Saturday, August 12, 2006

Prometheus

"That doesn't look like any animal I know," said Epimetheus.
Prometheus squatted by the riverbank, hunched over his newly shaped wad of clay. He didn't bother to look up.
"I call it man," he replied. "I have great hopes for him."
"Looks a little like Zeus. He might not like that."
"Zeus," said Prometheus, "can take a flying leap, for all I care."
"Careful, brother. You better watch what you say."
But Prometheus did not watch what he said, or did, either. He breathed life into his clay man and chuckled as the little mudfart stumbled away blindly. He does kind of resemble Zeus, he thought.

"Where's my goddamned torch?" bellowed Zeus.
Prometheus was hard at his new sculpture, a fish mammal. He didn't bother to look up.
"Oh, you mean the one that was burning for no apparent reason in your, uh, throne room?"
"You know very well which torch. What have you done with it?"
"I took it to earth and gave it to man so he needn't stumble around anymore in the dark."
Zeus sizzled. "FOOL!" was the first epithet out of his mouth, but not the last by any means. He went on and on for weeks about the unmitigated gall, the impudence, the genie, the bottle, the barn door. It all got a bit arcane. Monotonously arcane. Painfully monotonously arcane.

Which describes the punishment Zeus came up with when he finally cooled off. Prometheus would awaken every morning for thirty thousand years to find himself chained to the top of a mountain with a brand new liver. And everyday the eagle Ethon would alight, tear out that liver and eat it. So much for craftsmen.

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