ABSTRACT
In ancient Greece the common story ran that the great sky-god Zeus hid fire from men, but that the crafty hero Prometheus, son of the Titan Iapetus, stole fire from the deity in heaven and brought it down to men on earth, concealed in a stalk of fennel. For this theft Zeus punished Prometheus by nailing or chaining him to a peak in the Caucasus and sending an eagle which devoured the hero’s liver or heart by day perpetually; for by night the organ recovered all that it had lost by day. This torture Prometheus endured for thirty or for thirty thousand years, until he was at last released by Hercules. 1
