Comparative Journeys: Essays on Literature and Religion East and West

That Aeschylus is often concerned with the nature of cosmic order is familiar enough to all readers of Greek dramas; however, Jaeger’s reading of Prometheus Bound seems one-sided in its insistence on the positive value of suffering. His interpretation takes the experience of pain to be ultimately a blessing because with it comes a deeper knowledge of Zeus’s mighty and orderly rule. In this interpretation of Aeschylus, Prometheus, or what he represents, although he is not lacking in heroic stature, belongs in the last analysis to “the primitive world of Titans and their challenging arrogant hybristic strength” that must be brought finally under the subjection of Zeus. Because suffering reveals (as supposedly it does in Job’s experience) the power and wisdom of God, suffering is theodicy.

The criticism of many other students of Greek literature, on the other hand, has discovered in Prometheus Bound a more balanced emphasis: namely, that both Zeus and Prometheus are guilty in the play. Far from justifying God’s way to men, this tragedy has been thought to call powerfully into question the freedom of man as well as the freedom of God. To be sure, the portrait of Zeus as tyrant, which is so at variance with the theme of other Aeschylean dramas, has been a subject of sustained controversy. In the present study of the play’s structure and certain key patterns of imagery, therefore, the theology of Prometheus Bound will be taken up again with the examination of two related problems: the causes of Prometheus’s suffering and the nature of the knowledge that the play seeks to impart. It is my contention that the essence of the play’s tragic theology is its vehement protest against serious flaws in divinity, out of which arises a mandate for change as well as a distant hope of reconciliation.

In speaking of the play’s structure, we, first of all, have to consider the problem of its formal imperfection; for of the original trilogy that Aeschylus wrote on the myth of Prometheus, the only extant part we have is the desmôtēs, now generally taken to be the first of the three plays.² The truncation of parts presents difficulty in interpretation, because the trilogical form, with its possibility of extending dramatic time and action, appeared to be the poet’s favored mode of composition.³ Without the other plays, therefore, we are left to conjecture as to the outcome of the dramatic action initiated in Prometheus.

There has been no want of suggestion, of course, that the incidents sequent to the first play may be partially reconstructed by analogizing from another group of plays such as the Oresteia. Because the only complete trilogy we possess ends in the cessation of conflict, this interpretation takes it as not unlikely that the Prometheia, too, will terminate with some sort of reconciliation. Implicit in such a hypothesis is the notion that Zeus will undergo a moral transformation in the Prometheia that will make him consistent with the exalted conception found in other Aeschylean dramas.⁴ Against this idea of an “evolutionary” theology or an “emergent” deity, however, is the 1956 essay of Hugh Lloyd-Jones in which is set forth the vigorous argument that there never was any “advanced” conception of Zeus in Aeschylus at all. The God of The Suppliant Maidens, the Oresteia, and the Prometheia, according to Lloyd-Jones, remains the brutal, callous deity whose essential character can only be termed “primitive.”⁵

Although it is perhaps undeniable that the use of analogy can never quite resolve the interpretative difficulties in Prometheus, a play remarkable for its unique features, I suggest that Lloyd-Jones’s objection to the idea of Zeus’s ethical development is too strenuous to be entirely convincing. What is of immense interest and significance in the desmôtēs is not whether there is a “Zeus-religion” or whether Zeus may be summarily labeled advanced or primitive, but how the poet’s criticism of and expectation for the deity function as part of the drama itself. As I hope to demonstrate in analyzing the play, the resolution of dramatic conflict, which is clearly anticipated and implied in the action, is inextricably tied to the hope for a change in the characters both of Zeus and of Prometheus.

The second problem that must occupy our attention briefly has to do with the peculiar condition in which Aeschylus has situated his hero. With the only protagonist chained and bound, Aeschylus, as one critic has observed, “gives us a hero who literally cannot move.”⁶ This severe curtailment of physical action, together with the relatively simple progression of events, gives to the play a seemingly static quality. Prometheus is visited consecutively by the chorus and three other persons who provide him with dialogues of revelatory significance—a technique that Milton later uses with great effectiveness in Samson Agonistes—but nothing more happens, in the crude sense of the word, between Prometheus’s initial binding and the final catastrophe.

The simplicity and immobility of the plot have led many scholars to wonder whether it is amenable to the kind of formal, structural criticism proposed by Aristotle and his modern disciples and whether its dramatic movement, if any, may be apprehended best by such categories as anagnorisis and peripeteia. Because the essential conflict ranges itself around the wrath of Zeus and the defiance of Prometheus, it is almost a critical commonplace to assert that the play is a drama of mind and emotion.⁷ This last generalization, however, provokes the question, Does it do justice to all aspects of Prometheus Bound?

Although obviously our attention is directed constantly toward the thoughts and feelings of the hero, it is grossly myopic to view the play only as the spectacle of Prometheus’s reactions to certain situations; nor is it adequate to think of Prometheus and his opponents as, in reality, the representation of something else. The trouble with much of the criticism that stresses the philosophic bent of Aeschylus’s mind or the symbolic resonance of his characters is that it often, unintentionally, leaves the impression that the plays are not much more than doctrinal or allegorical documents. Without undermining the speculative tendency of the poet’s intellect or the piety of his belief and without, I hope, assuming an unnecessarily doctrinaire position in critical method, I wish to suggest in what follows that the play has a perceptible dramatic structure. The religious and philosophical questions gain poignancy precisely because they arise from the concrescence of events enacted and witnessed. It is possible to discern in the casual series of encounters between protagonist and visitors some form of the principle of probable sequence.⁸ Further, it is possible to see that the dramatic development is determined not simply by Prometheus’s emotions but, in a quite real sense, by his action as well.

