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-And here comes in the apprehension of yet another Promethean analogy: have I confounded male and female, and incurred the penalty? Or no — when will resemblances end?— have I, rather, cheated my hearers by serving them up bones wrapped in fat, comic laughter in philosophic solemnity? As for stealing — for Prometheus is the thief’s patron too — I defy you there; that is the one fault you cannot find with me: from whom should I have stolen? if anyone has dealt before me in such forced unions and hybrids, I have never made his acquaintance. But after all, what am I to do? I have made my bed, and I must lie in it; Epimetheus may change his mind, but Prometheus, never.
+And here comes in the apprehension of yet another Promethean analogy[1]: have I confounded male and female, and incurred the penalty? Or no — when will resemblances end?— have I, rather, cheated my hearers by serving them up bones wrapped in fat[2], comic laughter in philosophic solemnity? As for stealing — for Prometheus is the thief’s patron[3] too — I defy you there; that is the one fault you cannot find with me: from whom should I have stolen? if anyone has dealt before me in such forced unions and hybrids, I have never made his acquaintance. But after all, what am I to do? I have made my bed, and I must lie in it; Epimetheus[4] may change his mind, but Prometheus, never.
+> [1] Lucian tells us, in another piece, that the principal crime attributed to Prometheus was his making of women. See [[home:texts_and_library:dialogues:prometheus-on-caucasus|Prometheus on Caucasus]].((Select Dialogues: Of Lucian, Translated from the Greek by Thomas Franklin, D.D. The Sungraphein, by G. W. Vernon, Esq. William M’Kenzie, 1792.))
+> [2] bones wrapped in fat | Prometheus, according to the mythological history, once upon a time played Zeus a slippery trick - he killed two large oxen, in the skin of one of them he enclosed all the fat and flesh of them both, and in the other put nothing but the bones. Zeus, who was to have his choice, took the latter, and Prometheus, who was a wag, laughed at the jest. Prometheus afterward paid dearly for his choice when the vulture gnawed his liver on Mount Caucasus.((Select Dialogues: Of Lucian, Translated from the Greek by Thomas Franklin, D.D. The Sungraphein, by G. W. Vernon, Esq. William M’Kenzie, 1792.))
+> [3] thief's patron | Hermes.((Select Dialogues: Of Lucian, Translated from the Greek by Thomas Franklin, D.D. The Sungraphein, by G. W. Vernon, Esq. William M’Kenzie, 1792.))
+> [4] Epimetheus | Epimetheus, we are told, was the son of Zeus and Clymene, and husband of famous Pandora. He is likewise supposed to have been an excellent statuary, and changed into an ape, probably because his figures appeared to be real. Lucian, who is now and then fond of pun, seems only to have mentioned him here from a similarity of sound between the words Pro-metheus and Epi-metheus.((Select Dialogues: Of Lucian, Translated from the Greek by Thomas Franklin, D.D. The Sungraphein, by G. W. Vernon, Esq. William M’Kenzie, 1792.))