Prometheus, Pandora, et al

There are four figures in this painting, from your left they are an eagle, so the next figure must be Zeus, the boy is Ganymede, and

the final figure is Prometheus stealing fire from Mt. Olympus for his mortals. Zeus originally took fire from humans to punish

Prometheus for tricking him with the sacrifice. The pitcher and two-handled drinking cup next to Ganymede are in the same

shapes as those used in ancient Greece. We’ll encounter Zeus and Ganymede in the next reading assignment

An old photo of a great stone relief depicting Prometheus on Mt. Olympus stealing fire (a glowing ember) on the end of a fennel staff. He is sneaking

away from the workshop of Hephaestus and the Cyclopes

Jan Cossier Prometheus brings Fire to HumanityPainting by Heinrich Friedrich Füger in 1817

What follows here is one photo depicting a scene from classical myth, created and staged by a myth student. Note the fabulous modernization and

interpretation of this scene.

Know that this will be your assignment in the second half of this course

• Take a good look… at Prometheus stealing fire…

An appropriate symbol on Zeus’ t-shirt

BTW, what kind of beer does Zeus

drink?

You’d think Zeus had

better taste…

One tradition states that Prometheus fashioned the first man from mud. Here he is shaping him. Athena

(Roman Minerva) stands by. Notice that Athena is recognizable through her helmet, the only goddess who

wears one

After Prometheus stole the fire from Mt. Olympus, Zeus

punished both Prometheus and his beloved humans. He had his henchman Kratos and Bia

(Greek for Power and Strength) chain Prometheus to the

Caucasus mountains, beyond the edge of civilization.

To give you some perspective, here’s Athens and Troy

Every day an eagle (or vulture) ate Prometheus’ liver which would grow back every night. Prometheus, a son

of a Titan, was immortal, so this punishment was unending...

The Torture of Prometheus, 1819

Prometheus by Christian Griepenkerl (1839-1916)

The inside image of a

Greek drinking cup: Atlas on

the left is holding up the

sky, and there’s our

buddy Prometheus

again. Prometheus

was eventually saved by

Heracles…but that’s another

story…

Another student photo—

interpretation of the Prometheus

and Eagle scene.

Keep this future assignment in

mind as you read subsequent

assignments…

Before Prometheus (Greek: pro-metis = for-

thinker) was taken away, he told his brother

Epimetheus (epi-metis = backwards thinker) not to

accept anything from Zeus. But Zeus had other plans.

He planned to punish Prometheus’ men by

creating and sending a terrible thing: woman.

Hermes delivered the first woman, called Pandora, to Epimetheus. She had a jar

(later called a box)...

…which she was not supposed to open…but she did. The box contained all the evils in the world. She shut the box before all could get out, leaving only HOPE (so is hope a good or bad thing?). Thus we have an etiological story (KNOW THIS TERM) for three things: how and why women were created, why evils exist in the world, and marriage

(Pandora married Epimetheus). The story explicitly blames woman for introducing evils into the world, just as Adam pointed the finger at Eve, who encouraged Adam to eat the

apple. The artist of these paintings is John Waterhouse.

More of Waterhouse’s work: he seems to use the same female in every painting. We’ll encounter these works in several

weeks

Pandora is a commonly depicted

mythological character, as a search of Google’s

images will prove

The next five images are from the story of Zeus turning King Lycaon into a wolf, the flood story, then Deucalion and

Pyrrha creating another race of mortals