Prometheus – Angel or Demon?

Quite some time ago a friend mentioned something interesting about the ancient Titan of myth, Prometheus. She said that she could not fathom why so many people considered him a Satanic figure given the fact that the pagan pantheons were no one’s idea of nice, let alone Christian. Zeus and Odin, the heads of the Olympian and Asgardian pantheons, tend to get a “good rap” in modern culture because they are the head of their respective deified cutlures. It must be said that modern portrayals of ancient heroes or gods, such as Hercules and Thor, tend to make their respective fathers look good to avoid upsetting modern audiences. It is hard to write a hero with a bloodthirsty father if you want the hero to be on the good guy’s side!

At least, it is difficult to do that now. Many moderns look at Zeus or Odin as direct ancient interpretations of God the Father. When the myths are gentled or ‘tamed’ to Christian positions, then this may seem reasonable. Closer inspection, however, paints a very different picture of the original interpretations of these deities than those which most moderns would think.

This is particularly true of Odin All-Father, who enjoyed human sacrifice and was the god of politicians as well as death. Known by many fearful epithets, lest the Norse attract his attention when they didn’t want it, Odin was as much a trickster as his blood-brother Loki. Loki would play a trick on the Aesir rather than on mankind, while Odin’s tricks often ended with a king or a brave warrior dead. One of the ways men were sacrificed to Odin was by being hung from a tree and then speared, for the All-Father bore a spear and used it in battle to slay his favorites when he decided he wanted them in Valhalla as part of his Einherjar.

Zeus is better known for his philandering ways but he, too, was not mankind’s friend. The only reason he did not allow humanity to be wiped out in a flood was because then there would be none to worship the Olympians. Likewise, according to Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology (1970), if it had not been for Prometheus, mankind would have starved. Most of their meat needed to be sacrificed to the Olympians and this meant they could barely feed themselves – until Prometheus tricked Zeus into accepting the bones and offal instead of the best meat for sacrifice.

Angered by this, Zeus did not harm the Titan immediately. Only when Prometheus stole fire and gave it to man, so that man could cook and build, did the head of the gods seek vengeance upon him. As the myth goes, Zeus had Prometheus chained to a crag so an eagle (a creature subservient to and representing Zeus) could eat his liver every day. The organ would grow back each night so the cycle could repeat – not unlike Loki being chained to a rock by the Aesir with the guts of his own son so that a snake could drip poison into his eyes.

In both cases, Odin and Zeus are less like God the Father and more like the beings described as the “fathers” of the Nephilim or Biblical giants in this episode of The Lord of Spirits podcast. The episode is fascinating (and horrifying) to modern Christian and non-Christians living in our shattered society for how very bloodthirsty the “old gods” prove to be. The gods of old were not universally mankind’s friends; to avoid Odin’s notice, Norsemen used upwards of a hundred different names for the All-Father, one of which was The Necromancer. It was only in later times and stories that Odin came to be seen as anything like a benevolent father deity rather than as a creature whose attention one would rather avoid so as not to be the victim of either spearing or a blood eagle sacrifice.

What does this have to do with Prometheus? Well, it is now taken for granted that he is often portrayed as a Satanic figure, someone rebelling against the head god of the Greek pantheon, who was a glimmer the Greeks had of God the Father. Doesn’t that mean that anyone going against Zeus was going against God?

In order to answer that question, I did a little digging: it seems Prometheus only really began to pick up his “Satanic connection” following the Renaissance. This was especially true during the Romantic Era which followed the Age of Enlightenment (a movement that wasn’t universally against religion or monarchy). The best known or loudest Romantics essentially took the worst aspects of the Enlightenment and ran with them, opposing organized religion and generally advocating practices not conducive to maintaining a civilization, healthy or otherwise. Some of the biggest names during the Romantic Era who publicly did this were Mary Shelley, authoress of Frankenstein, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. It is Percy Bysshe Shelley who is responsible for Prometheus’s modern “bad rap” with his play Prometheus Unbound, which is often compared to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which describes Satan’s rebellion against God.

Ironically, Shelley himself is the one who drew that comparison, and most academics have followed his lead. This seems more than a little disingenuous and explains my friend’s confusion over the comparison of Prometheus to Satan: the person primarily responsible for Prometheus’s modern “bad rap” is Percy Bysshe Shelley. Others may have held the view before him, but he is the one who popularized it with his Greek myth fanfic that he tied to Milton’s epic poem and thus rode Milton’s coattails.

Once one understands this, one must wonder why we continue to tar this classical hero with Shelley’s interpretation of him. There was quite a different view of Prometheus back in the Middle Ages, and if one views the old gods through the lens of Lord of Spirits, Prometheus looks less like a devil and more like an angel sent to help men by God. The Greek gods were capricious and callous; they help men out of pity sometimes. Or they pursue them out of desire, or they punish them for not honoring the gods properly. Among the few classical Greek deities to actually be interested in mankind for man’s own sake is Prometheus. Shouldn’t that be something worth investigating on its own, rather than allowing Shelley’s view to dominate the conversation?

While there is still good reason for Catholics to study Prometheus Unbound as Shelley’s personal Satanic fanfic, it is a little bothersome to see that fantasy conflated with the actual myths. The protagonist of Prometheus Unbound is an entirely different character and is the progenitor for a great deal of trouble, certainly, but why should Catholics – or anyone else – let that affect their perception of the mythic Titan? Why are Catholics not examining Prometheus as a guardian of humanity sent by God to protect His creation, sort of like Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring or The Hobbit? Tolkien scholars agree that the “Secret Fire” which Gandalf states he serves is the Holy Spirit, and while Odin may have inspired the wizard’s physical appearance, their personalities are quite different. Gandalf wields fire and the third Elven ring, Narya, the “Ring of Fire” which lets him set men’s hearts ablaze to help them confront the evil of Sauron.

Prometheus is said to have stolen fire in the ancient myths. But from a Catholic’s perspective, what if he didn’t actually steal it? Tolkien was much better versed in ancient myth, Greek as well as Norse, than most people today are. He would know all about The Necromancer, as he himself called Odin All-Father in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. For all his love of Norse mythology, that was not the only source the good professor drew upon in his writings.

Prometheus “stole” fire, we are told. What if, instead of stealing, he was given fire by God the Father so that he could help mankind? What if the Olympians took exception to that gift because it broke their control over humanity? The original Prometheus is not the being in Shelley’s play. He is someone older, wiser, and more Titanic, if you will forgive the pun. Why not play with the original myth instead of Shelley’s tale? It would be a better counter to the narrative that Shelley set in motion so long ago, and which has helped to cause such grief.

What do you think? Should we give the original Titan another chance? Or should we simply let Shelley’s version continue to suck the air out of the room?

Looking at Prometheus from another angle might be worth it. We might have done him a great wrong by allowing Shelley’s vision to take over the popular consciousness. A new view may be in order.