Prometheus

Carol Dougherty

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134347513
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: History
• Categoria: Ancient History

With no recent publications discussing Prometheus at length, this book provides a much-needed introduction to the Promethean myth of this rebellious god who defied Zeus to steal fire for mankind.

Seeking to locate the nature of this compelling tale's continuing relevance throughout history, Carol Dougherty traces a history of the myth of Prometheus from its origins in ancient Greece, to its resurgence in the works of the Romantic era and beyond.

Offering a comparative approach that includes visual material and film, the book reveals a Prometheus who was a rebel against Zeus' tyranny to Aeschylus, a defender of political and artistic integrity to Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a symbol of technological innovation during the industrial revolution; his resilience and adaptability illuminating his power and importance in Western culture.

Prometheus is an essential introduction to the Promethean myth for all readers of classics, the arts and literature alike.

KEY THEMES

1
THE TRICKSTER

Hesiod’s Prometheus

The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that Homer and Hesiod were the poets who taught the Greeks about their gods: ‘it is they who created for the Greeks their theogony, giving to the gods their special names, distributing their honors and their skills, and revealing their forms’ (2.53.2). Although Homer makes no mention of Prometheus, Hesiod includes his story in two of the poems that are attributed to him, the Theogony, a poem about the origins of the gods and the world, and the Works and Days, a didactic poem in the tradition of wisdom literature. Taken together, Hesiod’s poems offer the obvious point of departure for studies of Prometheus in the ancient world as well as his modern reception. They present Prometheus as a trickster figure and offer powerful testimony to the ways in which his myth helped the Greeks of the archaic period think about the nature of the human condition in all its complexity and ambiguity. Hesiod draws upon Prometheus’ gift of fire to humans to mark the separation of mankind from the world of the gods and to explain the suffering and work that characterize the human experience at this time. Sandwiched between the rich palace world of the Homeric poems and the budding prosperity and innovation of the classical age, the world of Hesiod is one of scarce resources and limited opportunities. Hesiod uses Prometheus’ battle of wits with Zeus – his theft of fire, the origins of sacrifice, Zeus’ counter-gift of Pandora – to help Greeks of his time think about why their life is so difficult. Hesiod’s Prometheus describes human existence as a decline from days of former wealth and ease. The introduction of Pandora, with her jar of evils and sickness, highlights the problematic role of women within the broader human experience as well. Before looking more closely at Hesiod’s Prometheus, we need to get a better understanding of Hesiod – his works and his times.

HESIOD AND HIS TIMES

The poet whom we know as Hesiod tells us a fair amount about himself in his poems. In the Works and Days, for example, we learn that his father came from Kyme, a city on the coast of Asia Minor, from which he fled ‘awful poverty’ and took to sailing as a merchant, ending up in Askra, a village in western Boeotia, which Hesiod describes as ‘bad in winter, godawful in summer, nice never’ (Works and Days 640). Hesiod addresses the poem to his brother, Perses, inveighing upon him to stop his profligate ways and begging him to leave off from his lawsuits over their father’s inheritance and to settle down to some productive work. And in the Theogony, Hesiod gives us his name and tells us that while tending his flocks upon the slopes of Mt Helikon, the Muses handed him a staff of laurel and inspired him with divine song so that he might celebrate past and future.

It is in large part because of these ‘autobiographical’ details that we tend to think of Hesiod and his poetry as something quite different from the anonymous bard of the Homeric poems. Hesiod, by contrast, brings a strong personal voice and personality to his poetry, creating the impression that he is singing about aspects of his own life. And yet, Hesiod’s techniques of self-reference belong to traditions older than the poet himself. In each poem, he creates an authorial persona that straddles the divide between historical reality and poetic fiction in ways that can be frustrating to modern readers and scholars. In the Theogony, for example, Hesiod adopts the role of the encomiastic hymnic poet, while in the Works and Days, he combines what Richard Martin has called the authoritative voice of the outsider with the traditional role of dispenser of advice common to the genre of wisdom literature. Gregory Nagy has even suggested that the etymology of the name Hesiod means ‘he who emits the voice’, representing the poet not as an historical individual, but rather as a generic figure who embodies the singing power of the Muses.