When the play opens on the scene of a desolate wasteland, Kratos and Bia, together with Hephaestus, arrive to execute their punitive assignment. Prometheus’s offense (ἁμαρτία) and its penalty are disclosed in the first speech of Kratos.⁹ Charged with the crime of conferring on mortals fire, the glory (ἄνΘος) of the gods, Prometheus is further accused of displaying the detestable disposition of loving humanity (ΦɩλανΘρώπου τρόπου; see also 28). The rebellious but defeated Titan is thus immediately linked to the cause of mankind, although from the point of view of someone like Kratos, such a trait in Prometheus deserves nothing but contempt. The purpose he therefore assigns to the process of physical torture, presently described by him and Hephaestus with excruciating vividness, is to teach Prometheus to respect divine sovereignty (ὡς ἄν δɩδαχΘῇ τὴν Δɩὸς τυραννίδα/ στέργεɩν, 10–11), and to realize that his cleverness is no match for Zeus (ἴνα / μάΘῃ σοΦɩστὴς ὢν Δɩὸ νωΘέστερος, 61–62). Whether this is, in fact, the tragic mathos that Prometheus should learn becomes an increasingly more urgent and weighty question as the play progresses.

Prometheus’s entrance is postponed for some eighty-seven lines; the gradual confirmation of his identity through the words (Θέμɩδος αἰπυμῆτα παῖ) and gestures (nailing and binding) of the other players is not an uncommon technique, but it creates enormous suspense and anticipation. The deliberations of Kratos and Hephaestus do not only introduce such thematic materials (which are to develop later) as the cruelty of Zeus, the absolutism of his reign, and the feeling of insecurity among his subjects (e.g., Kratos’s question to the smith, οὐ τοῦτο [i.e., Zeus’s command] δεɩμαίνεɩς πλέον; and his warning, ὡς μή σ᾿ ἐλɩνύοντα προσδερχΘῇ πατήρ;). More importantly, they serve to dramatize the contrasting attitudes toward the protagonist. Whereas Hephaestus is filled with pity for Prometheus because of kinship, Kratos’s captious tongue is matched only by his vicious appearance (note Hephaestus’s remark: ὄμοɩα μορΦῇ γλῶσσά σου γηρὐεταɩ). They thus embody the opposing emotions of sympathy and hostility that characterize all subsequent visitors. In the series of visitations, we have accordingly the friendly but unenlightened chorus, the garrulous and obsequious Oceanus, the pathetic and partially deranged Io, and finally the lackey Hermes. This juxtaposition of forces friendly and hostile in relation to the hero and his response to them define the principle governing the sequence of dramatic action.

After his crucifixion, Prometheus is left alone to lament his suffering. Stressing its unjust but unavoidable nature, his soliloquy gives voice to a paradoxical idea constantly heard in the play. By his very name, Prometheus is supposed to foreknow what will befall him. Yet, despite having this advantage, he still cannot resist the force of necessity (τὸ τῆς ἀνάγκης ἔστ᾿ ἀδήρɩτον σΘένος, 105). He does not deny that his punishment is self-induced (106–107); at the same time, however, it is a penalty harsh beyond his expectation (269–270), an arbitrary blow that greatly affronts his divine status. As the epanodos in line 92 has it, his hurt is the god’s but wrought by gods (μ᾿ οὶα πρὸς Θεῶν πάσχω Θεός).

Because his suffering is both foreknown and yet beyond anticipation, Prometheus is caught in a dilemma. He has little reason to complain because, as he puts the matter, no new affliction may come to him unforeseen (οὐδέ μοɩ ποταίνɩον / πῆμ᾿ οὐδὲν ἥξεɩ). On the other hand, the deep sense of outrage compounded with the gnawing presence of pain makes it impossible for him to be silent. “I cannot speak about my fortune,” he protests a little later to the chorus, “cannot hold my tongue either.” As we shall see, this struggle to keep silent or not (οὔτε σɩγãν οὔτε μὴ σɩγãν) constitutes the central conflict in Prometheus’s character; and, in the course of the drama, his silence and his speaking both entail fateful consequences.

The entrance of the chorus initiates Prometheus’s encounter with his visitors. Conversation between the inquisitive chorus and the hero helps bring to light the past guilt of Prometheus, his present misery, and the fears and hopes for the future. If we accept Thomson’s thesis that Prometheus Bound is the first play of the trilogy, the necessity for this conversation becomes clear; for Prometheus’s dialogue with the chorus constitutes the needed exposition of his former activities that have led to his present condition.

In addition to eliciting from Prometheus the necessary background information, the chorus assumes the classic role of a foil for the emotion of the audience. Its frequent expressions of fear and tearful lamentations (lines 144–148, 183–184) are appropriate to the feelings created by the sight of Prometheus; and as a “pitiful onlooker,”¹⁰ it continues the part begun by Hephaestus.

Conversation with the chorus, moreover, marks for the first time Prometheus’s allusion to Zeus’s weakness and his eventual downfall. This disclosure is understandably shocking to the chorus, which has just made the assertion that the hardened heart of Zeus (ἄγναμπτον νόον) is determined to subjugate the race of the Titans relentlessly (οὐδὲ λήξεɩ) unless his power is usurped by someone’s crafty device (παλάμᾳ). The last condition is, of course, from the chorus’s point of view, plainly unimaginable; and it is so stipulated only to underscore the endless nature of Prometheus’s imprisonment. There is, therefore, only incredulous surprise when Prometheus picks up an idea from an ostensibly contrary-to-fact statement and turns it into a prophecy of his own victory and release. The very mention of Zeus’s unbending to give satisfaction (ποɩνάς) for Prometheus’s outrage at once induces the chorus to chide:

Its sympathy notwithstanding, the chorus at this point can only conclude that Prometheus is unquestionably in the wrong. It holds the sentiment of the common man, who, almost instinctively, would take the side of the reigning power against all rebels and revolutionaries; and it provokes from Prometheus at one point the bitter taunt to worship, beseech, and flatter whoever happens to be ruling at the time (σέβου, προσεύχου, Θῶπτε τὸν κρατοῦντ᾿ ἀεί, 937). Many words must be spoken, many secrets revealed, and many events witnessed before the chorus reverses its position to fall with the condemned hero.

