Question

Is Zeus's punishment of Prometheus fair or

Answer 1

Explanation:

That is a very controversial question! Nevertheless, I’ll provide both views.

First, the gods then did not have to be “fair” by human standards. They didn’t need to justify their actions. Especially not the king of the gods. From a gods’ view, fairness is irrelevant. What mattered was that Prometheus went against Zeus’ orders and brought fire to man. And so he was punished. He probably expected that too, as the titan god of forethought. No justification or fairness needed.

As a human, if Epimetheus ran out of fur and feathers for man, Prometheus’ masterpiece, and I was left as I was and had to resort to huddling in caves? Why should Prometheus be punished for trying to fix the shortcomings his brother caused? And he helped us a ton! We could cook meat, warm water, fire clay, and so many other things with the fire he gave us. To man, it was probably very unfair that their ally was chained to a mountain and had his liver eaten by an eagle.

Prometheus probably also thought it was unfair, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t expecting it. And he probably knew what he thought didn’t really matter to Zeus at that point.

It depends who you ask to decide if the punishment was fair or not.