The world that Hesiod describes in the Works and Days, characterized as it is by powerful, ‘gift-devouring’ kings and subsistence agriculture, corresponds to what little we know about the Greek world in the archaic period, the eighth to seventh centuries BC. Following the period known sometimes as the Dark Age, the archaic period is marked by increased contact between Greek cities and the larger Mediterranean world, in part through trade and in part through overseas colonization, and while this shift in economic orientation and scale brought increased prosperity to some, primarily the elite, the less well off, as we can see from Hesiod’s Works and Days, experienced a decrease in opportunities and resources, left to fend for themselves in an increasingly unforgiving agricultural economy.

Taken together, the Theogony and the Works and Days offer us unique access to the Prometheus of the archaic period. His theft of fire for mankind and subsequent punishment at the hands of Zeus play an important role in both poems, and each time, the account is told slightly differently, influenced by the conventions of literary genre as well as by aspects of social and historical context. In spite of their differences, the two accounts complement each other and present a coherent portrait of Prometheus as a trickster figure symbolic of the human struggle to make the world habitable in the archaic period. In addition, the myth provides a commentary on the human condition in early archaic Greece.

The Theogony weaves together many disparate mythological strands to present a comprehensive poetic account of the origin of the universe structured as a genealogy and organized into successive generations. The Works and Days, on the other hand, is an example of a genre known as ‘wisdom literature’, characterized by advice about general conduct combined with truisms and general knowledge – all put into a largely fictitious setting. In each of these very different literary contexts, Hesiod draws upon the mythic figure of Prometheus. Although different aspects of the myth are highlighted or downplayed in each poem, the basic outline is the same. If we put the two together the story would go something like the following.

HESIOD’S PROMETHEUS

In the Theogony, Prometheus is the son of Iapetus the Titan and the Oceanid Klymene; he has three brothers, Menoitios, Atlas, and Epimetheus, all of whom have suffered at the hands of Zeus. As part of a bigger project to praise the rule of Zeus, Hesiod introduces Prometheus as one who dared to match wits with mighty Zeus but ultimately failed. He explains that when the gods and mortals were together at a place called Mekone, Prometheus butchered a big ox and divided up the victim for gods and men. He tricked Zeus into choosing the bones and fat, leaving the rich meat for humans to eat:

This was Prometheus’ trick. But Zeus, eternally wise,
Recognized the fraud and began to rumble in his heart
Trouble for mortals, and it would be fulfilled.
With both his hands he picked up the gleaming fat.
Anger seethed in his lungs and bile rose to his heart
When he saw the ox’s white bones artfully tricked out.

(Theogony 550 – 55)

And that, Hesiod explains, is why at a sacrifice men offer the gods the inedible bones and fat and keep the more valuable cooked meat for themselves. Zeus, however, was furious at Prometheus’ deception, and in return he withheld the ‘power of weariless fire’ from humans. Prometheus then stole fire back for mankind, hiding it in a hollow fennel stalk, and Zeus, when he saw fire burning again among men, retaliated by creating ‘trouble to pay for fire’: the first woman.

In the Works and Days, Hesiod gives this woman a name, Pandora, because ‘all the Olympians donated something’ to her creation. Hephaestus kneaded some earth and water and gave her a voice and a beautiful figure; Athena taught her embroidery and weaving; Aphrodite endowed her with grace and desire, and Hermes gave her a ‘bitchy mind and a cheating heart’. When the gods were finished creating Pandora, Zeus sent Hermes to take her to Epimetheus, Prometheus’ slow-witted brother, who accepted her on behalf of mankind, only remembering too late that his brother had warned him not to accept gifts from Zeus. And, as Hesiod observes, now, as a result, humans no longer live without trouble and work, for Pandora brought with her a large storage jar containing all the miseries and troubles that beset humankind which she scattered all over the earth. Only Hope was left in the jar, unable to fly out before Pandora slammed down the lid on her. As a result, Hesiod concludes, ‘the earth is full of evil things and so’s the sea’.

With Pandora and her jar of evils, Zeus brings suffering to mankind in retaliation for their enjoyment of fire, but for Prometheus he has another punishment:

And he bound Prometheus with ineluctable fetters,
Painful bonds, and drove a shaft through his middle,
And set a long-winged eagle on him that kept gnawing
His undying liver, but whatever the long-winged bird
Ate the whole day through, would all grow back by night.
That bird the mighty son of pretty-ankled Alkmene
Herakles, killed, drove off the evil affliction
From Iapetos’ son and freed him from his misery.

