The Pyrocene is Here!

Telling Earth’s story from the perspective of fire-wielding animals.

Photo by Jo-Anne McArthur on Unsplash. Remix by editor.

In Aeschylus’s famous Greek tragedy, Prometheus Bound, the story opens with this:

Now have we journeyed to a spot of earth
Remote-the Scythian wild, a waste untrod.
And now, Hephaestus, thou must execute
The task our father laid on thee, and fetter
This malefactor to the jagged rocks
In adamantine bonds infrangible;
For thine own blossom of all forging fire
He stole and gave to mortals; trespass grave
For which the Gods have called him to account,
That he may learn to bear Zeus’ tyranny
And cease to play the lover of mankind.

You see, Prometheus is a Titan, one of the pre-Olympian Gods of Greek Mythology. In the tale, He defies the God Zeus and gives the power of fire to humankind. For this betrayal, He is punished in traditional, Godly dramatic fashion: forever tied to a rock where each day a vulture will eat out His liver. Tragic.

Apart from being a classic in the study of Classics, this is also a rudimentary start to the…