Note 34 — THE WORKS AND DAYS.

Mock’d by wise Prometheus.] The original deception which provoked the wrath of Jupiter was the sacrifice of bones mentioned in the Theogony.

It would appear extraordinary that the crime of Prometheus, who was a god, should be visited on man. This injustice betrays the real character of Prometheus; that he was a deified mortal. If Prometheus, the maker of man according to Ovid, and his divine benefactor according to Hesiod, be in reality Noah, as many circumstances concur to prove, the concealment of fire by Jupiter might be a type of the darkness and dreariness of nature during the interval of the deluge; and the recovery of the flame might signify the renovation of light and fertility and the restitution of the arts of life.