Who is prometheuss brother
Men now had meat, but they still had difficulty surviving because they could not keep warm or cook their food. Prometheus knew that fire would save them, but Zeus kept fire for the gods alone. So again, Prometheus thought up a plan.
He took a red-hot coal and hid it inside a woody fennel stalk to give to mortals. Now the mortals could cook and keep warm and they were much happier; they worshipped Prometheus as the inventor of all the arts of civilization. But when Zeus saw mankind using fire, he became furious at having been tricked once again. He ordered that Prometheus be nailed to a lonely spot in the Caucasus Mountains. But Zeus was not finished with his punishments; now he wanted to punish mankind.
He would steal fire. He waited until he was certain Zeus was not watching, and he lifted his torch to the light of the sun, catching an ember of fire. This he hid inside a hollow stalk and hurried back to Earth. The people were overjoyed. With fire, they no longer shivered in the cold night. With fire they were able to forge weapons to subdue the wild beasts. With fire they made tools to till the earth and build dwellings.
With fire they warmed those dwellings. And the animals feared the sight of those flames and no longer attacked human beings. As the humans watched the smoke spiraling up into the sky, their thoughts turned to the gods. They decided to build temples to honor those gods, and they decided to roast an animal as a sacrifice to those gods.
When Zeus looked down and saw the fires flickering, he was furious. He understood Prometheus had betrayed him. But when he breathed in the smells of those sacrifices, he calmed down. According to Plato's use of the old myth in his Protagoras d—a , the twin Titans were entrusted with distributing the traits among the newly created animals. Epimetheus was responsible for giving a positive trait to every animal, but when it was time to give man a positive trait, lacking foresight he found that there was nothing left.
Prometheus decided that mankind's attributes would be the civilizing arts and fire, which he stole from Zeus. Prometheus later stood trial for his crime. In the context of Plato's dialogue, "Epimetheus, the being in whom thought follows production, represents nature in the sense of materialism, according to which thought comes later than thoughtless bodies and their thoughtless motions.
According to Hesiod, who related the tale twice Theogony, ff; Works and Days 57ff , Epimetheus was the one who accepted the gift of Pandora from the gods. As soon as she was on earth, Pandora, seeing a jar that was there and devoured by curiosity, opened it. The jar was holding all the evils, and they immediately spread over mankind. Another tradition presents the jar as Pandora's wedding gift to Epimetheus, that was holding all goods.
But, because Pandora opended it, all goods escaped and returned to the gods, except hope, that was at the bottom and could not escape before Pandora put the lid back on the jar see Hesiod 's Theogony , ; Works and Days , Prometheus' punishment was to be chained to a huge rock in Caucasus where an eagle would come every day to eat his liver, that would reconstitue immediately. And Zeus vowed never to unchain Prometheus from his rock.
Yet, when Heracles happened to pass by, he killed the eagle and unchained Prometheus, who told him how to get the Golden Apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Zeus was proud of this deed of his son, but, so as not to renege on his vow, he ordered Prometheus to always wear a ring that would be made out of the steel from his chains and a piece of the rock he had been tied to.
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