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Prometheus, pandora chapter summer 2012
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- 2. There are fourfigures in this painting, from your left they are an eagle, so the next figure must be Zeus, the boy is Ganymede, and the final figure is Prometheus stealing fire from Mt. Olympus for his mortals. Zeus originally took fire from humans to punish Prometheus for tricking him with the sacrifice. The pitcher and two-handled drinking cup next to Ganymede are in the same shapes as those used in ancient Greece. We’ll encounter Zeus and Ganymede in the next reading assignment
- 3. An old photoof a great stone relief depicting Prometheus on Mt. Olympus stealing fire (a glowing ember) on the end of a fennel staff. He is sneaking away from the workshop of Hephaestus and the Cyclopes
- 4. Jan Cossier Prometheus brings Fire to Humanity Painting by Heinrich Friedrich Füger in 1817
- 5. What follows hereis one photo depicting a scene from classical myth, created and staged by a myth student. Note the fabulous modernization and interpretation of this scene. Know that this will be your assignment in the second half of this course
- 6. • Take agood look… at Prometheus stealing fire…
- 7. An appropriate symbolon Zeus’ t-shirt
- 8. BTW, what kind ofbeer does Zeus drink?
- 9. You’d think Zeus had better taste…
- 10. One tradition statesthat Prometheus fashioned the first man from mud. Here he is shaping him. Athena (Roman Minerva) stands by. Notice that Athena is recognizable through her helmet, the only goddess who wears one
- 11. After Prometheus stolethe fire from Mt. Olympus, Zeus punished both Prometheus and his beloved humans. He had his henchman Kratos and Bia (Greek for Power and Strength) chain Prometheus to the Caucasus mountains, beyond the edge of civilization. To give you some perspective, here’s Athens and Troy
- 13. Every day aneagle (or vulture) ate Prometheus’ liver which would grow back every night. Prometheus, a son of a Titan, was immortal, so this punishment was unending...
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- 15. Prometheus by ChristianGriepenkerl (1839-1916)
- 16. The inside image of a Greek drinking cup: Atlas on the left is holding up the sky, and there’s our buddy Prometheus again. Prometheus was eventually saved by Heracles…but that’s another story…
- 17. Another student photo— interpretation of the Prometheus and Eagle scene. Keep this future assignment in mind as you read subsequent assignments…
- 18. Before Prometheus (Greek: pro-metis = for- thinker) was taken away, he told his brother Epimetheus (epi-metis = backwards thinker) not to accept anything from Zeus. But Zeus had other plans. He planned to punish Prometheus’ men by creating and sending a terrible thing: woman. Hermes delivered the first woman, called Pandora, to Epimetheus. She had a jar (later called a box)...
- 19. …which she wasnot supposed to open…but she did. The box contained all the evils in the world. She shut the box before all could get out, leaving only HOPE (so is hope a good or bad thing?). Thus we have an etiological story (KNOW THIS TERM) for three things: how and why women were created, why evils exist in the world, and marriage (Pandora married Epimetheus). The story explicitly blames woman for introducing evils into the world, just as Adam pointed the finger at Eve, who encouraged Adam to eat the apple. The artist of these paintings is John Waterhouse.
- 21. More of Waterhouse’swork: he seems to use the same female in every painting. We’ll encounter these works in several weeks
- 22. Pandora is a commonly depicted mythological character, as a search of Google’s images will prove
- 24. The next fiveimages are from the story of Zeus turning King Lycaon into a wolf, the flood story, then Deucalion and Pyrrha creating another race of mortals