Prometheus

Prometheus means 'forethought', and he is the rare Titan who sided with Zeus in the war. What he could not accept was what Zeus intended for mortals afterwards, which was very little.

He rigged the first bargain between gods and men at Mecone, wrapping the good meat in an ox's stomach and the bare bones in glistening fat, then letting Zeus choose. Zeus took the fat and the bones — and from then on, sacrifice meant burning bones for the gods and keeping the meat. In retaliation Zeus withheld fire. Prometheus stole it back in a hollow fennel stalk.

The punishment was designed to last. He was chained to a rock in the Caucasus, and an eagle came each day to tear out his liver, which grew back each night so the eagle would have something to return to. Aeschylus makes him defiant throughout, and gives him one card Zeus cannot take: he knows a prophecy about which union would produce a son greater than his father, and he will not say.

Heracles eventually shot the eagle and freed him. The gift itself was double-edged — Zeus's answer to fire was Pandora, and everything that came out of her jar.

Aeschylus makes him the first tragic hero of the Western stage, and the reading has never gone away — Prometheus as the figure punished for giving people the means to improve their own lives. Mary Shelley subtitled Frankenstein 'The Modern Prometheus' for exactly that reason, and the association of fire with knowledge, and knowledge with consequences, starts here.