40 Fun Facts About Prometheus

Which novel, begun as a ghost-story dare at Lake Geneva, is subtitled The Modern Prometheus?

Frankenstein casts its scientist as a new fire-thief: he seizes the secret of life and pays dearly for it. Mary Shelley was 18 when she began the story.

Which organ of the chained Prometheus grew back every night, only to be torn out again each day?

Liver tissue really can regrow: it is the only internal organ able to regenerate. The ancient Greeks also thought of it as the seat of human emotions.

Which bird, a symbol of Zeus, came every day to feed on Prometheus as he hung in chains?

The eagle was the emblem of Zeus himself. Greek vase painters showed the scene, often with an archer taking aim at the bird.

Which hero, a son of Zeus, shot the bird tormenting Prometheus and set the prisoner free?

Heracles had his father's permission for the rescue. Known to the Romans as Hercules, he came upon the prisoner while travelling on one of his twelve labours.

Which first mortal woman did Zeus send among humans as payback for Prometheus's theft of fire?

Pandora arrived carrying a sealed jar of miseries. Centuries later a translation slip, usually pinned on the scholar Erasmus, turned that jar into the famous box.

Which brother of Prometheus was sentenced, after the Titans' defeat, to carry a burden for ever?

Atlas fought on the losing side, and his sentence was to hold up the sky. Collections of maps have carried his name since the 16th century.

American Prometheus, a Pulitzer-winning 2005 biography, tells the life story of which scientist?

Robert Oppenheimer led the project that built the first atomic bombs, the stolen fire of the title. The book inspired Christopher Nolan's 2023 film about him.

Which New York landmark has a gilded statue of Prometheus overlooking its winter ice rink?

Rockefeller Center has had the gilded bronze since 1934. Sculptor Paul Manship shows the Titan falling through a ring marked with the signs of the zodiac.

The 2012 Ridley Scott film Prometheus, about a deep-space expedition, is part of which franchise?

Alien, the 1979 original, was also a Ridley Scott film. The newer movie takes its title from the expedition's spaceship, the Prometheus.

In later Greek and Roman tellings, from what material did Prometheus sculpt the first humans?

Clay ties him to the potters of Athens, who counted him as a patron of their craft. Their quarter, the Kerameikos, shares its Greek root with the English word ceramics.

In the best-known telling, from which mountain did Prometheus carry off fire for humankind?

Mount Olympus is a real peak, the highest in Greece. Other tellings have him take the flame from a divine workshop or from the chariot of the sun.

The name Prometheus is usually taken to mean what, the opposite of his brother Epimetheus's name?

Forethought is the usual reading, though the name's true origin is uncertain. The myths match it: he is the clever planner, his brother the foolish one.

Inside the hollow stalk of which plant did Prometheus smuggle fire away from the gods?

Fennel of the giant kind is the plant meant. Followers of Dionysus carried its stalks as ritual staffs, often topped with a pine cone.

In most tellings, in which mountain range was Prometheus chained to a rock?

The Caucasus lay at the far edge of the world the Greeks knew. Some place the rock on Mount Elbrus or Mount Kazbek, two volcanic peaks in the range.

Which god reluctantly fastens Prometheus to the rock at the start of Prometheus Bound?

Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods, takes no pleasure in the task. In the older poems he is also the one who shapes the first woman at Zeus's command.

At Mecone, Prometheus tricked Zeus into choosing which part of an ox, hidden under glistening fat?

Bones wrapped in fat became the gods' share at every Greek sacrifice from then on, while people kept the meat. Zeus struck back by hiding fire from humans.

Which son of Prometheus survived Zeus's great flood in a chest built on his father's advice?

Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha then refilled the empty earth by throwing rocks over their shoulders, and each stone turned into a person.

Which tragedian, who fought at Marathon, is traditionally credited with the play Prometheus Bound?

Aeschylus is the traditional author, though some scholars doubt he wrote it. The play is thought to have opened a trilogy whose other parts survive only in fragments.

Prometheus is also a small moon, discovered in Voyager 1 images in 1980, that orbits which planet?

Saturn's narrow F ring is kept in line by this moon, whose gravity shepherds the ring's inner edge. The moon is oddly stretched, more than twice as long as it is thick.

What alone stayed in the jar of evils opened by the first woman, sent to punish Prometheus's theft?

Hope was left under the lid when the jar was shut. The Greek word can also mean a deceptive expectation, so readers still argue whether it was a comfort or one last curse.