Discarding Prometheus’s prophecy of future triumph, the chorus urges him instead to recount the reason for his arrest and punishment. The long speech that follows (186–241), in which Prometheus recalls how his assistance to man incurred the wrath of Zeus, ends once more with the complaint against the injustice of his present treatment. The chorus remains unmoved; Prometheus is simply guilty, but dwelling on his past benevolences bestowed on humanity is hardly an adequate remedy for him. Realizing that the chorus is far from persuaded by his words, Prometheus admits his error (ἑκὼν ἑκὼν ἥμαρτον, οὐκ ἀρνήσομαɩ) but begs the chorus to try to participate in his woes (πίΘεσΘέ μοɩ, πίΘεσΘε, συμπονήσατε / τῷ νῦν μογοῦντɩ, 274–275).

Oceanus’s arrival introduces the second visitation and a marked change of feeling and tone in the drama. He comes, as he says, from a long journey (δολɩχῆς) and out of sympathy (συναλγῶ) for Prometheus’s fate. Unlike Hephaestus, however, his disingenuous claim of kinship and loyal friendship (Φίλος βεβαɩότερός) as well as his breathless verbosity arouse at once the latent violence in the hero’s character. The rhetorical question of Prometheus,

On the thematic level, the visit of Oceanus apparently extends the idea mentioned a little earlier by the chorus that some means of release must be sought (ἄΘλουδ᾿ ἔκλυσɩν ζήτεɩ τɩνά) for Prometheus. Oceanus is confident that Zeus will grant Prometheus’s freedom to him as a gift (αὐχῶ γάρ, αὐχῶ, τήνδε δωρεɩὰν ἐμοὶ / δώσεɩν Δί, ὥστε τῶνδέ σ᾿ ἐκλῦσαɩ πόνων, 338–339) if the rebel will curb his dangerously immodest behavior. Significantly, it is in this advice of Oceanus and Prometheus’s steadfast rejection of it that we can most clearly discern the nature and direction of the hero’s tragic development.

For those who have pondered the crucial question of wherein is the tragic deed that brings about the play’s final catastrophe, the usual answer is found either in Prometheus’s defiance of Zeus or in his theft of fire.¹¹ The last explanation is plainly unsatisfactory, for Prometheus’s act of stealing fire and thereby preventing Zeus from the destruction of mankind is prior to the action of the drama. That act is similar to Samson’s disclosure of his secret to Delilah that involves him in medias res when Milton’s play begins. As far as the myth is concerned, Prometheus’s theft may certainly be considered the cause of his immediate and subsequent suffering, but within the play itself, his crime is the incident given to set in motion the dramatic action; it is not the direct cause of his final doom.

The stubborn and proud defiance of Zeus comes closer to the real answer.¹² Throughout the play, the word “obstinacy” (αὐΘαδία) is used again and again to characterize both Prometheus and his unseen enemy. Attitudes and emotions, however, are by themselves nondramatic elements in the sense that they cannot be readily perceived by the audience until they are made known through concrete action or word. In fiction or poetry, the revelation of emotional conditions may be accomplished by narration; but in a drama such as we have here, the disclosure must be effected by means consistent with the artistic form. We remember that Aeschylus has so designed his play that the hero is literally immovable. What is there remaining for him to perform that can qualify as some kind of dramatic action? The answer is so obvious that it eludes most commentators, for the one thing that the enchained hero still can use to both his advantage and disadvantage is his tongue.

One may immediately argue, of course, that this reasoning is tautological, because the artistic form in use indisputably presupposes this kind of action, the speech of dialogue. To build a reading of the play upon an element so native to the form may appear to be indulging in criticism overly subtle and tenuous. Nevertheless, the hypothesis that the words of Prometheus in his particular situation tend to transcend their normal aesthetic function deserves to be heard and examined.

As in many other Greek tragic dramas, Prometheus’s final condition is a result of the choices he makes; but these choices, on account of his peculiar situation, are realized solely by means of what he says. That his words may be taken as a form of action can be seen in the way they are employed in the presence of either friend or foe. To someone like Io, Prometheus promises that he will tell her distinctly (τορῶς) all she desires to know, not with the riddling language of oracles (οὐκ ἐμπλέκων αἰνίγματ᾿), but in simple speech, because it is meet to open the lips to friends (ἀλλ᾿ ἁπλῷ λόγῳ,/ ὥσπερ δίκαɩον πρὸς Φίλους οἴγεɩν στόμα, 609–611). To his enemies, however, Prometheus’s utterances are either pointedly insulting or darkly enigmatic. For this reason, Hermes later orders Prometheus to divulge his secret “in clear terms and no riddles” (καὶ ταῦτα μέντοɩ μηδὲν αἰνɩκτηρίως, / ἀλλ᾿ αὔΘ᾿ ἕκαστα Φράξε, 949–950). The words of Prometheus in the play thus literally decide his destiny because they serve to precipitate the tragic denouement by defining and developing both his action and his character.

