Promēthe us

, a son of Iapetus by Clymene, one of the Oceanides. He was brother to Atlas, Menœtius, and Epimetheus, and surpa ed all mankind in cunning and fraud. He ridiculed the gods, and deceived Jupiter himself. He sacrificed two bulls, and filled their skins, one with the flesh and the other with the bones, and asked the father of the gods which of the two he preferred as an offering. Jupiter became the dupe of his artifice, and chose the bones, and from that time the priests of the temples were ever after ordered to burn the whole victims on the altars, the flesh and the bones altogether. To punish Pro me the us and the rest of mankind, Jupiter took fire away from the earth, but the son of Iapetus outwitted the father of the gods. He climbed the heavens by the a istance of Minerva, and stole fire from the chariot of the sun, which he brought down upon the earth at the end of a ferula. This provoked Jupiter the more; he ordered Vulcan to make a woman of clay, and after he had given her life, he sent her to Pro me the us, with a box of the richest and most valuable presents which she had received from the gods. See: Pandora . Pro me the us, who suspected Jupiter, took no notice of Pandora or her box, but he made his brother Epimetheus marry her, and the god, now more irritated, ordered Mercury, or Vulcan, according to Æschylus, to carry this artful mortal to mount Caucasus, and there tie him to a rock, where for 30,000 years a vulture was to feed upon his liver, which was never diminished, though continually devoured. He was delivered from this painful confinement about 30 years afterwards by Hercules, who killed the bird of prey. The vulture, or, according to others, the eagle which devoured the liver of Pro me the us, was born from Typhon and Echidna. According to Apollo dor us, Pro me the us made the first man and woman that ever were upon the earth with clay, which he animated by means of the fire which he had stolen from heaven. On this account, therefore, the A then i ans raised him an altar in the grove of Academus, where they yearly celebrated games to his honour. During these games there was a race, and he who carried a burning torch in his hand without extinguishing it obtained the prize. Pro me the us, as it is universally credited, had received the gift of prophecy; and all the gods, and even Jupiter himself, consulted him as a most infallible oracle. To him mankind are indebted for the invention of many of the useful arts; he taught them the use of plants, with their physical power, and from him they received the knowledge of taming horses and different animals, either to cultivate the ground, or for the purposes of luxury. Hesiod , Theogony , lis. 510 & 550.— Apollo dor us , bks. 1 & 2.— Pausanias , bk. 1 , ch. 30 ; bk. 5 , ch. 11 .— Hyginus , fable 144.— Aeschylus , Pro me the us Bound .— Virgil , Eclogues , poem 6.— Ovid , Metamorphoses , bk. 1 , li. 82 .— Horace , bk. 1 , ode 3.— Seneca , Medea , li. 823 .