This story deftly answers one of the most vexing problems of Christianity: If god is all powerful and supremely good why do bad things happen to us?
The Greek answer is that if there is an omnipotent god (Zeus), he/she is indifferent or malevolent. This view was also shared by the Gnostic Christians who were very quickly pushed out of the Christian church.
Prometheus is also something of a scapegoat who comes between the full fury of the gods and mankind. Mankind suffers, but not nearly as much as could be were it not for the suffering of Prometheus. The scapegoat archetype is very common and is seen in figures such as Christ and Odin. Take a quick look at the image above and tell me that does not resemble Christ. This image however dates from 350 BC. Scapegoats suffer so that others will not have to. It was very common in early societies to practice scapegoating at the New Year. Often a sacrificial figure would be identified a year ahead of time and pampered like a king for that year. On the eve of the new year they would then be sacrificed, stoned or exiled from the town/village. This symbolic act was a ritual purge of the collective sins or evils of a community. The sacrificial individual would be suffering in the hopes that the community would not have to. It is also connected with early agricultural and hunting societies where death is recognized as an integral part of the life/death/rebirth cycle.
In the case of Christ the sacrifice was of such magnitude that is obviated the need for further sacrifices. Up until that time sacrifice was a regular practice. For more detailed explanations of the scapegoat rituals and documentation see "The Golden Bough" by Sir George James Frazer.
Another trend which is highlighted by Works and Days is the increasing distance humans have from their once divine roots. Most stories of alienation foretell a time of great hardship and strife usually right before the end of the world or a new beginning. According to Hesiod we were experiencing that time now. For a poetic version of the end-days see "The Second Coming" a poem by WB Yeats which I have provided here.
The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Prometheus is something of a champion for mankind and we recognize his heroic qualities. Prometheus is the source of civilization for humanity as the theft of fire allowed for a shift in the ways humans lived. He was the spark of inspiration that allowed for further progress.
The Golden age that preceded Prometheus is a psychological version of the womb where all the child’s needs were met automatically and there was no want or conflict. The gradual decline in that perfection represents a coming to terms with the world and its necessary evils which cannot be reversed and is only ameliorated in death; which for the Greeks was small consolation. The hope for a return to that world without want and overabundance is a desire to return to the womb.
Obviously a return to that eternal state is only possible in death which brought many cultures to revere the power of the Goddess as supreme. She is the "womb and the tomb" which we will read about for tomorrow.
