sufferings. He is now fastened to Mount Caucasus, and the eagle, an offspring of Earth and Tartarus, comes to torment him daily. Cheiron the Centaur at last offers himself to supply the place of Prometheus in Hades—for on no other condition was he to be liberated than that some other immortal should offer himself in his stead. Cheiron, incurably wounded by Hercules, is accepted by Zeus. Other legends give a varying account, and make Prometheus the creator of man out of earth and water. Many have been the explanations of this myth, as that it represents the human mind in the consciousness of its own power, refusing to obey implicitly the will of Zeus. There can be no doubt that Prometheus is a culture-hero, analogous to the Maori Mani, and the Finnish Wainamoinen. The possession of fire to early man was a matter of enormous importance, and the legend of its being originally stolen from heaven by a primeval hero is very widely spread over the world. The Greek name means 'fore-sight'; Epimetheus ('after-thought') is obviously its opposite; and the beautifully ingenious identification of the solar mythologists with the Sanskrit Pramantha, the fire-stick of the Hindus, may be disregarded in the face of the existence of the myth far beyond the possible range of Aryan influence.
See the article FIRE, p. 630; E. B. Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865), and Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers (2d ed. 1886); older books on the myth by Weiske (1842) and Lasaulx (1843), and monographs by Holle (Berl. 1879) and Milchhöfer (Berl. 1882).