The king of the gods comes off as kind of a jerk in this myth. What's new, right?

When Prometheus helps mankind by giving him fire, Zeus not only dooms Prometheus to be horribly tortured, but he also creates Pandora to release all kinds of badness on humanity. Yo, Zeus, is it really that bad for mankind to have fire? Was all that really necessary?

To play devil's advocate, though, human beings have done an awful lot of bad stuff with fire over the years: weapons, war, burning restaurants down on WB sitcoms. So, who knows? Maybe Prometheus should've listened to what Zeus had to say.

The myth of Prometheus and Pandora is only one of the many, many stories Zeus gets his hands on. For more on this Greek bigwig, check out Shmoop's guide to all things Zeus.