(Theogony 521 – 28)

And so, with this comparatively brief account of Zeus’ punishment of the Titan and his eventual liberation at the hands of Heracles, Hesiod ends the story of Prometheus.

PROMETHEUS VS ZEUS: A BATTLE OF WITS

In the Theogony, the myth of Prometheus functions as part of the poet’s broader strategy to celebrate Zeus’ acquisition and consolidation of power. Hesiod tells us that in order to avoid the fate of the two previous generations, Zeus draws upon a combination of physical and intellectual skills to solidify his position as king of gods and men. When warned that he, like his father before him, would be overthrown by a son born to him from Metis, the personification of intellectual cleverness, Zeus swallowed her, effectively filling himself with her power. In Greek thought, the goddess Metis represents the kind of intellectual skill associated with trickery, deception, and lies; metis is often contrasted with strength or physical power and operates in shifting terrain and ambiguous settings. Nestor, for example, advises Antilochus in Book 23 of the Iliad that the charioteer triumphs over his rival through metis just as: ‘It is through metis rather than through strength that the wood-cutter is much better. It is through metis moreover that the helmsman guides the swift ship upon the wine-dark sea against the wind, and it is by metis that charioteer excels charioteer’ (Iliad 23. 315 – 18). The semantic field of metis also includes a kind of practical effectiveness, a resourcefulness of any kind whether it be the mastery of a craft, success in a particular activity or cunning strategy in war. Prometheus, too, the god whom Hesiod describes as ‘capable of wriggling out of even the inextricable’, is here presented as the very prototype of metis – his very name contains the word. Prometheus’ anticipatory knowledge well equips him to duel with Zeus in wits.

Turning back to the Theogony, we see that the Prometheus story functions there to celebrate Zeus’ intelligence. The episode opens and closes with reference to Zeus’ punishment of Prometheus repeating the refrain ‘no one can deceive Zeus, not even the very clever and tricky Prometheus’. The first thing we notice is the myth’s focus on deception. Words for trickiness and cleverness are used fifteen times to describe the nature and actions of Prometheus and Zeus in this passage (535 – 616); in fact, the episode is structured as a contest in cleverness.

Round one: Prometheus tries to trick Zeus with the unequal sacrifice portions, but Zeus is not to be fooled. He replies:

‘Iapetos’ boy, if you’re not the smartest of them all.
So you still haven’t forgotten your tricks, have you?’

(Theogony 543 – 44)

But Zeus, the god ‘whose wisdom never wears out’, retaliates by withholding the power of fire from mortals. Round two: Prometheus outwits Zeus by stealing fire and hiding it in a fennel stalk to return it to mortals, but once Zeus sees ‘the distant gleam of fire among men’, he arranges for the creation of the first woman whom Hesiod characterizes as a ‘sheer deception irresistible to men’, thus outwitting the very clever Prometheus in the final round. Unlike Zeus’ conquest of the monstrous Typhoeus or his fierce battle with the rest of the Titans, the competition between Prometheus and Zeus is one of intellectual prowess, not physical strength. In part, the myth of Prometheus is introduced in celebration of Zeus’ own intellectual prowess – if Zeus can outwit Prometheus, he can outsmart anyone.

PROMETHEUS AS TRICKSTER

In this respect, Hesiod’s Prometheus, his associations with cleverness, trickery, and deception, has much in common with the trickster figure that appears in the mythological and folklore traditions of nearly every traditional society – sometimes as a god, sometimes as an animal. Tricksters are ambiguous and anomalous figures; they are deceivers, even shape-shifters, and they often bridge the divine and mortal worlds. In an essay on the North American Indian trickster, Mac Linscott Ricketts defines a trickster as

the one who changes the chaotic myth-world into the ordered creation of today; he is the slayer of monsters, the thief of daylight, fire water, and the like for the benefit of man; he is the teacher of cultural skills and customs; but he is also a prankster who is grossly erotic, insatiably hungry, inordinately vain, deceitful, and cunning toward friends as well as foes; a restless wanderer upon the face of the earth and a blunderer who is often the victim of his own tricks and follies.

