I risked the bold attempt, and saved mankind
From stark destruction and the road to hell.
Therefore with this sore penance am I bowed,
Grievous to suffer, pitiful to see.

But, for compassion shown to man, such fate
I no wise earned; rather in wrath's despite
Am I to be reformed, and made a show
Of infamy to Zeus....

Yea, to my friends a woeful sight am I.

Freeing mankind myself have durance [imprisonment] found.
Natheless [Nevertheless], I looked not for sentence so dread,
High on this precipice to droop and pine,
Having no neighbor but the desolate crags.

And now lament no more the ills I suffer,
But come to earth and an attentive ear
Lend to the things that shall befall hereafter.

Harken, oh harken, suffer as I suffer!
Who knows, who knows, but on some scatheless head,
Another's yet for the like woes reserved,
The wandering doom will presently alight?...

                           ....listen to the tale
Of human sufferings, and how at first
Senseless as beasts I gave men sense, possessed them
Of mind.  I speak not in contempt of man;
I do but tell of good gifts I conferred.

In the beginning, seeing they saw amiss,
And hearing heard not, but, like phantoms huddled
In dreams, the perplexed story of their days
Confounded; knowing neither timber-work
Nor brick-built dwellings basking in the light,
But dug for themselves holes, wherein like ants
That hardly may contend against a breath,
They dwelt in burrows of their unsunned caves.

Neither of winter's cold had they fixed sign,
Nor of the spring when she comes decked with flowers,
Nor yet of summer's heat with melting fruits
Sure token:  but utterly without knowledge
Moiled, until I the rising of the stars
Showed them, and when they set, though much obscure.

Moreover, number, the most excellent
Of all inventions, I for them devised, 
And gave them writing that retaineth all,
The serviceable mother of the Muse,
I was the first that yoked unmanaged beasts,
To serve as slaves with collar and with pack,
And take upon themselves, to man's relief,
The heaviest labour of his hands:  and I
Tamed to the rein and drove in wheelèd cars
The horse, of sumptuous pride the ornament.

And those sea-wanderers with the wings of cloth,
The shipman's wagons, none but I contrived.

These manifold inventions for mankind
I perfected, who, out upon't, have none--
No, not one shift--to rid me of this shame....

But hear the sequel and the more admire
What arts, what aids I cleverly evolved.

The chiefest that, if any man fell sick,
There was no help for him, comestible,
Lotion or potion; but for lack of drugs
They dwindled quite away; until I taught them
To compound draughts and mixtures sanative,
Wherewith they now are armed against disease.

I staked the winding path of divination
And was the first distinguisher of dreams,
The true from false; and voices ominous
Of meaning dark interpreted; and tokens
Seen when men take the road; and augury
By flight of all the greater crook-clawed birds
With nice discrimination I defined;
These by their nature fair and favourable,
Those, flattered with fair name.  And of each sort
The habits I described; their mutual feuds
And friendships and the assemblages they hold.
And of the plumpness of the inward parts
What colour is acceptable to the Gods,
The well-streaked liver-lobe and gall-bladder.

Also by roasting limbs well wrapped in fat
And the long chine, I led men on the road
Of dark and riddling knowledge; and I purged
The glancing eye of fire, dim before,
And made its meaning plain.  These are my works.

Then, things beneath the earth, aids hid from man,
Brass, iron, silver, gold, who dares to say
He was before me in discovering?
None, I wot well [believe], unless he loves to babble.
And in a single word to sum the whole--
All manner of arts men from Prometheus learned.
 

• History 60 Home Page

• The Golem, Legends of the Ghetto of Prague;

• Man a Machine (1748) by Julien de la Mettrie (1709-1751);

• The Sandman (1816) by E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822);

• The Temple of Nature; or, the origin of society (1803) by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802);

• Zoonomia; or, the laws of organic life (1803) by Erasmus Darwin;

• Galvanic Experiments, from the Times of London; and

• Philosophical Zoology, Vol. 1 (1809) by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829);