A speculation Doctor Halsey makes in Halo 4: Spartan Ops is that the Greek god/titan Prometheus had stolen fire from the gods and had given it to humanity, she then questions Thorne on what the Prometheans might have to offer us and he replies with negativity towards them.
One speculation I have would be similar events that had taken place in Forerunner history and Greek mythology: when the Didact used humans that were to be preserved on the Halo ring to create the Prometheans (fire), he was sentenced to imprisonment; when Prometheus had taken the fire of Olympus and gave it to humanity, he too was imprisoned. I know it isn’t a close/solid correlation, but it was just a thought.
What do you guys think? What is the meaning of this interesting name?
Okay so there’s two questions. Why did Forerunner Warrior-Servants name their highest ranking group with that name. So is there an in-universe reason?
More likely there’s a real world artistic and more symbolic reason. Your theory is interesting but I can’t tell if that’s what they had on their mind while choosing the name. I hope it wasn’t just because it sounds cool.
The Forerunners predated the Greeks by over 100,000 years. So I think there is no in-universe relation between these names. It is a question of translating Forerunner language in fact. The translation systems (which UNSC used in this process) just replaced many of the original Forerunner terms with similar equivalents from modern humanity’s history.
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> The Forerunners predated the Greeks by over 100,000 years. So I think there is no in-universe relation between these names. It is a question of translating Forerunner language in fact. The translator systems (which UNSC used in this process) just replaced many of the original Forerunner terms with similar equivalents from modern humanity’s history.
While this is kind of a party pooper I think it’s probably the most accurate.
Forerunners came WAY before the name Promethean existed, according to the Halo lore…I am still curious however about how that translation would come through…
Prometheus however literally means “gave fire to man”, I’m guessing that that is probably where the human translators came up with a name for them because of what the Didact did to people.
So I’d say the answer is a cross between ANDROYD rus 's and Walker184 's theory.
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> The Forerunners predated the Greeks by over 100,000 years. So I think there is no in-universe relation between these names. It is a question of translating Forerunner language in fact. The translation systems (which UNSC used in this process) just replaced many of the original Forerunner terms with similar equivalents from modern humanity’s history.
This is the most likely reason. UNSC translation systems would have translated any Forerunner words to the closest human (English, in most cases) equivalent. It’s what happened with the Forerunner Jat-Krula protected boundary, which was translated as the Maginot Line.
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> The Forerunners predated the Greeks by over 100,000 years. So I think there is no in-universe relation between these names. It is a question of translating Forerunner language in fact. The translation systems (which UNSC used in this process) just replaced many of the original Forerunner terms with similar equivalents from modern humanity’s history.
I would think the Forerunners predating Greek mythology makes more of a relation. Human mythologies deriving context from an older civilization that had a big part to play in their biological and technological ascendance would be sensible. As with my idea and potentially others to be posted, this action could have taken place in Forerunner history and was then transcribed into Human mythologies, which actually gives one other little piece of support of my idea (the Didact being Prometheus).
As others said, its probably a contextualized translation. They probably aren’t called prometheans by the forerunners, but something that’d mean the same to us.
As for why, there’s not much to go by, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the founding of the order had to do with taking the domain from Precursors.
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> Okay so there’s two questions. Why did Forerunner Warrior-Servants name their highest ranking group with that name. So is there an in-universe reason?
>
> More likely there’s a real world artistic and more symbolic reason. Your theory is interesting but I can’t tell if that’s what they had on their mind while choosing the name. I hope it wasn’t just because it sounds cool.
There’s no direct translation. It’s just using a idiom from human culture as the closet translation or approximation for whatever name the Forerunners for them in their language. Like the Librarian’s garden being called “Eden” or even the titles “Librarian”, “Didact” of “Faber”. They wouldn’t be their actual titles in the Forerunner language.
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> > 2533274824409174;2:
> > Okay so there’s two questions. Why did Forerunner Warrior-Servants name their highest ranking group with that name. So is there an in-universe reason?
> >
> > More likely there’s a real world artistic and more symbolic reason. Your theory is interesting but I can’t tell if that’s what they had on their mind while choosing the name. I hope it wasn’t just because it sounds cool.
>
> There’s no direct translation. It’s just using a idiom from human culture as the closet translation or approximation for whatever name the Forerunners for them in their language. Like the Librarian’s garden being called “Eden” or even the titles “Librarian”, “Didact” of “Faber”. They wouldn’t be their actual titles in the Forerunner language.
That’s obvious. It doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason for it. Unless you wanna dismiss it as something lost in the translation but I still think it is a valid question.
I don’t think it means anything other than some sort of artistic decision (which is ok with me because it sounds cool) and I don’t think it ties into anything mythological on Earth except maybe in a very very loose sense conceptually.
Personally, I wish Bungie had tied more of our history with their Halo lore than they did. And maybe they were planning to but in the end decided against it and I don’t see 343i trying to go back and correct that.
Like, just an example. The Flood is a scary parasitic alien race, and in Halo 3 we discover an ARK. How could you not put Flood and Ark in the same game and not make any allusions to Noah’s Ark?
How cool would it have been if we received a few hints that our old Biblical story of Noah was a left over from a terrible cataclysmic event in pre-historical times. So old, that we’ve forgotten most of the details and the Flood was now water and the Ark was now a boat because ancient humans no longer had any knowledge of space travel and life beyond our planet? Maybe that’s what they were going for in the beginning but no one ever mentions it in the games.
I think the name Promethean is functioning in a similar manner.
(o_O )