Prometheus.
A Titan, son of Iapetus and Clymene (or Themis), Prometheus was a champion of men against the gods; in some legends he was even credited with creating mankind out of clay. He possessed the gift of prophecy—his name means “forethinker.” As a master craftsman and inventor he taught men arts and sciences in order to improve their primitive existence. When Zeus captiously deprived mankind of fire, Prometheus stole a spark of fire from the gods and gave it to man. He also kept from Zeus the secret of an oracle prophesying that the Nereid Thetis, whom Zeus desired, would bear a child who would be greater than his father.
      In revenge for Prometheus’s acts of defiance, Zeus devised two punishments. He ordered the creation of Pandora (the first woman), who carried all the evils of the world to earth with her, and he had Prometheus chained to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle fed daily on his liver. Prometheus was eventually released from his bondage by Heracles (Hercules), or possibly by Zeus in exchange for revealing Thetis’s secret.
      As a Titan, Prometheus was usually considered immortal. However, another tradition relates that he was mortal, but that after the centaur Chiron was wounded by a poisoned arrow, Prometheus offered to take on his immortality, allowing him to die and be spared perpetual suffering.


Further References:
      Graf, Arturo. 1902. Prometeo nella poesia. Turin: Chiantore.
      Raggio, Olga. 1958. ‘The Myth of Prometheus: Its Survival and Metamorphoses Up to the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 21: 44—62.
      Trousson, Raymond. 1976. Le thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne, 2 vols. Geneva: Droz.

Listings are arranged under the following headings:
Prometheus; Prometheus the Creator; Prometheus Bound; Prometheus Freed; and Tityus.


See also:
Athena; Chiron; Deucalion and Pyrrha; Pandora.