In the chorus’s very first meeting with Prometheus, it already accuses him of being too free with his tongue (ἐλευΘεροστομεῖς). When Oceanus is present, he rebukes Prometheus for his sharp and flinty words (τραχεῖς καὶ τεΘηγμένους λόγους, 311), his haughty tongue (ὑψηγόρου γλώσσης, 318–319), his reckless speech and his idle eloquence (λαβροστόμεɩ … γλώσσŋ ματαία, 327–329). As Oceanus sees the matter, Prometheus, despite his humiliation, still possesses in his words a powerful weapon for antagonizing Zeus. Hence, Oceanus is afraid that once such inordinate expressions reach the ears of the Olympian monarch, greater disaster will be forthcoming. Attempting to pacify Prometheus’s anger and change his obstinacy, Oceanus confronts him with the question, “Do you not know, Prometheus, that words are healers of the sick temper?” This question is deliberately phrased, since it follows Prometheus’s declaration that he will exhaust himself in his present lot until anger shall quit the mind of Zeus (έγὼ δè τὴν παροὓσαν ἀντλήσω τύχην,ἔστ ᾽ἀ νΔɩὸ ςΦρόνημα λωΦήσῃχ όλου, 375–376). Oceanus’s point is that Prometheus can perhaps ameliorate his condition if he would be more compliant in his speech. The reply of Prometheus, however, shows that he is even more aware of the therapeutic or subversive power of words (379–380), but he also knows that they are effective only when they are spoken in due season (ἐn kαɩρῷ; at the present moment, he simply cannot bow to Zeus’s tyranny.

This entire episode with Oceanus decidedly reveals which of the speakers possesses a more profound understanding of the cosmic situation and, consequently, a more authoritative and effective use of language. It is ironical that Oceanus comes as a tutor of the prisoner (ἔμοɩγε χρώμενος δɩδασκάλῳ), but in reality, he can offer only platitudes (άρχαῖ’ … λέγεɩν) and banal aphorisms (note his use of what must have been an old proverb, πρὸς κέντρα κὼλον ἔκτενεἲς, to argue for the logic of submission). Before too long, he is forced to acquire a chilling lesson about his own precarious existence under the shadow of Zeus (333–334, 390). Again, ironically, in his proposal to intercede on behalf of Prometheus, Oceanus declares that he forms his judgment on the basis of deeds and not words (έργῳ κου’ λόγῳ τεκμαίρομαɩ), implying, by the certainty he expresses immediately thereafter, that his utterance will be supported by accomplishment. In the course of the drama, however, it is actually Prometheus whose words achieve some amazing results.¹³

Prometheus’s main struggle may be seen as revolving around one basic issue: will Prometheus submit to Zeus by telling his secret or not? In this contest of will and endurance, his words are pitted against the immutable oracles of Zeus. Hermes later declares that “the mouth of Zeus / does not know how to lie, but every word brings to fulfilment” (1032–1033). In sum, Zeus’s proclamations are as good as his deeds, but so, too, are those of Prometheus. When the Titan persists in the announcement that Zeus will fall and suffer more than he (932), the chorus is moved to ask: “Have you no fear in saying such things?” And when Prometheus maintains near the end that no threat or torture of Zeus can alter his stand, Hermes is led to exclaim, “These are a madman’s words; a madman’s plans.” Little does he realize, of course, that Prometheus’s raving has a double edge; it not only confounds his adversary but wins over the final allegiance of the chorus as well.

When these abundant verbal images are brought properly into view, is it not plausible to suggest that Prometheus’s words, so fraught with fearful consequences in this instance, constitute in truth his tragic deed? As the drama advances, the question about which we are made to care most intensely is whether the hero will speak or not, for that is the conflict, arising from the clash of external condition and inward conviction, that demands some form of resolution. In the speeches of Prometheus, the destiny of both the protagonist and his invisible antagonist moves from cryptic hints, through partial disclosure, to full revelation. Correspondingly, Prometheus’s danger of inciting further the wrath of Zeus increases from his initial lament to the final baiting of Hermes. From the point of view of Zeus, moreover, the speech no less than the silence of Prometheus is provocative. When he speaks, Prometheus’s bold invectives for his foe are the very epitome of his defiance. Even the heaviest thunderbolts are rather mild and colorless when compared with the violent and vituperative denunciations that Prometheus hurls (ῥίψεɩς) against his oppressor. On the other hand, his silence about his secret also spells insubordination, and it is this act of speaking and not speaking that finally calls down the ire of Zeus.

With Oceanus’s departure, Prometheus resumes his narration by enumerating the manifold gifts he gave to man. The impressive claim that every art possessed by mortals comes from Prometheus (πãσαɩ τέχναɩ βροτοἲσɩν ἐκ προμηΘέως) serves a double purpose. In the first place, it substantiates the noble motivation of Prometheus’s action, for he was moved to come to man’s assistance by human miseries (πήματα) as well as by his own kindly disposition (εὔνοɩα). Such qualification, in fact, challenges implicitly the accusation of his enemies that it was hubris that turned him into a philanthropos. Secondly, Prometheus’s lengthy discourse heightens the pitifulness as well as the irony of his predicament. He who has devised marvelous inventions for mankind has no means wherewith to cure the troubles of his own (469–475). Echoing the sentiment expressed by Hephaestus earlier, the chorus once more warns him not to care for mortals beyond due measure, for it is still of the opinion that Prometheus would have a better chance to gain his freedom if he were less obdurate. Prometheus’s stunning and completely unexpected reply to this admonition is that not only is his own craft, great as it may have been to mankind, no match for Necessity (τέχνη δ’ ἀνάγκης ἀσΘενεστέρα μακρῷ), but even Zeus is also subject to its powerful sway.

