Prometheus

Prometheus, whose name means forethought, was the son of Iapetus. He did not fight against Zeus in the Titanomachy. In Hesiod he is a trickster who takes the side of mortals. At a feast at Mecone, which divided the sacrificial animal between gods and men, he wrapped the bones in glistening fat and the meat in the hide, and Zeus chose the bones. That is why Greeks burned the bones and fat for the gods and ate the meat themselves.

Angry, Zeus took fire from humankind. Prometheus stole it back, hidden in a fennel stalk, and gave it to humans. Zeus punished him by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle ate his liver each day and the liver grew back each night. Heracles eventually killed the eagle and freed him. Zeus also made Pandora, the first woman, as a punishment for humans.

In Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, which is probably from the 5th century BCE, Prometheus is not just the giver of fire. He claims to have given humans numbers, writing, medicine and the crafts: he is the champion of human skill.

In a later, Roman, tradition, he also moulded humans from clay.