Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

(wind blowing)

- [Narrator] Who is this figure

sneaking into the Palace of the Gods on Mount Olympus?

(footsteps scraping)

An intruder, here? (fire hisses)

Impossible, how dare he enter?

Why has this mysterious figure stolen fire from the gods?

Does he not realize that a terrible punishment awaits him?

(mysterious music)

It all began a long, long time ago.

Remember?

At the dawn of time, there was Chaos.

Then came Gaia, the Earth Mother.

Gaia brought forth Uranus, the sky,

and from their union were born the Titans,

the Cyclopes, and the Hekatonkheires.

Among the Titans was Japet.

Japet chose a wife named Clymene.

Together they had four children,

Atlas, Menoetius, Epimetheus,

and the key figure in this story, Prometheus.

(ominous music)

Unlike his brother Epimetheus,

whose name means hindsight, or he who thinks last,

the name Prometheus means forethought,

or he who thinks first.

This rare quality proved to be of great value to him.

When Zeus waged war against his father Cronus

in the battle for supreme power,

the Titans formed an alliance against him.

All of them?

All except one, Prometheus.

The one whose name is synonymous with forethought.

Prometheus predicted that Zeus would emerge victorious

from this conflict, so naturally,

he offered his services to the future king of Olympus,

and he persuaded his brother Epimetheus to do likewise.

In the ensuing blaze, Prometheus supplied the young Zeus

with what he lacked, the strength,

the wiles, and the cunning

that the generation of Titans had in abundance.

Thus began the terrible war known as the Titanomachy.

(suspenseful music)

As predicted by Prometheus, Zeus prevailed.

The world then entered a period of relative peace.

No more battles, (soft eerie music)

shows of prowess, and remarkable feats.

Henceforth, the days succeeded one another

in much the same way.

And in this too-perfect peace, the gods became bored.

No more war, nobody to make happy

nor to make suffer, nothing.

So, bored, Zeus turned to his son Hephaestus,

the god of blacksmiths, the one who forged weapons,

and assigned them to the deities of Olympus.

Zeus asked him to make something different,

something other than all these pointless objects.

Something special, something unique,

something that could distract the gods.

Hephaestus pondered.

Special, unique, easy enough to say, but what?

Hephaestus thought long and hard and came up with an idea.

He summoned to his workshop

the dozen main gods who lived on Olympus,

and explained to them what he wanted from them.

He wanted them to merge earth (fire hissing)

and fire, and any other substances that could be combined.

With these primordial elements,

they would fashion living beings.

Some would have fins, legs, and shells.

These would be called animals.

(rock cracking and rumbling)

Others would be just like the gods.

These would be called men.

And they would only be males.

This would now prevent the gods from becoming bored.

(majestic classical music)

Everything was ready.

It remained only to decide which qualities

would be attributed to animals, and to men.

Zeus assigned the task to the Titans

Prometheus and Epimetheus. (eerie music)

Epimetheus was full of enthusiasm.

He pleaded with his brother to allow him

to take care of distribution.

And Prometheus, although known for his foresight,

was foolish enough to accept. (metal clanging)

Epimetheus got to work. (rumbling and cracking)

He endowed some with strength, others with speed.

He gave some a coat of hair to protect them

from bad weather, (thunderous footsteps)

while giving others hooves, or even a heavy hide.

Once his work was done,

he stood up and rubbed his hands together.

But what about the men?

In his eagerness,

Epimetheus had completely forgotten about men.

(suspenseful music)

Look, here they are in front of him.

Naked, destitute, vulnerable.

Worse still, having squandered all the resources

granted to him by Zeus,

Epimetheus had no way of making amends for his oversight.

Prometheus decided to go in search of Zeus

to beg a favor of him.

He wanted men to have the means

to protect themselves from ferocious animals,

and perhaps even a way to cook their food.

They should be given fire.

Zeus agreed. (thundering and crashing)

He struck the ground with a lightning bolt,

and fire swept through the treetops.

Men would only have to climb them to collect it.

(soft majestic music)

(fire crackling)

This was the Golden Age.

Men led peaceful lives,

and it was a rather happy existence,

as there was no such thing as work,

or, for that matter, seasons or diseases.

Wheat grew naturally,

with no need for sewing or cultivation.

Men and gods would meet up for sumptuous banquets.

Life went by in a trouble-free existence.

It could've been paradise.

(suspenseful music)

Just one thing separated humans from gods,

and that was immortality.

But during this period, men did not really die.

(mysterious classical music)

When their time came, without any tiredness or suffering,

they would quietly fall asleep.