That such an audacious assertion is beyond the ken of the chorus is clear from the ensuing response. The chorus, which has accepted without question Zeus’s power, can envisage no higher Necessity in the universe except that Zeus is foreordained to rule eternally (τί γàρ πέπρωταɩ ζηνὶ πλὴν ἀεὶ κρατεἲν). Urging submission to Zeus, it can say in effect to Prometheus that they are wise who do homage to Necessity (οἱ προσκυνοὓντες τὴν’αδράστεɩαν σοΦοί, 936). For Prometheus to insist that he possesses a secret weapon that will ensure his ultimate victory (521–525) is, therefore, to transgress in speech, a fearful offense from which the chorus prays to be spared (μηδ’ ἀλίτοɩμɩ λόγοɩς, 532). Furthermore, for Prometheus to persist in his reverence for mortals (σέβῃ Θνατοὺς) in opposition to Zeus’s will is itself foolish. The Titan’s effort can only be unrequited kindness (ἄχαρɩς χάρɩς), for what help (ἀλκά) can come now to Prometheus from such puny creatures as men? Therefore, the moral lesson that Prometheus and his spectators should learn (ἔμαΘον) from his plight, as the chorus piously concludes, is that Zeus must be feared, and this high regard for humanity must be abandoned, for no plan of mortals can ever disrupt the harmony of Zeus (οὔποτε—/ τàν Δɩὸς ἁρμονɩαν Θνατὼν παρεξίασɩ βουλαί).

The choral stasimon is succeeded by the appearance of Io in the form of a half-cow, half-human figure chased by a gadfly. To the chorus, which hitherto seems to think that Zeus can do no wrong, the sudden intrusion of Io’s hideous presence and her story of heaven-sent calamity (Θεόσσυτον χεɩμὼνα, 643ff.) provide a shattering example of innocent suffering. At the end of this episode, to be sure, the thoroughly shaken chorus lapses into the rather silly aphorism about how one should not marry above one’s pedigree (ὡς τὸ κηδεὓσαɩ καΘ’ ἑαυτὸν ἀρɩστεύεɩ μακρῳ, 890); but undeniably, Io’s experience magnifies Zeus’s cruelty and reinforces Prometheus’s accusation that the tyrannical deity is violent in all his ways (ὁ τὼν Θεὼν τύραννος ἐς τὰ πάνΘ’ ὁμως / βίαɩος εἴναɩ, 736–737). Her rehearsal of divine seduction indeed moves the chorus to terror and pity.

It should be noted, however, that Io’s role is designed not merely to reflect the wickedness of Zeus, or, as Prometheus says, to win a tear from the audience by weeping over her misfortunes. Positively, she comes to provide comfort for the suffering hero because she, of all the visitors, is the only person who participates in his suffering by being herself a sufferer. Prometheus can mock the chorus, and implicitly everyone who visits him, that “it is an easy thing for one whose foot / is on the outside of calamity / to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer”; but he obviously cannot say this to Io, for she, too, is a victim of Zeus. Concern for a friend in distress helps him momentarily to forget his own troubles and assume the role of a comforter.

Moreover, Io’s faith in Prometheus’s knowledge of the future, evident in her desperate pleading with him to reveal what cure there may be for her affliction (τί μηχαρ, ἢ τί Φάρμακον νόσου; δεɩ ξον), both strengthens Prometheus’s position and arouses the curiosity of the chorus. Responding to their request, Prometheus tells at length the painful wanderings still awaiting Io as well as her eventual restoration by Zeus. That he can describe her past and future experience in such intimate details is not only, as he says, a positive proof (τεκμήρɩον) of his words’ truthfulness, but it also gives credence to his own claim concerning his future deliverance from Io’s descendant.

When Io is gone, Prometheus proceeds to explain how Zeus will finally be toppled because of an ill-fated marriage. The half-believing chorus is still afraid that Prometheus’s boast has not much more validity than wishful thinking (928). The arrival of Hermes, Zeus’s footman, intensifies the dramatic tension to the breaking point. Zeus’s command for Prometheus to divulge his secret is met with an equally fierce and obstinate refusal. At the brink of the final terror, the chorus is warned to stay away. Instead of imitating the caution previously exercised by Oceanus, the chorus dramatically reverses its stand and falls with the condemned hero. Having counseled hitherto compromise and submission, the chorus suddenly deems it a better lot to perish with the rebel. Such a profound reversal of the chorus, to my knowledge, is unparalleled anywhere in Greek literature.

The change, furthermore, illustrates a kind of peripeteia and anagnorisis that markedly differ from Aristotle’s conception. From the dramatic examples given in his discussion of these terms in the Poetics (chap. 11), Aristotle apparently thought of change and discovery as events in the action closely associated with the protagonist (e.g., Oedipus). Yet in the case of Prometheus Bound, it is the chorus that gains at last the profound knowledge that Prometheus is speaking the truth; and on the basis of this discovery, it chooses to suffer with the hero. Such a momentous change signals the chorus’s transformation from a dull and imperceptive spectator of tragedy to its enlightened and courageous participant. Its action is a direct answer to the earlier plea of Prometheus (267–278), and its description of Zeus’s treachery echoes the Titan’s very word (i.e., νόσος [1069]; see also lines 226–227). If the comments of the chorus have often been banal and insensitive, the final speech to Hermes,

displays such overwhelming conviction, courage, and compassion that we can best interpret it, perhaps, as Aeschylus’s own voice of commendation for Prometheus also. As such, it becomes a subtle sign of what should be our response to the protagonist. Seen in this light, the ending of the play is drama of the highest order. Like all great tragic heroes, Prometheus leaves the stage accompanied paradoxically by gain and loss. The loss, of course, comes in his savage overthrow. Making good his word with action (καὶ μὴν ἔργῳ κοὐκέτɩ μήΘῳ), Zeus dispatches a violent storm to hurl him into the abyss, yet his gain, even more tremendous, is the friendship of the universe itself. At the play’s beginning, Prometheus has called on the elements of nature to witness how unjustly (ἔκδɩκα) he suffers, a call that he repeats in his exit. There is now, however, a decisive difference. The chorus, which as the offspring of Oceanus forms part of nature (i.e., water, the “sleepless current” encircling the earth, 136–140), has not only seen the injustice of his pain; but seeing, it has been converted to the rightness of his cause.

