The
Story of Prometheus
Some god - it is not known which -
gave his good offices in arranging and disposing the earth. He appointed rivers
and bays their places, raised mountains, scooped out valleys, distributed woods,
fountains, fertile fields, and stony plains. The air being cleared, the stars
began to appear, fishes took possession of the sea, birds of the air, and
four-footed beasts of the land.
But a nobler animal was wanted, and
Man was made. It is not known whether the creator made him of divine materials,
or whether in the earth, so lately separated from heaven, there lurked still
some heavenly seeds. Prometheus took some of this earth, and kneading it up
with water, made man in the image of the gods. He gave him an upright stature,
so that while all other animals turn their faces downward, and look to the
earth, he raises his to heaven, and gazes on the stars.
Prometheus was one of the Titans, a
gigantic race, who inhabited the earth before the creation of man. To him and
his brother Epimetheus was committed the office of making man, and providing
him and all other animals with the faculties necessary for their preservation.
Epimetheus undertook to do this, and Prometheus was to overlook his work, when
it was done. Epimetheus accordingly proceeded to bestow upon the different
animals the various gifts of courage, strength, swiftness, sagacity; wings to
one, claws to another, a shelly covering to a third, etc. But when man came to
be provided for, who was to be superior to all other animals, Epimetheus had
been so prodigal of his resources that he had nothing left to bestow upon him.
In his perplexity he resorted to his brother Prometheus, who, with the aid of
Minerva, went up to heaven, and lighted his torch at the chariot of the sun,
and brought down fire to man. With this gift man was more than a match for all
other animals. It enabled him to make weapons wherewith to subdue them; tools
with which to cultivate the earth; to warm his dwelling, so as to be
comparatively independent of climate; and finally to introduce the arts and to
coin money, the means of trade and commerce.
Prometheus has been a favourite
subject with the poets. He is represented as the friend of mankind, who
interposed in their behalf when Jove was incensed against them, and who taught
them civilization and the arts. But as, in so doing, he transgressed the will
of Jupiter, he drew down on himself the anger of the ruler of gods and men.
Jupiter had him chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where a vulture preyed on
his liver, which was renewed as fast as devoured. This state of torment might
have been brought to an end at any time by Prometheus, if he had been willing,
to submit to his oppressor; for he possessed a secret which involved the
stability of Jove's throne, and if he would have revealed it, he might have
been at once taken into favor. But that he disdained to do. He has therefore
become the symbol of magnanimous endurance of unmerited suffering, and strength
of will resisting oppression.
Byron and Shelley have both treated
this theme. The following are Byron's lines:
Titan!
to whose immortal eyes
The
sufferings of mortality,
Seen
in their sad reality,
Were
not as things that gods despise;
What
was 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.
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.
And,
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.
Byron also employs the same
allusion, in his "Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte":
Or,
like the thief of fire from heaven,
Wilt
thou withstand the shock?
And
share with him- the unforgiven-
His
vulture and his rock?
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