Encyclopedia > Prometheus

  Article Content

Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus ("forethought") is the Titan who stole fire from the gods and brought it to mortals for their use. He further irritated Zeus by offering the gods in settlement burnt sacrifice of the less appetizing portions of the sacrificial animals. As punishment, he was chained to a rock in the Caucasus where a vulture or an eagle named Ethon would eat out his liver; it would grow back each day and the vulture would eat it again. Eventually he was freed by Heracles and returned to Olympus. As the introducer of fire and inventor of sacrifice he is seen as the patron of human civilization. Uncertain sources claim he was worshipped in ancient Rome.

He was the father of Deucalion with Celaeno.

The chaining of Prometheus to the rock was by some ancient writers compared to a crucifixion.


In astronomy, Prometheus is a moon of Saturn.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Battle Creek, Michigan

... is spread out with 27.2% under the age of 18, 8.7% from 18 to 24, 29.5% from 25 to 44, 21.0% from 45 to 64, and 13.5% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 24.1 ms