(Ricketts 1965: 327)

Two of the best-known trickster figures are the Native American Coyote and Anansi the spider-trickster from West Africa. Each delights his own people with his antics, and yet his irreverence calls the ordinary categories of daily life into question. Tricksters speak the truth through deception, and for this reason, trickster tales are more than a source of amusement and play. They are deeply embedded in the social experience of those who tell them.

Trickster figures are often associated with theft and deception rather than with the use of force or violence, and Hesiod’s Prometheus certainly fits this description. Norman O. Brown has pointed out that the Greek verb usually translated as ‘to steal’ (kleptein) really means to remove secretly, to deceive, or to use secret action, and Hesiod’s Prometheus unites both these senses when he steals fire from the heavens by hiding it in a fennel stalk. For all their cleverness and wit, tricksters are also often portrayed as dull-witted, responsible for disorder or chaos. In the trickster narrative, cunning and stupidity go together, each one illuminating the other, and Carl Kerényi has observed that the positive and the negative qualities of the traditional trickster figure are expressed in the Greek tradition through the two brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus:

Every invention of Prometheus brings new misery upon mankind. No sooner has he succeeded in offering sacrifice than Zeus deprives mankind of the fire. And when, after stealing the fire, Prometheus himself is snatched away from mortals to suffer punishment, Epimetheus is left behind as their representative: craftiness is replaced by stupidity. The profound affinity between these two figures is expressed in the fact that they are brothers. One might almost say that in them a single primitive being, sly and stupid at once, has been split into a duality: Prometheus the Forethinker, Epimetheus the belated Afterthinker. It is he who in his thoughtlessness, brings mankind, as a gift from the gods, the final inexhaustible source of misery: Pandora.

(Kerényi in Radin 1956: 181)

For all his efforts and cleverness, Hesiod’s Prometheus does not actually help mankind through his deceptions of Zeus (sacrifice, fire). Not only is he himself punished for the theft, but Prometheus is directly responsible for human suffering and for the separation of mankind from the ease of the divine world.

In this respect, Prometheus’ tale, like that of other trickster figures, establishes the human world ‘as it is’ – not as it should be. And he does so, in spite of, not in accordance with, the plans of the gods. Tricksters often appear as transformational figures; they embody the human struggle to make the world more human. Trickster tales help probe a culture’s inner workings, for nothing confirms the meaning of social order more impressively than recognition of that which evades order. Moving fluidly across boundaries – above/below, male/female, nature/culture – the ambiguous figure of the trickster represents man himself in a liminal state and celebrates the creative and transformational power of that liminal state.

The complexity of trickster figures, whether that of the west African Anansi or the archaic Greek Prometheus, is best appreciated by keeping him firmly within his own cultural context, and doing so can also reveal a great deal about that culture. In the case of Prometheus, a divine figure whose theft of fire upset the world of gods and men alike, his actions both threaten and reaffirm the rules and conventions that constitute archaic Greek culture. In particular, Prometheus’ story calls attention to important cultural divisions and boundaries of archaic Greece – the boundaries between humans and gods, between humans and beasts, between men and women. In addition, it accounts for those human institutions that defined Greek life at that time: sacrifice, marriage, agriculture. And finally, its focus on hiding, deception, and trickery represents the ambiguous nature of the human condition as the Greeks conceived it.

PROMETHEUS AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

In an influential essay, ‘The Myth of Prometheus in Hesiod’, the French classicist Jean-Pierre Vernant argues that Prometheus’ story ‘defines the status of man, midway between that of the beasts and that of the gods: It is characterized by sacrifice, fire for culinary and technical operations, the woman seen both as a wife and as a bestial stomach, and cereal foods and agricultural labor’ (Vernant 1988: 192). In addition, he notes that the trick of Prometheus, his theft of fire, consecrates the separation of men and gods through the institution of sacrifice, and it does so with inevitable consequences: (stolen) fire, woman and marriage, agriculture and work. Finally, these elements are all inextricably embedded in the core of the myth. Hesiod’s two tellings of the Prometheus myth have a certain complementary logic, and they can provide valuable insight into the ways in which Pro...

Indice dei contenuti

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• SERIES FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• GENEALOGICAL TABLE
• WHY PROMETHEUS?
• KEY THEMES
• PROMETHEUS AFTERWARDS
• FURTHER READING
• WORKS CITED