We have been asked about our name so many times we have created a page to answer those questions.
Pro·me·the·us
In Greek mythology, 'Prometheus (Ancient Greek, meaning is "forethought") is the Titan chiefly honored for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mortals for their use.
The Long Version
Prometheus was a son of Iapetus by Clymene (one of the Oceanids). He was a brother of Atlas, Menoetius, and Epimetheus, but he surpassed all in cunning and deceit. He held no awe for the gods, and he ridiculed Zeus, though he fought alongside the gods against the other Titans. Prometheus, in Ovid's Metamorphoses, is credited with the creation of man "in godlike image" from clay; in others, this role is assigned to Zeus. When he and his brother Epimetheus set out to make creatures to populate the earth under the orders of Cronos, Prometheus carefully crafted a creature after the shape of the gods: a man. According to the myths, a horrendous headache overcame Zeus and no healer of the realm was able to help the Lord of the Gods. Prometheus came to him and declared that he knew how to heal Zeus, taking a rock from the ground Prometheus proceeded to hit Zeus in the head with it. From out of Zeus' head popped the Goddess Athena, with her emergence Zeus' headache disappeared. Some myths attribute Hephestus to the splitting of the head rather than Prometheus.
Prometheus and Epimetheus journeyed to Earth from Olympus, they ventured to the Greek province of Boitia and made clay figures. Athena took the figures and breathed life into them, the figures that Prometheus had created became Man and honored him. The figures that his brother Epimetheus had created became the beasts, which turned and attacked him.
Zeus was angered by the brothers' actions, he forbade the pair from teaching Man the ways of civilization, Athena chose to cross Zeus and taught Prometheus so that he might teach Man.
For their actions, Zeus demanded a sacrifice from Man to the Gods to show that they were obedient and worshipful. The gods and mortal man had arranged a meeting at Mecone where the matter of division of sacrifice was to be settled. Prometheus slew a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, skillfully covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones artfully with shining fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose. Zeus, seeing through the trick, realised that in purposefully getting tricked he would have an excuse to vent his anger on mortal man, and thus chose the pile of bones (many sources say that Zeus did not, in fact, see through this trick). This also gives a mythological explanation of the practice of sacrificing only the bones to the gods, while man gets to keep the meat and fat.
Zeus in his wrath denied men the secret of fire. Prometheus felt sorry for his creations, and watched as they shivered in the cold and winter's nights. He decided to give his most loved creation a great gift that was a "good servant and bad master". He took fire from the hearth of the gods by stealth and brought it to men in a hollow wand of fennel, or ferule that served him instead of a staff. Thus mankind was warm. To punish Prometheus for this hubris (and all of mankind in the process), Zeus devised "such evil for them that they shall desire death rather than life, and Prometheus shall see their misery and be powerless to succor them. That shall be his keenest pang among the torments I will heap upon him." Zeus could not just take fire back, because a god or goddess could not take away what the other had given.
Zeus was enraged because the giving of fire began an era of enlightenment for Man, and had Prometheus carried to Mount Caucasus, where an eagle by the name of Ethon (offspring of the monsters Typhon and Echidna) would pick at his liver; it would grow back each day and the eagle would eat it again. In some stories, Zeus has Prometheus tortured on the mountain because he knows the name of the person who, according to prophecy, will overthrow the king of the gods. This punishment was to last 30,000 years. About 12 generations later, Heracles (known as Hercules in Roman mythology), passing by on his way to find the apples of the Hesperides as part of the Twelve Labours, freed Prometheus, in a bargain he had agreed with Zeus in exchange for Chiron's immortality, by shooting the eagle with an arrow. Zeus did not mind this time that Prometheus had again evaded his punishment, as the act brought more glory to Heracles, who was Zeus's son. Prometheus was invited to return to Olympus, though he still had to carry with him the rock to which he was chained.
To punish man for the offenses of Prometheus, Zeus told Hephaestus (Vulcan) to "mingle together all things loveliest, sweetest, and best, but look that you also mingle therewith the opposites of each." So Hephaestus took gold and dross, wax and flint, pure snow and mud of the highways, honey and gall; he took the bloom of the rose and the toad's venom, the voice of laughing water and the peacocks squall; he took the seas beauty and its treachery, the dog's fidelity and the wind's inconstancy, and the mother bird's heart of love and the cruelty of the tiger. All these, and other contraries past number, he blended cunningly into one substance and this he molded into the shape that Zeus had described to him. She was as beautiful as a goddess and Zeus named her Pandora which meant "all gifted".
Zeus breathed upon her image, and it lived. Zeus sent her to wed Prometheus' brother, Epimetheus, and although Prometheus had warned his brother never to accept gifts from the Olympians, Epimetheus ("hind-thought", as opposed to "fore-thought") was love-stricken, and he and Pandora wed. The Gods adorned the couple with many wedding gifts, and Zeus presented them with a beautifully wrought box. When Pandora opened the box, all suffering and despair was unleashed upon mankind. Zeus had had his revenge.
As the introducer of fire and inventor of crafts, Prometheus was seen as the patron of human civilization. Uncertain sources claim he was worshipped in ancient Rome as well along with other gods.
He was the father of Deucalion with Pronoia who is often confused as Clymene because the both of them are often called by the same other name, Asia.