Which early Greek poet gives the oldest surviving account of Prometheus, in his Theogony?

Hesiod tells the story twice. The Theogony has the sacrifice trick and the punishment, and his Works and Days adds the first woman and her jar of evils.

In one telling, which wise centaur, incurably wounded, gave up his immortality so Prometheus could go free?

Chiron was the tutor of heroes, with Achilles and Jason among his pupils. Being immortal he could not die of the wound, so he traded his endless life away.

Prometheus knew which sea nymph, courted by Zeus, was fated to bear a son greater than his father?

Thetis was married off to a mortal instead, and her son was Achilles. The secret is the one hold the chained Titan has over Zeus in Prometheus Bound.

Which maiden, turned into a cow and chased by a gadfly, meets the chained Titan in Prometheus Bound?

Io was a princess of Argos, transformed after Zeus fell for her and Hera took revenge. The playwright brings her in as a fellow victim of Zeus.

Which divine messenger arrives in Prometheus Bound to demand the prisoner's secret, and is refused?

Hermes brings threats from Zeus: an earthquake, and a mountain falling to bury the prisoner. The Titan still refuses, and the play ends as the storm breaks.

Which enforcer of Zeus in Prometheus Bound shares his name with the hero of the God of War games?

Kratos, whose name means strength, leads the captive on stage with his sister Bia. A director of the games called the shared name a happy mistake.

Which Titan, named by Homer as a prisoner in Tartarus, was the father of Prometheus?

Iapetus was later identified with the biblical Japheth, a son of Noah, partly because the two names sound so alike.

Which composer's only full ballet, premiered in Vienna in 1801, is The Creatures of Prometheus?

Beethoven liked the finale's main theme enough to reuse it in a set of piano variations and in the last movement of his Eroica Symphony.

Which Romantic poet, host of the 1816 Villa Diodati gathering, wrote a poem called Prometheus?

Lord Byron shows the Titan as unrepentant to the end. The Romantics loved Prometheus as a lone rebel who suffers for helping humankind.

Which German writer's defiant early poem Prometheus was later set to music by Schubert?

Goethe wrote it in the 1770s, at the height of the Sturm und Drang movement. His Titan scolds Zeus to his face and boasts of making humans in his own image.

Which Flemish master painted Prometheus Bound, leaving its bird to animal painter Frans Snyders?

Rubens kept the canvas himself for years, then traded it with other pictures to an Englishman in exchange for a collection of classical statues.

Which Mexican muralist painted Prometheus above a dining-hall fireplace at Pomona College in 1930?

José Clemente Orozco finished the work in June 1930, and it counts as the first modern fresco in the United States.

Prometheus, a tree nearly 5,000 years old when felled in Nevada in 1964, was of which species?

Bristlecone pine WPN-114 was cut down for research, and nobody involved knew its record age beforehand. It proved to be the oldest non-clonal living thing then known.

Which Norse god, punished much like Prometheus, lies bound beneath a serpent that drips venom?

Loki has his wife Sigyn beside him, catching the venom in a bowl. When she turns away to empty it, the drops make him writhe, and that shaking was said to cause earthquakes.

Which sorceress gave Jason the Charm of Prometheus, an ointment proof against fire-breathing bulls?

Medea was the daughter of the king of Colchis. Sailing in, Jason's crew had watched the bird of Zeus flying toward the mountains where the Titan hung.

In one telling, the hero who freed Prometheus was on a labour to fetch which prize?

Golden apples were the goal of his eleventh labour. In this version the rescue is a payment: the Titan tells him how to find the fruit and is set free in return.

Which team contest was run at Athens in honour of Prometheus, starting from his altar?

A torch relay suited the fire-bringer: teams of runners handed on a burning brand. The travel writer Pausanias describes runners carrying lit torches from his altar to the city.

The altar of Prometheus stood in which Athenian grove, later home to a famous school of philosophy?

The Academy was a sacred olive grove long before philosophers taught there. Several of the city's processions set out from the Titan's altar among the trees.

In the comedy The Birds, what does Prometheus hide beneath so that Zeus cannot spot him from above?

A parasol is his whole disguise. He slips in to tip off the rebels that the gods are starving, then leaves moments before the envoys of Zeus arrive.

Which philosopher's dialogue Protagoras has Prometheus steal fire to fix a brother's blunder?

Plato has Epimetheus hand out every useful trait to the animals and leave nothing over for humans. Stolen fire is his brother's emergency remedy.