The second generation Titans Prometheus (the son of Iapetus and a cousin of Zeus) and Epimetheus were initially not punished, as their relatives such as Atlas who participated in the Titanomachy, a fight with the father of all Gods Zeus. Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus (“gifted with afterthought”) were asked of forming man from water and earth (Prometheus formed the shape while Athena breathed life into the figure), which he did, but in the process, became fonder of men than Zeus had anticipated. Zeus didn't share Prometheus' feelings and wanted to keep men from having power, especially of fire. The fire symbolizes knowledge and knowledge and intelligence together with arrogance (“Blessed are the poor in spirit”) would probably make Zeus and the other gods obsolete.
Prometheus cared more for man than for the wrath of the increasingly powerful and autocratic Zeus, so he stole fire from Zeus' lightning, concealed it in a hollow stalk of fennel, and brought it to man. He also stole skills from Hephaestus and Athena to gave to man.
Zeus reacted by presenting to man Pandora (also called Anesidora “sender up of gifts” ), the first woman. While Prometheus may have crafted man, woman was a different sort of creature. She came from the forge of Hephaestus, beautiful as a goddess and beguiling.
Note that she is not like her Jewish counterpart: Eve was created to soothe Adam's loneliness, and to help him as a partner. Pandora, the first woman in Greek myth, was created as a punishment to mankind. Her name does not mean "giver of all gifts" - rather "she to whom all gifts were given" - the gods gave her beauty (Aphrodite), skill (Athena), while Hermes gave her a doglike (bitch-like?) mind and a thieving nature. "All (pantes) the gods gave her gifts (dora), a sorrow to men who live on bread." Zeus wanted to punish mankind for Prometheus' theft of fire - he decided to give them a "beautiful evil" (kalon kakon) "to pay for fire" (anti pyros). Hephaestus makes the woman out of earth and water, to look like a goddess. Thus Pandora - and through her all women, who are her descendants - has a beautiful exterior, but is worthless inside.
Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” or “he who thinks ahead,” is a figure whom Steiner refers to as the Greek Lucifer. Prometheus awakened a consciousness in humans that was too dangerous in the eyes of Zeus, so Zeus had Prometheus chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains. But Prometheus is patient, for he knows a secret that is not known to Zeus. In the future, Zeus will lie with a mortal woman, Io, and she will give birth to a son, who will start a line of descent leading to the birth of Hercules or Heracles, meaning “he who is called by Hera.” This great hero, whom Steiner indicates is a portent of Christ Jesus, will grow up to succeed Zeus in his position of authority as Law-giver in the heavens. Heracles will also kill the vulture that eats Prometheus' liver, and then liberate the great Greek Lucifer. Tom Mellett ALBERT EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY AS RUDOLF STEINER'S FINAL “RIDDLE OF Philosophy, Journal for Anthroposophy, Number 60, Spring 1995 issue, pp. 51-63)
Zeus presented her as a bride to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus (whom Prometheus, expecting retribution for his audacity, had warned against accepting gifts from Zeus), along with a box that they were instructed to keep closed. Epimetheus was dazzled by Pandora and forgot the advice of his prescient brother. Unfortunately, one day while her husband was away, Pandora opened the box. In the process, she unleashed all the evils now known to man, but retaining Hope . No longer could man loll about all day, but he would have to work and would succumb to illnesses. So for the Greeks the woman was crated as a punishment for man. What is the reason of the creation of the woman according to the Bible? Why did God produce male and female versions of all animals but only a man Adam initially. Why did he not create also Eve separately and why did he use material from Adam? Both stories, the Greek and the Christian version are mythological stories to explain the superiority of mens over women. The Greek version says that people were created by throwing stones, in the Bible Eve and Adam had two sons but how were their children produced?