Of the characters in Prometheus Bound, the one who, apart from the protagonist, continually engages our attention is paradoxically one who is physically absent from the stage. Nevertheless, his personality and his influence are so ubiquitously felt that, without him, the drama would collapse. This invisible person is Zeus, and the most astonishing thing about him is that he is represented as the antagonist, the unrighteous and unjust God whose tyrannical nature is emphasized throughout the drama.

That Zeus is capable of being the author of various evils is certainly an idea not foreign to the theology of Greek poets and dramatists. We have but to remember that Pandora was designed specifically as a gift of ruinous trouble (κήδεα λυγρά) for men (Hesiod, Works and Days 49) to feel the venom of divine intrigue. Nonetheless, what distinguishes Prometheus Bound from works of Aeschylus’s contemporaries no less than those by Homer and Hesiod is the unremitting vision of a wicked Zeus. Not even in Euripides’ Herakles, a play almost without parallel in its exploitation of the theme of antitheodicy, do we find such abundant images of divine truculence and savagery. With oppressive frequency, the speeches in the play allude to Zeus’s despotic rule: he is cruel and hard-hearted (τλησɩκάρδɩος, 160); he has a mind not open to reason or entreaty (ἀκίχητα γὰρ ἤΘεα καὶ κέαρ / ἀπαράμυΘον, 184–185); his authority is based not on moral supremacy but solely on material force.

To dramatize this hateful character of Zeus, Aeschylus significantly departs from his sources in his treatment of Io, Prometheus, and what befalls mankind. In the case of the Titan, the malignity of Zeus manifests itself primarily in his ingratitude; for in his struggle to become the Olympian monarch, Zeus was indebted to the help of Prometheus. Hesiod, in the Theogony (70–75), attributes Zeus’s victory over the old gods to his sheer power (καρτεϊ νɩκήσας πατέρα κρόνον), but Prometheus claims in the play that he is finally responsible for helping Zeus to win (200–223) and to apportion the honors and the limits of the gods (228–230, with the rhetorical question of lines 439–440: καίτοɩ Θεοῖσɩ τοῖς νέοɩς τούτοɩς γέρα / τίς ἄλλος ἤ’γὼ παντελῶς δɩώρɩσεν;). Once having consolidated his authority, however, Zeus turns against his friend and repays his service (ὠΦελημένος) with foul return (κακαῖσɩ ποɩναῖς, 223), justifiably forcing Prometheus to describe such faithlessness to friends as a disease inherent in tyranny (224–225).

As far as man is concerned, Zeus’s malice comes in the form of the harshness (τραχύς) and hard-heartedness (τλησɩκάρδɩος) of his reign. Above all, it is his indifference to human happiness and welfare that characterizes his attitude toward man as downright hostility. Prometheus’s suffering on account of his compassion for man and the misfortunes of Io both point up the terrible defect in the character of Zeus—his lack of any feeling of pity (ἔλεος, οἶκτος) for anyone. Through the choral comments, the poet has made it clear that the normal “human” reaction to the sight of Prometheus and the plight of Io cannot be anything but pity and compassion. As the chorus says at one point, only a heart of iron and one carved out of stone (σɩδηρόΦρων τοɩ κἀκ πέτρας εἰργασμένος, 242) can withhold sympathy when looking at Prometheus. Yet Zeus is precisely of that disposition that exults (ἐπɩχαρῆ, 159 and 161) in the suffering of others, making his government despicable and his nature odious.

Such an infamous portrayal of Zeus is not without its perplexing feature, for there seems to appear in the other plays of Aeschylus a radically different Zeus. It is well known that in The Suppliant Maidens, for example, Zeus is not only the final judge of human iniquity, but he is hailed as perfect (τέλεɩος), protective toward the earth (γαɩάοχος), and omnipotent. With an incandescent eloquence that has been compared with Hebraic poetry and prophecy, the chorus extols Zeus as lord of lords, the most blessed of the blessed, the most perfect of the perfect, all happy Zeus (ἄναξ ἀνάκτων, μακάρων / μακάρτατε καὶ τελέων / τελεɩότατον κράτος, ὄλβɩε ζεῦ, 524–526).

The most notable attribute of Zeus in that play, however, is not that he is mighty to accomplish what he purposes,¹⁴ but that he is himself pitiful and solicitous toward the needy and the oppressed. “Any other Olympian,” writes Lloyd-Jones, “might have had the protection of suppliants as a special charge,”¹⁵ but Zeus in the Suppliants is credited with much more than a perfunctory title of guardianship. In several places, Zeus himself is called the Suppliant (ζεὺς Ἱκετήσɩος, ἈΦίκτωῤ) whose anger awaits those untouched by the sufferer’s cry (μένεɩ τοɩ ζηνὸς ἱκταίου κότος / δυσπαραΘέλκτους πανΘόντος οἴκτοɩς, 385–386; see also lines 347, 360, 478). The theology of Aeschylus in this play thus reaffirms and refines the traditional Homeric belief that Zeus indeed gives peculiar attention to the aged, the stranger, and the suppliant—all who are manifestedly helpless and in need of protective care.¹⁶

