Source Verification: Prometheus

Why did Zeus withhold fire from humanity in the first place?

It was retaliation for a trick at Mecone, where gods and mortals were settling how a sacrificed ox should be divided. Prometheus split it into two piles and wrapped the good meat in the unappetizing stomach lining while hiding the bones under rich, tempting fat. He offered Zeus first choice, Zeus picked the fat-covered pile, and on discovering the bones underneath, he punished humanity by withholding fire, the thing that let mortals cook meat and work metal at all.

Source: Hesiod, Theogony 535-560

How exactly did Prometheus steal fire back?

He hid a coal or a spark inside the hollow stalk of a giant fennel plant, which smolders slowly without burning through, and carried it down from Olympus to give to mortals. The fennel stalk became one of his standard attributes in later art specifically because of this detail.

Source: Hesiod, Theogony 561-569

What punishment did Zeus give humanity for receiving fire?

Zeus had Hephaestus mold a beautiful woman, Pandora, out of earth and water, gave her a jar containing every evil, and sent her to earth as a gift to Epimetheus, Prometheus's less cautious brother. When she opened the jar, sickness, toil, and old age escaped into the world; hope alone stayed trapped inside. Hesiod frames this explicitly as the price humanity paid collectively for Prometheus's theft, distinct from the punishment given to Prometheus himself.

Source: Hesiod, Works and Days 42-105

What was Prometheus's own punishment for stealing fire?

Zeus had him bound with unbreakable chains to a rock in the Caucasus mountains, where an eagle came each day to eat his liver, which regrew overnight so the torment could repeat without end. Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound stages this punishment at length and adds that Prometheus withholds a piece of knowledge Zeus badly wants - which of Zeus's future lovers would bear a son strong enough to overthrow him - refusing to speak even under torture.

Source: Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 1-30

How was Prometheus eventually freed?

Apollodorus records that Heracles, traveling through the Caucasus generations later, shot the eagle that tormented Prometheus and broke his chains, acting with Zeus's consent rather than in defiance of it - by that point Zeus's anger had cooled, and freeing Prometheus cost him nothing once the secret had either been extracted or become moot.

Source: Apollodorus, Library 2.5.11

• Hesiod, Theogony 535-569
• Hesiod, Works and Days 42-105
• Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 1-30

• Carol Dougherty, Prometheus (2006)
• Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)