The Creation of Man by Prometheus

The Creation of Man by Prometheus

You may be wondering what happened to Prometheus. Well for stealing fire and giving it to man, and for tricking Zeus, he was strapped to a rock with unbreakable chains and everyday he had a giant eagle pecking away at his liver. Zeus gave him two ways to get out of the torture, however. The first way was for Prometheus to tell Zeus which woman would bear the child that would dethrone him. The other way was to one, convince another god to die for Prometheus, and for a mortal to slay the giant eagle. If either of these things were done Prometheus would go free.

Prometheus told Epimetheus to give out all the different traits to the things on earth, he gave out wings and fur and flight and cunning and everything that was good to all the animals, so when it came time to give man its traits all the good stuff was gone.

Let's start with the plot. Prometheus and Epimetheus did not fight against the Olympians with their fellow Titans, so they were not punished like their comrades. Instead they were charged with the task of creating man. And this would stir up more problems than you could imagine.

Prometheus tricks Zeus as to what he receives from each sacrifice, and since he has to keep his word he takes out his rage on man, Prometheus' most beloved thing in the whole world. Zeus takes fire from man, but Prometheus lights a torch from the sun and brings it back to man.

Prometheus saw this and decided that he would make man stand up right, like the gods did and give man fire. Zeus was fine with this but he wanted man to give a portion of any animal they ate as sacrifice to him. This is where the conflict begins to arise.

Now to you and I and well, everyone, this is obviously a myth. But this is how the Ancient Greeks would explain things about life that could not be explained through math and science. We Christians have a similar way of doing this. We used parables to explain life in a way that we could understand and

When Zeus sees that man once again has fire he is furious. He creates a creature with a lying tongue, an evil cunning, a stunning beauty, and a quick wit. Its name? Pandora, the first woman. She is sent to Epimetheus as a "gift" and although Prometheus has instructed him never to accept gifts from Zeus he cannot resists her beauty and he allows her to stay. With her she has a jar that she is instructed to never open, but the curiosity inside her becomes too great and she opens it unleashing every evil upon the earth, but at the very bottom of the jar there is one good thing she has released to mankind: hope.

This was the Ancient Greeks way of explaining things like plagues, and hardships, and all the evils that are with us here on earth that we really have no explanation for. It becomes a more manageable thing when you have some way of explaining where it came from.

There are a lot of interesting moral messages here, such as if you steal something there will be repercussions, and if you do what you are told not to simply out of curiosity some very bad things could and will happen.Pandora and Prometheus learned this first hand.

And my favorite of the artwork made because of this myth, the paintings made to depict the innocence and curiosity of Pandora and her opening up her box.

As for underlying concepts I'm sure if you looked hard enough you'd find one or two, but everything is very out in the open with this one seeing as it is a myth that is attempting to explain things such as sorrow, hunger, and death.

This is a picture of Prometheus stealing fire for man. I'm sure most Greek mythology sparked the imaginations of artists and inspired them to depict this moments.

Now lets explain some artwork that has been made to illustrate this mythic tale. This is a picture showing Prometheus and Athena creating man out of clay and breathing life into it.

There seems to be a persistent theme of doing right resulting in right and doing what you are told not to or something you know you shouldn't resulting in punishment. And also a message of these evils aren't going anywhere so we have to learn how to handle them and live with them.