In the Oresteia, too, Zeus is described as all-seeing (πανόπτης), all-powerful (παγρατής), the cause of all (παναίτɩος), and the bearer of justice (δɩκηΦόρος). It is because the supreme deity is seen not only as all-powerful but also all-just that Electra invokes for Orestes the blessing and assistance of Strength and Justice, and Zeus the third (i.e., ζεὺς σώτηῤ, supreme over all). The precise nature of justice (δίκη) in Aeschylus is undoubtedly difficult to determine, for its meaning varies in different contexts. In the words of the suppliant maidens (76–81), the just cause (τὸ δίκαɩον) is one that does not go beyond what is right (παῤ αἶσαν), while the content of justice, as inscribed on Polyneices’ shield, has to do with the restoration of rights (The Seven Against Thebes 646–648). In the Oresteia, the concept dikê often may refer to an evenhanded payment of evil for evil (Agamemnon 1430; The Libation Bearers 309ff.), and in this sense, the Zeus who champions justice has perhaps the same juridical function in both Aeschylus and Hesiod.

Even granting a minimal view of the deity’s goodness, however, it is difficult to see how a Zeus who rewards the lowly and punishes the violent (Works and Days 1–6, 237–240) is essentially no different from one almost totally devoid of redeeming virtue. Can we really believe, with Lloyd-Jones, that the Zeus who presides over public assemblies and speeches, and hence who prevails by reason and persuasion (ἐκράτησε ζεὺς ἀγοραῖος [Eumenides 973]), is to be identified with a tyrant who keeps his own standard of justice (παῤ ἑαυτῷ / τὸ δίκαɩον ἔχων ζεύς [Prom. 186–187])? Moreover, the closing choral verdict in the Eumenides refers to Zeus and Moira jointly working for the final establishment of peace (ζεὺς …/ ὅυτω μοῖρά τε συγκατέβα), whereas the deity of Prometheus Bound has yet to learn of his own limitation in terms of his fate. Indeed, one study has thoroughly demonstrated that the Zeus of Prometheus is a near-perfect epitome of the reckless and ruthless tyrant in classical conception,¹⁷ and tyranny (δεσποτούμενον), as the chorus in the Eumenides reminds us, is just as undesirable as an ungoverned life (ἄναρκτον βίον, 526–527).

Expanding the thesis of a previous essay,²⁰ Leon Golden has argued that the Zeus of the Suppliants and the Oresteia is “a grand symbol of all the spiritual forces that reach majestic fulfilment in the creation of the polis,” while “the cruel and tyrannical Zeus of the Prometheus Bound is the unleashed, uncontrolled brute power of nature which often threatens man.”²¹ The concord reached eventually between Prometheus and Zeus is taken to mean that “amoral nature” will yield gradually to “the forces of human intellect and civilization.” This is a tidy solution, and to the extent that it unmistakably distinguishes the Zeus of the Prometheia from that of the other plays, it is not without merit. The question is, will it outweigh the liabilities? For, although the might of Zeus is often compared in the play with volcanic eruptions and violent storms, what makes Golden’s highly symbolic interpretation questionable is whether nature can be said to have such personal (and, therefore, moral) attributes as does the dramatic Zeus. Does it make any sense to say that nature will learn wisdom through suffering as it is predicted of Zeus?

In the work of Podlecki already alluded to, a more reasonable view is set forth, supported by impressive evidence. The full-length portrait of Zeus Tyrannos, according to the author, is, among other things, a powerful indictment against all forms and figures of political tyranny, a specific example of which might well have been Hiero of Syracuse.²² Friedrich Solmsen, too, in his celebrated study of Hesiod and Aeschylus, has suggested that the dramatist might have been inspired by contemporary historical events. The strange succession of brutal deities, so vividly chronicled for the reader in the Theogony, could have been taken by Aeschylus as a reflection of the human struggle for a more adequate realization of justice, “and what happens to the Olympian dynasty is found to have a far-reaching effect upon the development of mankind.”²³

In addition to the perceptive criticism of Solmsen and Podlecki, it must be pointed out that political and historical analogies do not exhaust the meaning of Prometheus Bound. For Aeschylus, what may be the experienced realities of history provokes queries of religious urgency, because suffering raises the ultimate question of whether this world may be said to be governed justly by Zeus. The character of the divine government in turn has important implications for assessing the divine nature itself.

Within the context of the drama, the specific excuse for the cruelty and harshness of Zeus’s reign, at least according to a compliant chorus or Oceanus, is its newness. Zeus is a neos tyrannos, and, therefore, he must govern gods and men arbitrarily (παρ ἑαυτῷ, ἴδɩος νόμος). Newness breeds insecurity, and a tyrant parvenu must show his strength with no indecisiveness lest his scepter be wrested from him by the hands of insubordination (note also Hephaestus’s remark: ἅπας δὲ τραχὺς ὅστɩς ἄν νέον κρατῃ). So, the counsel of Oceanus to Prometheus is that he must learn to adapt to this new situation and yield to Zeus, but the very fact that this is the reasoning of Oceanus shows how unsatisfactory it must have been to Prometheus as well as to Aeschylus. No moral justification can be found for the treatment of Prometheus, because that punishment is a payment of evil for good, and the severity of the penalty far exceeds the weightiness of the crime. In this sense, Zeus’s action must be judged also as beyond due measure, for his hostility toward Prometheus and mankind is irrationally excessive. Prometheus’s caustic remark to Hermes (νέον νέοɩ κρατεῖτε καὶ δοκεῖτε δὴ / ναίεɩν ἀπενΘῆ πέργαμ’, 955–956) may serve as an even more fitting rebuke for the master, for Zeus’s behavior bespeaks the nervous arrogance of youthful power, not the majestic authority of a seasoned monarch.

