Thomas Cole took the narrative for this painting from the classical tragedy Prometheus Unbound. Prometheus was a Titan, a race of immortal giants, who charged Jupiter to create human beings, whom he fashioned out of mud and water in the image of the gods. Prometheus then stole fire from the gods to help the humans. The theft angered Jupiter, who had Prometheus chained to a rock, where he was condemned to have his liver devoured by a vulture, only to have it repeatedly regrow and be devoured again the next day. Research suggests that Cole, an abolitionist, may have chosen this subject to create a moral allegory of the evils of slavery, symbolized most potently by the shackles that bind Prometheus to the rock.