Her act ends the Golden Age. She serves the same mythic function as Eve in Genesis. In both the Bible and Greek myth, humanity pays a price for knowledge: loss of innocence, peace and loss of paradise. “While saving him from mental darkness, Prometheus brought to man all the tortures which accompany self-consciousness: the knowledge of his responsibility to the whole of nature; the painful results of all wrong choices made in the past, since free-will and the power of choice go hand in hand with self-consciousness; all of the sorrows and sufferings -- physical, mental and moral -- to which thinking man is heir. Prometheus accepted these tortures as inevitable under the Law, knowing that the soul can develop only through its own experience, willing to pay the price for every experience gained”. THEOSOPHY, Vol. 27, No. 12, October, 1939
Deucalion and Pyrrha , Metamorphoses Bk I: 367-415 , Solis
Eventually Hercules rescued Prometheus, and Zeus and the Titan were reconciled. Zeus became angry enough with conditions on earth that he summoned other gods to a conference at his heavenly palace. Zeus (like the Christian God) decided to destroy humankind and to provide the earth with a new race of mortals more worthy of life and more reverent to him. Zeus feared that the destruction of humankind by fire might set heaven itself aflame, so he called for assistance from a god of the sea, and humankind was instead swept away by a great flood.
The great flood is a common mythological story in many cultures, for example the myth of Noah in the Old Testament, and probably there was once such a great flood in reality, an event that was incrorporated in various mythological stories.
Meanwhile, Prometheus had sired the human Deucalion (some say as his son with Clymene or Celaeno) one of the noble couple whom Zeus had spared when he caused the creatures of the earth to be destroyed by a flood. Deucalion was married to his cousin Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora. During the flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha had stayed safe on a boat. When all the other evil humans had been destroyed Zeus caused the waters to recede so that Deucalion and Pyrrha could come to land on Mount Parnassus. While they had each other for company, and they could produce new children, they were lonely and sought help from the oracle of Themis. He was told to “toss the bones of his mighty mother over his shoulder”, that he and Pyrrha understood to be “Gaia” the mother of all living things and the bones to be rocks. Following the advice, they threw stones over their shoulders. From those thrown by Deucalion sprang men and from those thrown by Pyrrha came women.
That is why people are called laoi, from laas, "a stone." [Apollodorus 1.7.2]
"...I remember in Plutarch's works, what is worth relating that I read there, that by the Pigeon sent forth of the Ark, in Deucalions flood, was shown, that the waters were sunk down, and the storms past...."
Then they had their own child, a boy whom they called Hellen and after whom the Greeks were named Hellenes...
Other children were Thyia, and the Leleges all forming the various groups of Greeks (see Map below).
For Greeks it is left as an exercise to find out the corresponding group they belong and their corresponding root! For others, i.e. barbarians :-) see their corresponding myth (Noah,....,etc).
From myth back to history. Between 1900 and 1600 BC Greeks or Hellenes, a branch of the Indo-European speaking people, were simple nomadic herdsmen. They came from the east of the Caspian Sea and entered the Greek peninsula from the north in small groups. The first invaders were the fair-haired Achaeans of whom Homer wrote. The Dorians came 3-4 centuries later and subjugated their Achaean kinsmen. Other tribes, the Aeolians and the Ionians, found homes chiefly on the islands in the Aegean Sea and on the coast of Asia Minor. The land that these tribes invaded was the site of a well-developed civilization. The people who lived there had cities and palaces. They used gold and bronze and made pottery and paintings. The Greek invaders were still in the barbarian stage. They plundered and destroyed the Aegean cities. Gradually, as they settled and intermarried with the people they conquered, they absorbed some of the Aegean culture.
About the etymology of Prometheus it could be derived from Pramanthas, a member of the Vedic family of fire-worshipping priests of the fire god Agni.
Adam. In Greek this word is compounded of the four initial letters of the cardinal quarters:
Arktos, [Greek: arktos]. north.
The Hebrew word ADM forms the anagram of A [dam], D [avid], M [essiah].
Adam, how made. God created the body of Adam of Salzal, i.e. dry, unbaked clay, and left it forty nights without a soul. The clay was collected by Azrael from the four quarters of the earth, and God, to show His approval of Azrael's choice, constituted him the angel of death.—Rabadan.
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. After the fall Adam was placed on mount Vassem in the east; Eve was banished to Djidda (now Gedda, on the Arabian coast); and the Serpent was exiled to the coast of Eblehh.
After the lapse of 100 years Adam rejoined Eve on mount Arafaith [place of Remembrance], near Mecca.—D'Ohsson.
Death of Adam. Adam died on Friday, April 7, at the age of 930 years. Michael swathed his body, and Gabriel discharged the funeral rites. The body was buried at Ghar'ul-Kenz [the grotto of treasure], which overlooks Mecca.
Apollodorus. The Library, Sir James G. Frazer (transl.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1921, 1976.