ugh the cold winter nights and was overcome with sympathy. He decided to give his most loved creation a great gift. He stealthily stole fire from the hearth of the gods and brought it to humans in a hollow wand of fennel that served him in place of a staff. He brought down the fire and gave it to the humans, then instructed them as to how they could cook and stay warm.
Zeus was enraged by Prometheus' insubordinate action. However, Zeus could not simply take fire back, because a god or goddess was not able to take away what another had god or goddess had given. For Prometheus' act of hubris, Zeus devised a punishment that would suppress all of humankind while rendering Prometheus unable to succor them. Zeus had Prometheus carried to Mount Caucasus, upon the summit of which he was bound to a rock. Here an eagle by the name of Ethon would arrive daily to peck at his liver. Since Prometheus was immortal, his liver would grow back each day, and so the eagle would be able to eat it again.
In other variations of this story, Zeus has Prometheus tortured on the mountain because he had come to know the name of the person who, according to prophecy, would overthrow the king of the gods. This punishment was to last for eternity. About twelve generations later, Zeus's very own son Heracles, passing by on his way to find the apples of the Hesperides as part of his Twelve Labors, freed Prometheus. Once free, Prometheus captured Ethon and ate the bird's liver as revenge for his pain and suffering. Zeus was not overly perturbed upon hearing that Prometheus had again evaded his punishment, as the act brought more glory to his son. However, there was a problem, since Zeus had already decided that Prometheus would be tied in the rock for eternity. According to Greek mythology, this could never change, even if Zeus himself wished it. Finally, a solution was found: Prometheus was invited to return to Mount Olympus and was given a ring by Zeus that contained a piece of the rock to which he had been previously bound. Prometheus liked this ring and decided to wear it thereafter for eternity, technically fulfilling the conditions of Zeus' earlier decree.
To punish human beings for the offenses of Prometheus, Zeus told Hephaestus to "mingle together all things loveliest, sweetest, and best, but look that you also mingle therewith the opposites of each." So Hephaestus took gold and dross, wax and flint, snow and mud, honey and gall, the bloom of the rose and the toad's venom, the voice of laughing water and the peacocks squall, the sea's beauty and its treachery, the dog's fidelity and the wind's inconstancy, and the mother bird's heart of love and the cruelty of the tiger. All these and other contraries beyond enumeration he blended cunningly into one substance and this he molded into the shape that Zeus had described to him. What resulted was a maiden as beautiful as a goddess, who Zeus named Pandora which meant "all gifted." Zeus breathed upon her image, and it lived. The king of the gods sent her to wed Prometheus' brother, Epimetheus, and although Prometheus had warned his brother never to accept gifts from the Olympians, Epimetheus was love-stricken, and he and Pandora wed. The gods adorned the couple with many wedding gifts, and Zeus presented them with a beautifully wrought box, known today as Pandora's Box. When Pandora opened the box, all suffering and despair was unleashed upon humankind, and Zeus had finally taken his revenge.
As the introducer of fire and inventor of crafts, Prometheus was seen as the patron of human civilization, thus, it is not surprising that he was commemorated to some extent in Greek worship. A small shrine to Prometheus was located in the Kerameikos, or potter's quarter, of Athens, not far from Plato's Academy. As is common in many altars and votive reliefs to Prometheus, he was honored in an altar with Hephaestus. In the Akademia, located just outside of Athens, there stood another altar to Prometheus, from which athletes raced to the city carrying burning torches. The contest involved keeping the torch alight w