In the conflict between Cronus and Jupiter, Prometheus sided with the Olympian deities. He and his brother Epimetheus were tasked with creating humanity and endowing all creatures with the faculties necessary for survival.
Epimetheus generously bestowed gifts like courage, strength, and swiftness upon the animals. Prometheus, shaping man from earth and water in the image of the gods, gave him an upright stature. Finding no worthy gifts left for mankind, Prometheus ascended to heaven, lit his torch from the sun's chariot, and brought fire to humanity, though Jupiter granted it grudgingly.
Later, when gods and men disputed their prerogatives at Sicyon, Prometheus devised a trick to favor man. He divided a sacrificial bull into two portions: one contained the edible parts wrapped in skin topped with unappealing entrails; the other held bones disguised with a plausible layer of fat. He offered Jupiter the choice. The king of heaven, seeing through the deceit, chose the bones and fat. Using this as a pretext, he punished mankind by taking away fire. Prometheus, however, stole it back from heaven in a hollow tube.
As punishment, Jupiter ordered Prometheus chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where an eagle preyed upon his liver for ages, though it never consumed it entirely.
Prometheus endured this torment, sustained by the prophecy that a hero from Jupiter's own line would free him in the thirteenth generation. In time, the mighty Hercules arrived. Believing no greater service remained than freeing humanity's champion, Hercules spoke to the Titan:
The soul of man can never be enslaved
Save by its own infirmities, nor freed
Save by its very strength and own resolve
And constant vision and supreme endeavor!
You will be free? Then, courage, O my brother!
O let the soul stand in the open door
Of life and death and knowledge and desire
And see the peaks of thought kindle with sunrise!
Then shall the soul return to rest no more,
Nor harvest dreams in the dark field of sleep -
Rather the soul shall go with great resolve
To dwell at last upon the shining mountains
In liberal converse with the eternal stars.
Thereupon, Hercules killed the eagle and set Prometheus free.