Prometheus
The Prometheus Myth is intriguing. The fact that he brings fire in a fennel stalk probably reflects an actual event (fire can be carried this way) and witnessed by early man would this have seemed miraculous and could only be accountable in terms to have been stolen from the Sky God, the thrower of lightening which causes fire. The Sky God being Zeus. In Archaic Greece fire rituals seemed to be widespread and for worshipping the gods, so Zeus trying to stop men from having fire seems odd. Zeus appears to have seen through the ruse to offer the gods the bones but still goes ahead deny fire..... Then he allows Pandora to be created to make the life of mankind rather tedious because of the fire theft. I feel there is something else going on here but can't see it. It must be something linked with passion as it is the liver that Zeus has attacked (the Greek seat of passion). Zeus is pleased that his son, Herakles, releases Prometheus, what going on here?
Why the east, the Caucuses Mountains, for Prometheus's chaining and punishment? This is close to the land of Medea and the Golden Fleece, and an area just being explored by the sea-faring Greeks. But does it indicate the sources of the myth?
In Classical Mythology, A Very Short Introduction (Helen Morales 2007) there are a couple of instances of a modern take on Prometheus. The incongruity of using him in a statue at the Rockefeller Centre, New York, representing progress in a commercial world, and more interestingly, in a film by Tony Harrison, Prometheus (1998). Here Prometheus (who is again featured as a statue) is the antithesis of the commercial use in New York and seen as a bringer of devastation in a post industrial world and his failure to resist the despotism of Zeus. Just goes to show the power of this myth today and the very different meanings attributed to them.
Freud’s (1932) paper “The Acquisition and Control of Fire” is another one I had never read before. This one I found more complicated and, like many of Freud’s paper, he doesn’t tell you outright what his point is, rather he takes you through his thought process and through the different possibilities he has considered. This is what I got [my interpretation of Freud]: He wondered what was significant about the fire in the myth of Prometheus and the myth of Herakles. He asks several questions:
- Why was Prometheus punished for bringing fire to men? (it was stolen from the gods as punishment again for the trickery of the meat, but didn’t Zeus see through the trickery and still chose the bones?)
- Why did his liver (Greek view of liver as seat of all passions) continuously regenerate? (and thus his sentence being one of interminable torture – the eagle eating out part of his liver)
- Is there a connection in the theme of Prometheus bringing fire to humanity and Herakles’ use of fire to kill the multi-headed hydra? (acquisition and control)
He changed the title of his paper 3 times: previously “The Acquisition of Fire”, “The Acquisition of Power over Fire”. He also makes reference to his “Civilization and Its Discontents paper”, where some of these ideas are explored in more detail – ultimately, what do humans need to have but also control within themselves in order to live with others in civilized society?
Freud’s idea of there being regenerating drives, so to speak, and how these are vital for life but also need to be controlled. He wonders how these drives are satisfied and/or controlled. This is a two page long paper and he makes brief reference to the id and super-ego.
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