Hypnos, the god of sleep,

then took them into the green valleys

of the underground world,

to a place known as the Elysian Fields.

But then one day, Zeus tired of sharing his life with humans

on an equal footing, of sharing the same table with them.

Of watching them join in the same assemblies.

He decided it was time

that men were put in their place.

It was time to bring a little order

to the world. (lightning sizzling)

Zeus at the summit, the gods a notch below,

(thunder crackling)

with men further down at the bottom.

(dramatic music)

(wind blowing)

So Zeus organized a big festival

in the vast plains of Mecone,

where he brought men and gods together.

He ordered a large ox to be slain

and divided into two parts.

The best part, of course, would go to the gods,

while the rest was for men. (soft footsteps)

And it is on these words, the best part,

that the fate of humanity would be played out.

(ominous music)

All the gods approved of Zeus's decision except Prometheus.

Prometheus did not like these new rules.

He especially feared that the benefits he had accorded men

would be taken away from them.

Zeus charged him with making the sacrifice,

and dividing up the ox.

Prometheus was eager to accept,

for he had resolved to deceive Zeus.

Prometheus sacrificed the animal.

(metal slicing)

He began by stripping it entirely of its flesh.

Then he gathered together all the bones, only the bones,

and covered them with an appetizing coat of fat.

Taken as a whole, then,

the pile had a very tempting appearance.

Here was the first part.

It was inedible, but appeared to be the best.

Then Prometheus collected together all the meat,

everything that was good and edible,

but he hid it beneath a pile of bones and thick skin.

This second part looked most unappetizing.

Prometheus then showed the two piles to Zeus,

whose choice would decide the boundary between men and gods.

Zeus, of course, chose the part that, to him,

seemed the most appealing.

The one that Prometheus had covered

in an appetizing layer of fat.

But on discovering that it consisted only of bare,

inedible bones, he went into a fit of rage.

(metal and thunder crashing)

Thus, men, the protegees of the deceitful Prometheus

would be made to pay.

(somber classical music)

(wind blowing)

Zeus first decided to hide from them the wheat,

which thus far had grown freely,

needing to be neither sown,

nor cultivated. (fire hissing)

Humans would henceforth need to work

in order to feed themselves and to survive.

(suspenseful music)

Then the Lord of Olympus confiscated fire.

The punishment was a terrible one.

Without fire, it was impossible to cook food to eat,

impossible to have light

when the nighttime enveloped the earth,

impossible to produce warmth during the cold winter days,

and impossible too, to fight off ferocious animals.

(large animal roaring)

(thunder rumbling)

Prometheus hurried to Athena.

Athena was the great Olympian goddess.

She was also the daughter of Zeus.

She was fond of Prometheus.

To her, he pleaded the case of men,

punished for a wrong that was not their doing.

(metal clinking) The goddess was obviously

moved by Prometheus' words, so much so,

that when he pleaded with her

to be allowed to slip unnoticed into Olympus,

(metal clinks) she acquiesced.

(eerie music) (clothing rustling)

It was Prometheus then,

whom we saw stealing as inconspicuously as possible

into the land of the gods.

And it was he who took one of the embers

from the sacred fire of Olympus

and hid it in a hollow fennel stalk.

And he, Prometheus, who then gave fire to man.

(dramatic music)

This new challenge to the king of Olympus

could not go unpunished.

Zeus vowed to make Prometheus pay.

(lightning crackling)

Once again, he summoned his son, Hephaestus.

Hephaestus and the gods had created only males.

Zeus ordered him to forge a woman.

A woman made from the earth,

a woman in the image of the goddesses.

Not only should she be fabulous

and boast breathtaking beauty,

she had also to be endowed with qualities

of every type. (fabric whooshing)

Aphrodite conferred upon her grace.

Athena dressed her in the most beautiful clothes.

The Horae garlanded her with flowers.

The Charites adorned her with necklaces,

and then Hermes, on orders from Zeus,

gave her a shameful mind, a deceitful nature,

an insatiable appetite for sex,

and, most importantly, curiosity.

(stately classical music)

She was given the name Pandora.

Pandora, meaning all-gifted.

The wondrous femme fatale was now ready.

Zeus breathed life into her.

Pandora, then, was the first woman,

the forebear of all women.

But most of all, Pandora was the fire

that Zeus would introduce into men

without his needing to light the flame.

A thievish fire, reflecting the fire

stolen by Prometheus. (soft suspenseful music)

Now, she just had to be slipped into the bed of a man.

But not just any man.

One who thinks after the event.

It would have to be Epimetheus.

He who realized when it was too late.

He who was most like us.

