Prometheus is the Titan punished after giving fire to humanity, leading Zeus to create Pandora.
Prometheus is associated with forethought, cleverness, and humanity’s advancement. In the best-known version of the myth, he steals fire from the gods and gives it to mortals. Fire represents more than warmth: it enables cooking, metalworking, craft, and technological progress.
Zeus responds by arranging a punishment for humanity as well as for Prometheus. He orders the gods to create Pandora, who is presented to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. After the container is opened, the troubles within escape into the human world. Prometheus himself is then chained to a mountain, where an eagle repeatedly eats his liver, which grows back.
Prometheus’s story has several ancient variants, so individual details can differ between authors. He is sometimes connected with the creation of humans from clay, but the fire-theft episode is the central link between Prometheus and Pandora’s origin story.