mon centaurs who fought ferociously to gain possession of it. Hercules managed to kill most of them with the arrows he had dipped in the blood of the poisonous hydra, but his old master was also accidentally wounded by one of the terrible barbs. Any wound, however slight, inoculated with this poison, was certain to prove fatal, but the centaur Chiron was immortal and could not die. Retiring to his cave, he prayed to the gods to deprive him of his immortality so that he might be released from his suffering, and to accept him as an atonement for Prometheus, the gigantic Titan "Forethought," who wished for immortality so that he might always be an aid to man. This Titan, in his eagerness to aid mankind, had once displeased the gods by secretly climbing up to heaven, lighting a reed at the fire of the sun, and bringing down the holy flame as a gift to the human race. He thus was the founder of civilization.
And his heart chafed in anger, when he saw
The fire far-gleaming in the midst of man."
—Hesiod.
Not only did Jupiter punish the Titan by chaining him to a crag in the Caucasus mountains at the eastern end of the earth, but he sent Pandora to the Titan's brother Epimetheus, and Pandora, through her unrestrained curiosity, opened a forbidden box and let out all the woes and sorrows which now roam the world. Since, however, ungrateful mankind had informed on Prometheus, he rewarded them with a remedy for old age—which was slyly stolen by a snake as the gift was being conveyed down the mountain. Thus snakes renew their youth by casting off their skins while men suffer helplessly with all the evils that prey upon the old. But Jupiter now felt such great pity for Chiron in his torture that he somewhat forgot his indignation at Prometheus (and anyway
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