. of Jupiter nailed him down to Caucasus, and set an eagle to eat his heart, which grew by night as the eagle eat it by day; that after thirty years " Hercules killed the eagle, and set Prometheus at liberty. Thus Hyginus relates the fable of Prometheus;" he has enlarged it, in some circumstances, in his astronomy." According to this account, the teaching men how to kindle fire seems to have been what Prometheus was famous for; and this opinion may seem to be countenanced by a hint of Diodorus Siculus;" by the account we have in Pausanias of an altar erected in the academy at Athens; and by what Plato said of Prometheus. But I cannot think this was the fact; for, The ancient Greek mythologists, and those who copied from them, tell the story quite another way ;' saying that he made men and animated them with fire. 2. The supposed fact upon which Hyginus' fable depends, was not true; for it was not Prometheus, but * Προς αλήθειαν δ' ευρετην γενόμενον των πυρείων, εξ ων εκαινται To Tup. Diodor. Sic. 1. 5, p. 232. 4 Εν Ακαδημία δε και Προμηθέως βωμος και θεασιν απ' αυτά προς την πόλιν έχονίες καιομένας λαμπάδας, το S. αγώνισμα, όμου των δρόμω φυλάξαι την δάδα ότι καιομένην, ετιν. Pausan. in Attic. c. 30. * Пug μsv πapa Пpounews. Plato. in Politic. p. 539. Apollodor. lib. 1. c. 7. Fulgentii Mythol. lib. 2. c. 9. Tatian. Orat. ad Græc, Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. 5. Phoroneus who first taught the Greeks to kindle fire.* 3. The altar at Athens mentioned by Pausanias was either 'of no note, very modern, or more probably, what was said of it in Pausanias' time relating to Prómetheus, was not true; for Lucian is express, that Prometheus never had temple or altar any where dedicated to him." 4. What Plato says of Prometheus' giving men fire, was not meant in the literal sense; but in allusion to the Greek fable of his having made men. 5. If his teaching men how to kindle fire had been the fact committed by him, how could this have deserved punishment? Lucian's ridicule of this notion is sufficient to induce any one to think, that the ancients could never have imagined a man condemned for an invention of such use and service to mankind. Now for these reasons I think, that this account of Hyginus was not the true ancient Mythos about Prometheus; but rather an opinion of some later fabulists, who thought they could this way find an easier solu-. tion of what was said about him. The soul of man was thought by philosophers, more ancient than the stoics, to consist of fire. It was an ancient opinion that the Hebrew word aish for man, was derived from aesh, which in that language signifies fire;' and very probably the philosophy of the times, in which what is said of Prometheus was first recorded, t Pausan. in Corinthiac. "Vid. Lucian. in Prometheo. x Vid. Platon. Protag. p. 224. led those, who framed the Mythos concerning him, to say he gave fire to his men; but not in that low and vulgar sense in which some writers of later ages imagined. But let us see what the Greek writers say of him. They tell us, that having made men of water and earth, he gave them fire without Jupiter's knowledge; that Jupiter for this fact ordered Vulcan to nail him down upon mount Caucasus; where an eagle for many years preyed upon his liver, until at length Hercules delivered him. This is their account of him: let us now examine, what they could design to intimate by it. Lucian indeed tells us, that the Athenians called the potters, who made earthen vessels and hardened them with fire, Prometheus';d but then he owns that they were the wits who talked thus; and this is indeed making a jest of, but not explaining the ancient fables. The philosophers treated these matters in a more serious way. We have in Eusebius what one of them would have said upon the subject. Prometheus, he says, was fabulously re f z Nec vero Atlas sustinere cœlum, nec Prometheus affixus Caucaso traderetur, nisi cœlestium divina cognitio nomen corum ad Errorem Fabulæ traduxisset. Cic. Tusc. Disput. lib. 5. c. 3. Apollod. Bibl. II. f`, c. 7. Lucian. in Prometheo. a They were the jesters upon Prometheus' materials, the επισκωπίοντες ες τον πηλον, και την εν πυρι οπίησιν. Ibid. • Προμηθεύς. . . . . ος πλατίειν ανθρωπος εμυθεύετο σοφός γαρ ων εις παιδείαν αυτές επο της αγαν ιδιωτειας μετεπλατίεν. Euseb. in Can. Chronic. an. 332. ported to have made men; because being a wise man, he reformed by his instructions men, who were in a state of the grossest ignorance; and Plato tells us, what the fire was, which he stole and added to them; namely the arts, which Vulcan and Minerva taught the people.' Science is the fire, the life of man, though none but God did ever form man of the dust of the earth, and breathed into him the breath of life, so as to cause man to become a living soul ;* yet, what is said of Prometheus, taking it in the sense we have now offered, is not inelegant; though fables and similitudes are not to be too strictly taken; nor can instructing men be absolutely said to be making and giving them life. And now we may see how Prometheus offended Jupiter, and why Jupiter put a stop to him. Jupiter had appointed proper persons to instruct his Cretans, and agreeably to what was the sense of Joshua, who attended upon Moses," he thought it politically unsafe to permit any to be their teachers, but those who derived their authority from him, and therefore Prometheus, who had no such au thority, was treated by him as a corrupter and seducer of the people. It is not so easy to say, what the punishment was, which Jupiter inflicted on him. What is told of the eagle preying upon his heart or liver, is indeed a mere fable; and we have hints, that • Άνθρωπος σοφιαν την πολιτικήν εκ είχεν εις δε το της * Αθηνας και Ηφαις οίκημα το κοινόνεν ω εφιλοτεχνείτην, [Προμηθεύς,] λαθών εσέρχεται, και κλέψας την 7 εμπυρον τέχνην την τε Ηφαις, και την αλλην την της Αθήνας, δίδωσιν ανθρωπω. Plat. in Protag. p. 224. h Numbers xi. 28. & Gen: ii. 7. lead to the rise of it. Herodotus remarks, that the Greeks had the names of almost all their gods out of Egypt; and Diodorus observes, that there had been men in Egypt of all the several names, by which the illustrious Greeks were afterwards distinguished. Sol, Saturn, Rhea, Jupiter, Juno, Vulcanus, Vesta, and Mercurius were namès, which had been given to famous Egyptians; and thus the Egyptians had their Prometheus,' who was one of their kings." In his time the river Nile was called the Eagle," and great inundations happening in his reign from the overflowing of this river, the concern he had for his country threw him into the deepest melancholy. i Herod. lib. 2. c. 50. But * Diod. Sic. lib. 1. p. 8. We must not understand either Herodotus to mean, that the Greeks took the Egyptians' words for the names of their Gods, or Diodorus, that the Egyptians had called their heroes by the Greek names; the fact was this, the Greeks formed names for their gods and heroes of the same import in their language, as the Egyptian names were in the Egyptian, as homo the latin word for man expresses in latin, what Adam the Hebrew word does in Hebrew, both being of a like analogy to the word, which in each language signifies the ground, and this is what Herodotus and Diodorus intended about the Greek and Egyptian names; viz. that, as Diodorus expresses it, μεθερμηνευομενών αυτών ομώνυμος υπαρχειν, they were analogous to one another. 1 Diodor, ibid. m Diodor. ibid. * Δια την οξύτητα, και την βίαν τε κατενεχθενος ρεύματος τον μεν ποταμον Αετόν ονομασθήναι. Diodor. p. 11. • Τον δε Προμηθεα, δια την λύπην κινδυνεύειν, εκλιπείν του βιον εξεσίως. Id. ibid. |