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
1904

... 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 - 1904 - 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 See also: 1904 in film 1904 in literature 1904 in music 1904 i ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 28.8 ms