Prometheus

Prometheus felt sorry for his creations (humans), 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.

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 sea's 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 sent her to wed Prometheus' brother, Epimetheus, and although Prometheus had warned his brother never to accept gifts from the Olympians, Epimetheus 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.