is 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