THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS 11

daimon hovering between heaven and earth, brooding over
his anguished pride and ioneliness. From the depths of
his misery Prometheus looked down upon the race of
earth-men, remmants of the Titan spawn, whom Zeus’ victory
had doomed to extinction along with the entire Titanic gen-
eration.

Left reliant solery on their natural capacities, these men
had rapidiy sunk into a savage mode of life. Depraved, hope-
less, under the shadow of death, they were men without
necessity, men without a story. It was precisely because they
were fatherless and in need that Prometheus saw in them his
instrument of revenge.

Henceforth Prometheus made them his ally. Possessing
nothing of his own, forced into exile, he determined to create
his own lawless kingdom out of the thievings from his ene-
mies. He resolved secretively to subvert the new Olympian
realm and to save the race of earth-men.

So he stole the fire of Zeus. He stole his creative power.
He shook the Olympian throne. For it had been Zeus’ design
to beget a new race of higher men, sacramental men, men born
of his fire. Prometheus robbed these divine men of their pa-
ternity. He carried off Zeus’ fire in a hollow navel-reed in
order that he himself could be reborn as a son of Olympus.
He contrived for himself a second birth, an unprecedented
crime.

Prometheus’ great hybris consisted in his far-reaching
subversion of divine order. Not only did he possess creative
fire, but he also gave it to men. He thereby prolonged the
time-cycle of the Titanic race and prevented the emergence
of the higher man. His punishment was that he must be
chained to that cyle.

Hence, to the Greeks, Prometheus was a most awful
figure of guilt, suffering a punishment which, though just,
was terrifying to contemplate. This first rebel slave was author
of our foredoomed race. He had taken by adaption the tribe
of fateless, superfluous earth-men who had rushed headlong