14.普罗米修斯

Lesson Fourteen

Prometheus

1.Long long ago, there was no fire on the ground, so people had to eat raw food and spend one night after another in endless darkness.

2.Just then, a god named Prometheus came to the world, saw the tragic scene that human beings had no fire, and decided to risk his life and go to Apollo, the Sun God, to get the kindling.

3.One day, when Apollo was driving a sun chariot across the sky, Prometheus ran to the sun chariot, took a spark from the flaming wheel and brought it down to men.

4.Since there was a fire, human beings began to use it to cook food, drive out cold and keep warm, and use fire to drive away beasts that endanger human safety......

5.Knowing that Prometheus had stolen fire from heaven, Zeus, the leader of the gods, was frustrated and decided to give Prometheus the severest punishment and ordered the God of Fire to execute it immediately.

6.Hephaestus, the God of Fire, admired Prometheus and quietly said to him, “as long as you admit your mistake to Zeus and return the fire, I will definitely ask him to forgive you.”

7.Prometheus shook his head and answered firmly, “what’s wrong with benefiting mankind?

8.I can endure all kinds of pains, but I will never admit mistakes, let alone return the kindling!”

9.Hephaestus did not dare to disobey Zeus’s orders, so he had to take Prometheus to the Mountain Caucasus.

10.Prometheus was chained to a high cliff on Mountain Caucasus with his hands and feet tied with iron rings.

11.He could neither move nor sleep, and suffered from wind and rain day and night.

12.Even so, Prometheus did not give in to Zeus.

13.The cruelhearted Zeus sent a ferocious vulture to stand on Prometheus’s knees every day and tore at his liver with its sharp mouth.

14.During the day, his liver was eaten up but grew again at night.

15.In this way, the pain suffered by Prometheus never ends.

16.Prometheus has been locked on that terrible cliff for many years.

17.One day, Hercules, the famous Titan, passed the Mountain Caucasus.

18.When he saw Prometheus locked on a cliff, he was indignant, so he took an arrow with a bow and shot the eagle, and then smashed the chain with a stone.

19.Prometheus, the hero who dared to take the fire from the heaven, finally got his freedom.