Pataraz was the best man among all the Narts and was honored with the first drinking horn of the magical brew.  With pleasure Pataraz drank the horn of sana and said, “Now we shall have fire all our lives.”

Significance of this tale

The eagle's outstretched wings could block out the sun, enshrouding the earth in darkness.

This tale has numerous striking parallels with the Prometheus myth of ancient Greece.  Prometheus was a Titan (a race antedating that of the Hellenic Olympian gods) who sided with the Olympians in an epic battle against his own kinsmen.  He created mankind.  He stole fire from Zeus and gave it to his creation after Zeus had taken it away from humans for their failure to make adequate sacrifices to him.  As punishment, Zeus chained Prometheus to “Mount Caucasus,” where by day an eagle devoured his liver and by night he suffered frost and cold while his liver regenerated.  Eventually Prometheus was freed by the hero Herakles (the Roman Hercules).

The battle between Paqua and the Narts recalls the confrontation between the Titans and the rival Olympian pantheon.  Paqua himself seems to be an old, discredited god at the head of a pantheon of demons.  Paqua has taken fire from the Narts because they failed to honor him with sacrifices.  Nasren is a mortal rather than a Titan or god, but his sufferings at the hands of Paqua offer a striking parallel with those of Prometheus at the hands of Zeus.  Nasren, however, fails to bring back fire, this being accomplished by the herculean Pataraz.  Nevertheless, Nasren is freed by Pataraz as Prometheus was freed by Herakles.

One can imagine ancient Greek traders in their posts on the Black Sea coast adopting this tale from the native Circassians, but the parallels do not stop here.  Paqua means “docked” or “stub-nosed” in Circassian.  Herakles bore the epithet “Nose-Docker” because, in a separate tale, he cut off the noses of two impudent heralds.  In Circassian, paqua means “docked nose,” perhaps originally an epithet but now the name of the villain.  One can also show that the Circassian forms would originally have been pronounced like puqua in Adyghean and pugwa in Kabardian.