HOMECreate-Your-Own-Myth
What the Greeks thought:
Great job! Now you’ve told us why you think we have fire! Try comparing your myth with this – it’s what the Greeks thought!
Prometheus was a pretty smart god. He could tell into the future and always thought ahead. Because he was so good at this, Zeus gave him the job of recreating the Earth’s creatures after a huge flood that wiped out all life on Earth. Prometheus was to give each different animal a gift so that they could survive better. Prometheus was careful to distribute the gifts evenly so that each animal received one. This plan worked well until his brother Epimetheus, a god who wasn’t too smart, asked if he could help. Prometheus agreed that he could present the animals with their gifts as long as he was helpful.
Epimetheus began to give animals gifts, but found that he had underestimated the number of animals. He didn’t have a gift to give the last of the creatures - humans! Without something to protect themselves from the other animals, they would die!
When Prometheus found out, he was furious! Still, there was nothing he could do! After thinking for a while, though, he came up with a plan. He would give the humans fire - something that was supposed to be strictly for immortals. Zeus had forbidden him to grant anyone with this gift, but Prometheus did anyway.
He sneaked down to Earth with an amber from a sacred fire, hid it in a stalk of fennel and gave it to humans, warning them not to let it burn out. The humans thanked him and promised to do as he said.
The people built temples to honor the gods and sent them burnt offerings. When Zeus saw the smoke, he was mad at first but decided that he enjoyed the offerings. To keep him from becoming angry, the humans were forced to continue giving up their best meat.
Prometheus knew how hard the humans worked to get their meat and saw how they gave most of it up to Zeus. He once again felt bad for them, so he told them to make a pile of scraps and one of good meat. Then he told them to cover the pile of scraps with enough of the good meat so that it was impossible to tell that there were any scraps in it. He told them to then cover the pile of good meat with some scraps. Once this had been done, the pile with the good meat looked as if it was the pile of scraps and the pile of scraps looked like it was a pile of good meat. Zeus unknowingly chose the pile with the scraps hidden underneath because it looked to him like it was the better of the two piles, but when he found out that he had been tricked, he was furious!
Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to the Caucasus Mountains and sent eagles to him each day to eat his liver. Because he was immortal, he could not die, so his liver grew back each night.
Zeus didn’t want to punish humans that badly, so he sent a woman called Pandora to Earth - but that’s another story.