He who kept on making plans,

even though the course of events

was contrary to his predictions.

And if there's one thing that makes the gods laugh,

it's the schemes of men.

Hermes then went to Epimetheus.

He presented him with the sublime creature.

Epimetheus hesitated.

His brother, Prometheus, had implored him

to refuse any gifts from Zeus.

Because unlike his brother, Prometheus foresaw.

He had the ability to envisage and predict,

but dazzled by Pandora's beauty,

poor Epimetheus welcomed her with open arms.

But there was another important thing.

Before sending Pandora to Earth, Zeus gave her a box.

A magnificent box embellished with stunning adornments.

Into this box, every god had slipped

something harmful and destructive.

The box, then, contained all the woes of the world.

Hunger, thirst, disease, death.

Zeus, of course, had cautioned Pandora to never open the box

under any circumstances,

which was all he needed to say to arouse her curiosity.

On her wedding night, after her marriage to Epimetheus,

no longer able to resist the compelling temptation

of discovering what was in the box,

Pandora slipped out of bed, and she lifted the lid.

(wind roaring)

Out flew all the misfortunes and miseries of the world.

All the awful things that would afflict

the lives of human beings 'til the end of time.

Zeus had made these woes invisible and silent,

so that they could strike men at any moment,

leaving them no time to fend them off.

To make matters worse,

this malevolence mingled with the kindness

that the gods had poured on men previously,

making it impossible for it to be recognized or identified.

(eerie music)

Aghast, Pandora immediately slammed shut the lid of the box,

but it was too late.

Prometheus had deceived Zeus

by making something seem other than what it was.

The bare bones covered in fat,

the stolen fire hidden in a fennel stem.

And now, Pandora was the king of the gods' retort

to this reversal.

Beneath the captivating charms of Pandora,

he had hidden the direst of scourges.

From now on, forever separated from the gods,

man would have to plant a seed in the belly of a woman,

if he wished to reproduce,

just as he would have to plant a seed in the earth,

if he wanted to eat.

Good and evil, forever combined.

But all was not lost.

For something remained locked away

at the bottom of Pandora's box.

Something that did not have time to escape

before Pandora slammed shut the lid.

(voices whispering eerily)

It had been slipped in surreptitiously by Hermes

without the knowledge of Zeus,

and he had called it elpis, meaning hope.

(ominous music)

Thus, in the worst tragedies,

humanity could continue to believe and to hope.

Zeus had punished the mortals.

Now he had to punish their benefactor,

and he would do so in the cruelest of ways.

Zeus wanted to make an example of him.

He put Prometheus in chains on a rock,

somewhere on the summit of the Caucasus,

between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

He then ordered an eagle to devour his liver.

The liver symbolized the prime cut

that Prometheus had wanted to keep for men.

Every day, the eagle devoured the liver of Prometheus.

(wind blowing) (wind chimes jangling)

And to make the suffering even more terrible,

every night while Prometheus was agonizing,

the liver would regenerate.

In this way, his suffering would last for eternity.

Prometheus accepted the sentence of Zeus.

Instead of moaning, instead of complaining,

he continued to defy his torturer.

Because in truth, Prometheus had secret knowledge.

(suspenseful music)

knowledge that would one day lead to Zeus' downfall.

Zeus knew this.

It was also why he did not order the eagle

to kill Prometheus.

He hoped that one day, Prometheus would acquiesce,

and reveal to him this secret.

But Prometheus, in chains, remained silent.

If Zeus wanted to know, he would first have to set him free.

Thousands of years went by.

On Earth, gods, demigods,

and even mere mortals performed great feats.

And in every case,

Zeus managed to save his throne whenever threatened.

But he simply had to find out

what the secret about him was,

that Prometheus refused to reveal.

(eagle screeches)

Eventually, the Master of Olympus yielded.

He sent the most powerful of his mortal sons

to set Prometheus free.

Heracles killed the eagle with an arrow

straight through the heart, (eagle screeching)

and broke Prometheus' chains. (metal clinking)

The Titan, thus liberated, honored his promise

and revealed his secret to Zeus.

His secret was that if Zeus were to wed Thetis,

the sea nymph with whom he was so besotted,

then he would bring into the world

a son more powerful than his father, who would dethrone him.

Zeus immediately ended his courting of Thetis,

and married her off to a mortal.

Prometheus, though, was the god who protected men.

He was also a figure of rebellion and revolt.

Someone who tells us that to challenge power

is honorable and, on occasion, even necessary.

But he also tells us

that determining order itself is a mistake.

Despite his great foresight,

it is a notion that had escaped Prometheus.

(lively classical music)