I’m reading Mythos by Stephen Fry which I think is a really engaging and approachable take on the Greek myths. It comes across as half fictional narrative and half textbook...and this has led to a problem.
In the book Fry mentions that Prometheus created men of many different types originally from clay/mud (before Athena brought them to life). He mentions some were bronze coloured, some white, some yellow, some even blue and green. He then says that Zeus, coming down to inspect his work, accidentally tramples on the blue and green ones - presumably explaining why we don’t have blue and green skinned races.
Now, the question I have, is how much is this true? Cursory Googling seems to tell me not much more than the basic brush strokes, so this might be Fry’s embellishment. On the other hand, I know that some of the clay figures had names - leading to the Golden Age of man. How much do classical references make of the individual clay figures Prometheus made?
Thank you (hopefully) in advance and sorry if this is the wrong Sub for this - if so is there a alternative place to ask?
The "myth" of Prometheus' creation of Man derives from a single source, Plato's dialogue Protagoras, in which the title character tells a story that Epimetheus formed all the animals and gave them their traits, but that he forgot to leave something over for humans. Prometheus therefore had to provide humans with fire and craft, and then when human communities proved unstable because they kept killing each other Zeus granted them laws, which allowed them to form stable communities. Protagoras calls his story a "myth" (μῦθος), in that it has a prehistoric, supernatural narrative nature, but Protagoras gives his interlocutors a choice between a philosophical lecture and a myth and ends up telling the much more entertaining myth. From this it's pretty clear that the character's story is, as is often the case in Plato, supposed to be more or less allegorical, an entertaining version of an argument that could have been delivered as a more theoretical lecture. And indeed, Protagoras' story breaks off and he launches into a lecture explaining its meaning as an illustration that all human beings are possessed of a certain minimum level of virtue, without which they cannot survive in organized society, and those that fall short are punished according to the laws (which then sparks a discussion on capital punishment). In Protagoras' story there's nothing about colors of men or Zeus or anyone else coming to inspect his work--indeed, the earth forms are described as existing underground and pushing their way up out of the earth. It is possible that Plato may have drawn on some older tradition (it's even plausible that this story was an adaptation of a similar story that Protagoras might have told in his own work), but it seems unlikely. Plato's is the first account of Prometheus as a creator of men, and visual depictions of Prometheus or Epimetheus creating humans do not appear until the Hellenistic Period, long after Plato's influence would have shaped the story.