Well, Hephaestus, here is the Caucasus, where this poor Titan will have to be nailed up. Now then let us look about for a suitable rock, if there is a place anywhere that has no snow on it, so that the irons may be riveted in more firmly and he may be in full sight of everybody as he hangs there.
Yes, let’s look about, Hermes : we mustn't crucify him low and close to the ground for fear that men, his own handiwork, may come to his aid, nor yet on the summit, either, for he would be out of sight from below. Suppose we crucify him half way up, somewhere hereabouts over the ravine, with his hands outstretched from this rock to that one ?
Right you are; the cliffs are sheer and inaccessible
on every side, and overhang slightly, and the rock
has only this narrow foothold, so that one can barely
stand on tip toe ; in short, it will make a very handy
cross. Well, Prometheus, don’t hang back: climb
up and let yourself be riveted to the mountain.
Come, Hephaestus and Hermes, at any rate you might pity me in my undeserved misfortune.
You mean, be crucified in your stead the instant we disobey the order! Don’t you suppose the Caucasus has room enough to hold two more pegged up? Come, hold out your right hand. Secure it, Hephaestus, and nail it up, and bring your hammer down with a will. Give me the other hand too. Let that be well secured also. That’s good. The eagle will soon fly down to eat away your liver, so that you may have full return for your beautiful and clever handiwork in clay.
O Cronus and Iapetus and you, O mother (Earth)! What a fate I suffer, luckless that I am, when I have done no harm.
No harm, Prometheus? In the first place you
undertook to serve out our meat and did it so unfairly and trickily that you abstracted all the best
of it for yourself and cheated Zeus by wrapping
“bones in glistening fat”: for I remember that
Hesiod says so.
Hermes, you seem to be “blaming a man who is
blameless,” to speak with the poet,
Your appeal, Prometheus, will be tardy and of no avail, but say your say just the same; for in any case we must remain here until the eagle flies down to attend to your liver. This interval of leisure may as well be employed in listening to a sophistic speech, as you are a very clever scoundrel at speech-making.
Speak first, then, Hermes, and see that you accuse me as eloquently as you can and that you don’t neglect any of your father’s claims. Hephaestus, I make you judge.
No, by Heaven; you will find me an accuser
Well, then, divide the accusation ; you can accuse me of the theft now, and then Hermes will criticize the serving of the meat and the making of men. You both belong to trades-unions and are likely to be good at speaking.
Hermes shall speak for me too, for I am no hand at court specches but stick by my forge for the most part, while he is an orator and has taken uncommon interest in such matters.
I should never have thought that Hermes would care to speak about the theft or to reproach me with anything like that, when I follow his own trade ! However, if you agree to this, son of Maea, it is high time you were getting on with your accusation.
Just as if long speeches and adequate preparation
were necessary, Prometheus, and it were not enough
simply to summarize your wrong-doings and say that
when you were commissioned to divide the meat you
tried to keep the best for yourself “and cheat the
king, and that you made men when you should not,
and that you stole fire from us and took it to them!
You do not seem to realize, my excellent friend, that
you have found Zeus very humane in view of such
actions. Now if you deny that you have committed
them, I shall have to have it out with you and make
a long speech and try my best to bring out the truth;
but if you admit that you served the meat in that
Perhaps what you have said is also a waste of words ; we shall see a little later! But as you say your accusation is sufficient, I shall try as best I can to dissipate the charges. And first let me tell you about the meat. By Heaven, even now as I speak of it I blush for Zeus, if he is so mean and fault-finding as to send a prehistoric god like me to be crucified just because he found a small bone in his portion, without remembering how we fought side by side or thinking how slight the ground for his anger is and how. childish it is to “be angry and enraged unless he gets the lion’s share himself.
Deceptions of that sort, Hermes, occurring at table,
should not be remembered, but if a mistake is made
among people who are having a good time, it should
be considered a practical joke and one’s anger should
be left behind there in the dining room. To store
up one’s hatred against the morrow, to hold spite
and to cherish a stale grudge—come, it is not seemly
for gods and in any case not kingly. Anyhow, if
dinners are deprived of these attractions, of trickery,
jokes, mockery and ridicule, all that is left is drunkenness, repletion and silence; gloomy, joyless things,
all of them, not in the least appropriate to a dinner.
So I should not have thought that Zeus would even
Suppose, however, Hermes, that it was more serious—that instead of giving Zeus the smaller portion I had abstracted the whole of it—what then? Just because of that ought he to have mingled earth with heaven, as the saying goes, and ought he to conjure up irons and crosses and a whole Caucasus and send down eagles and pick out my liver? Doesn’t all this accuse the angered man himself of great pettiness and meanness of disposition and readiness to get angry? What would he have done in ease he had been choused out of a whole ox, if he wreaks such mighty deeds about a little meat ?
