/lit/ - Literature

>In the Platonic dialogue of his name, Protagoras narrates the myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus in the following terms:

>Once upon a time, there existed gods but no mortal creatures. When the ap- pointed time came for these also to be born, the gods formed them within the earth out of a mixture of earth and fire and the substances which are com- pounded from earth and fire. And when they were ready to bring them to the light, they charged Prometheus and Epimetheus with the task of equipping them and allotting suitable powers [dunameis] to each kind.

>Now Epimetheus begged Prometheus to allow him to do the distribution himself—"and whenI have done it," he said, "you can review it." So he persuaded him and set to work. In his allotment he gave to some creatures strength without speed, and equipped the weaker kinds with speed. Some he armed with weapons, while to the unarmed he gave some other faculty and so contrived means for their preservation. To those that he endowed with smallness, he granted winged flight or a dwelling underground; to those which he increased in stature, their size itself was a protection. Thus he made his whole distribution on a principle of compensation, being careful by these devices that no species should be destroyed. . . . Now Epimetheus was not a particularly clever person, and before he realized it he had used up all the available powers on the brute beasts, and being left with the human race [non-aloga] on his hands unprovided for, did not know what to do with them. While he was puzzling about this, Prometheus came to inspect the work, and found the other animals well off for everything, but man naked, unshod, unbedded, and unarmed, and al- ready the appointed day had come, when man too was to emerge from within the earth into the daylight. Prometheus therefore, being at a loss to provide any means of salvation for man, stole from Hephaestus and Athena the gift of skill in the arts [ten enteknen sophian}, together with fire—for with- out fire there was no means [amekhanon] for anyone to possess or use this skill—and bestowed it on man. In this way man acquired sufficient resources to keep himself alive, but he had no political wisdom [sophia]. This art was in the keeping of Zeus. . . . Through this gift man had the means of life, but Prometheus, so the story says, thanks to Epimetheus, had later on to stand his trial for theft.

>Since, then, man had a share in the portion of the gods, in the first place because of his divine kinship he alone among living creatures believed in gods, and set to work to erect altars, and images of them. Secondly, by the art which they possessed, men soon discovered articulate speech [phonen] and names {onomata}, and invented houses and clothes and shoes and bedding and got food from the earth.