Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/463

Rh destroyer, of man. That being is Prometheus, who, ascending to CHAP. the palace of Zeus, fills a ferule with fire, and thus brings down the precious boon to the woe-begone children of men. Henceforth the task of raising them was practically stripped of its difficulty, and Prometheus was enabled to teach men how to cook and build, and where to find the riches stored up within the earth. From him came the knowledge of the movements of the heavens, and the changes of the seasons ; by him men were taught to plough and reap, and to launch themselves in ships on the waters and spread their white wings to the breeze. From him they received skill in the discern- ment of herbs and roots for the healing of diseases under which they had groaned in hopeless suffering ; and from him they learnt to understand the signs of the calm and troubled heavens, and the meanings of the muscular movements of victims slain in sacrifice.

It was impossible for the poet to show more clearly that Prome- The theus was the friend who bestowed on man, originally a creature mem of more feeble and helpless than any of the brute beasts, all that can ^[g^^^" make life valuable. Of any earlier condition in which men lived, as in the golden or silver ages, or of any state better in any respect than the one in which he found them, the Prometheus of the great tragic poet knows nothing. Nor can we well lay too great a stress on this fact, because the version given by ^schylos not only makes the whole myth self-consistent, but is clearly the earlier form of the legend into which the Hesiodic poet introduced the vengeance taken by Zeus for the cheat put upon him. This story is really a mere patchwork ; for according to it men, deprived of fire as a punishment, lose a thing on which much of their comfort may depend, but they are not deprived of the crafty wisdom in which Prometheus had been their teacher. In short, they are as far as ever from that state of unawakened powers which IS of the very essence of the story in the tragedy of ^schylos. But there were two things which ^schylos felt it needful to explain. The very mode in which Prometheus became possessed of the price- less treasure implied that he was acting in opposition to the will of Zeus, or at the least without his knowledge, while it showed that he had access to the gleaming palace of the father of the gods. How then came it about that Prometheus should be able thus to enter Olympos, and why should he seek to conceal the deed which he had resolved to do ? These questions the poet answered by a reference to other myths with which Prometheus was connected. This friend of man was himself either a Titan or the son of the Titan lapetos ; and when his gigantic kinsfolk rose in rebellion against Zeus, Prome- theus played the part of Michael in the great war waged within the