How much more good-natured human beings are about such things! One would expect them to be more quick to wrath than the gods, but in spite of that there is not one among them who would propose to crucify his cook if “he dipped his finger into the broth while the meat was boiling and licked off a little, or if he pulled off a bit of the roast and gobbled it up. No, they pardon them. To be sure, if they are extremely angry, they give them a slap or hit them over the head ; but among them nobody was ever crucified on so trivial a ground. So much for the meat—an unseemly plea for me to make, but a far more unseemly accusation for him to bring ;
and now it is time to speak of my handiwork
and the fact that I made men. This embodies a
There existed, then, in time gone by (for if I
begin there it will be easier to see whether I have
done any wrong in my alterations and innovations
with regard to men) there existed, as I say, only the
divine, the heavenly race. The earth was a rude
and ugly thing all shaggy with woods, and wild
woods at that, and there were no divine altars or
temples—how could there be ?—or images or anything else of the sort, though they are now to be
seen in great numbers everywhere, honoured with
every form of observance. But as I am always
planning something for the common good and considering how the condition of the gods may be
improved and everything else may increase in order
and in beauty, it occurred to me that it would be a
good idea to take a little bit of clay and create a
few living things, making them like us in appearance; for I thought that divinity was not quite
complete in the absence of its counterpart, comparison with which would show divinity to be the
And then, “water and
earth intermingling,” in the words of the poet,
No, Hermes, that you gods have suffered no wrong through me and my works is self-evident; come, show me even one wrong of the smallest sort, and I will hold my tongue and own that I have had the treatment that I deserved at your hahds.
On the
contrary, that my creation has been actually of
service to the gods you will learn if you notice that
the whole earth is no longer barren and unbeautiful
but adorned with cities and tilled lands and cultivated
plants, that the sea is sailed and the islands are
inhabited, and that everywhere there are altars and
sacrifices, temples and festivals,
Moreover, Hermes, please consider this point too— do you think that any choice thing unattested, something that you get or make, for instance, which nobody is going to see or to praise, will give quite as much joy and pleasure to its owner? Why did I ask that question? Because if men had not been created, it would follow that the beauty of the universe would be unattested and it would be our lot to possess wealth, so to speak, which no one else would admire and we ourselves would not prize so highly ; for we should have nothing else to compare it with, and we should not realise how happy we were if we did not see others who did not have what we have. What is great, you know, can only seem great if it is gauged by something small. You should have honoured me for that stroke of policy, but you have crucified me and have given me this return for my plan.
But there are rascals, you say, among them, and
they commit adultery and make war and mar ry their
sisters and plot against their fathers. Why, are
there not plenty of them among us? Yet, of course,
fone could not on this account blame Heaven and
Earth for creating us. Again, you may perhaps say
that we have to undergo a great deal of annoyance
in taking care of them. Well, then, on that principle
Be idle and drink our nectar and eat our ambrosia without doing anything! But what sticks in my throat most is that although you censure me for making men “and particularly the women,” you fall in love with them just the same, and are always going down below, transformed now into bulls, now into satyrs and swans, and you deign to beget gods upon them!
Perhaps, however, you will say that men should
have been made, but in some other form and not like
us. What better model could I have put before
myself than this, which I knew to be beautiful in
every way? Should I have made my creatures
unintelligent and bestial and savage? Why, how
could they have sacrificed to gods or bestowed all
the other honours upon you if they were not as
they are? You gods do not hang back when they
bring you the hecatombs, even if you have to go to
the river of Ocean,
So much for men; and now, if you wish, I shall
pass to fire and that reprehensible theft! In the
name of the gods answer me this question without
any hesitation; have we lost any fire since men
have had it too? You can’t say that we have.
The nature of that possession is such, I suppose,
that it is not diminished if anyone else takes some
On the other hand, men are obliged to
use fire, not only for other purposes but above all for
the sacrifices, in order that they may be able “to fill
the ways with savour” and to burn incense and consume meat on the altars. Indeed, I notice that you
all take particular pleasure in the smoke and think it
the most delightful of banquets when the savour
comes up to heaven
It is not an easy matter, Prometheus, to rival such
an accomplished sophist. You are lucky, however,
I did know it, Hermes, and I also know that
I shall be set free again; before long someone will
come from Thebes, a brother of yours,
I hope so, Prometheus, and I hope to see you at large, feasting with us all—but not serving our meat !