In this regard, too, Aeschylus’s conception of Zeus in Prometheus Bound is more severe than the common Greek notion, expressed succinctly by Herodotus a little later, that God is always jealous and interfering (ΦΘονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες).²⁴ For in the idea of the jealous god, the main emphasis is on the wisdom and power of the deity to hold man down lest he should rise above his mortal station. The stress on human insecurity and human helplessness (ἀμηχανία) serves conveniently as a correlative check on human hubris—that arrogance that comes from the accumulation of wealth, fame, and success (see the choral debate in Agamemnon 760–775). Divine phthonos, according to such an etiology of disaster, does not necessarily implicate the deity as wholly wicked.²⁵

In Prometheus Bound, which reverses the Hesiodic emphasis on primal human happiness (Works and Days 90–91, 109–120), man before receiving the gifts of Prometheus is utterly wretched (ταλαίπωρος). Zeus has no basis whatever to be jealous or vindictive toward man. It is not man who is successful; it is Zeus. Apart from sheer cruelty, there is no possible explanation for the action of Zeus, who, having enjoyed the spoils of victory, turns to seek the destruction of man.

That the deity should be so villainous and loathsome is a fact freighted with meaning in regard to the issue of human suffering; for, if righteousness is to be attributed to the Supreme, then suffering in human existence must be explained by man’s guilt or sinfulness. To make man responsible for his pain and misery is in fact to absolve God from his responsibility (it may be interesting to recall that this has always been the Grundgedanke beneath the traditional Christian interpretation of the fall of man), but this attempt is not always successful or even plausible. As E. R. Dodds has put the matter so well,

The boldness of Aeschylus’s art is to be found precisely in this kind of audacious quest for justice. When Prometheus tellingly says that the spectacle of his own chastisement (ἐρρύΘμɩσμαɩ) brings dishonor to Zeus’s name (ζηνὶ δυσκλεὴς Θέα, 241), he is saying, in other words, that the facts no longer fit the theories, that he is more sinned against than sinning. Because no adequate explanation can account for the suffering of Prometheus and, by extension, of Io and of mankind as well, Zeus’s righteousness and justice now appear highly dubious. Man’s innocent suffering, in this case, establishes the logical corollary of divine guilt. Zeus, therefore, must change.

That change is a motif of fundamental import may be discerned in the way Zeus is thought and spoken of in the drama. From the perspective of Prometheus’s visitors, Zeus is not only fated to rule eternally, but he is also changeless in the sense that his mind is inexorable. He is a god who cannot be reached by prayer or entreaty (Φρένες δυσπαραίτητος, ἀχίχητος).²⁷ Moreover, he possesses the power to accomplish what he wills. Because his purpose supposedly cannot be frustrated, Kratos can say that no one but Zeus is free (50) and Hermes can claim that “alas” is a word unknown to Zeus (981). The only act of discretion for Prometheus in his condition, therefore, is to change and bend his mind to subjection (e.g., Hermes’ advice: τόλμησον,… τόλμησόν ποτε / πρὸς τὰς παρούσας πημονὰς ὀρΘῶς Φρονεῖν).

Against such a view of the deity stands Prometheus’s stubborn vision of the future. At their very first meeting, Prometheus startles the chorus by announcing that Zeus one day will enter into league and friendship (εἰς ἀρΘμὸν … καὶ Φɩλότητα) with himself. However incredible it may sound in his listeners’ ears, Prometheus’s prediction gains clarity and cogency as the drama unfolds. The change in Zeus is predicated first upon political expediency: he has need (χρείαν) of Prometheus’s secret knowledge in order to ward off a disastrous marriage that will lead to his overthrow (169–177, 908–915, 947–948). More important than that advantage, however, is the possibility of moral transformation that Prometheus gradually but unmistakably links to the suffering likely to be encountered by Zeus. The softening and smoothing of his anger (ἀτέραμνον στορέσας ὀργὴν) is a result of being crushed (ῥαɩσΘῇ—literally, pounded with a hammer) by adversity.

Repeatedly, Prometheus promises that Zeus will be stripped of his sovereignty (171, 756, 761–762, 908–915, 940, 957–958), and having fallen on his evil day, Zeus will learn the difference between being a ruler and being a slave (πταίσας δὲτῷδε πρὸς κακῷ μαΘήσεταɩ / ὅσον τὸ τ’ἄρχεɩν καὶ τὸ δουλεύεɩν δίχα, 926–927). Although Prometheus does not reveal exactly how the marriage will prove fatal to Zeus, there are intimations that when it comes, it will be the complete fulfillment of a father’s parting curse (πατρὸς δ’ ἀρὰ / κρόνου τότ’ ἤδη παντελῶς κρανΘήσεταɩ,/ ἣν ἐκπίτνων ἠρãτο δηναɩῶν Θρόνων, 910–912). In other words, Zeus must atone for the guilt of his sire’s overthrow, and his destiny thus involves the question of how to undo a crime that entangles the generations (957–959).²⁸ When such major thematic affinities with the Oresteia are considered, is it too improbable to see as part of the play’s final objective the education of Zeus? To Hermes’ boastful assertion that “alas” is unknown to Zeus, Prometheus can pointedly reply that time ever growing teaches all (ἐκδɩδάσκεɩ πάνΘ’ ὁ γηράσκων χρόνος, 982), for in the Aeschylean order of things, he who decrees that wisdom shall come from suffering (Agamemnon) must surely learn the lesson himself.²⁹

If Zeus undergoes profound transformation under the deft artistry of Aeschylus’s pen, this is no less true of Prometheus. Originally “a local fire god, patron of certain trades,” he was one among the several “phallic demons.”³⁰ In the poet’s creation, however, Prometheus becomes someone dark and great, and his struggle with Zeus expands from the petty squabbles of theomachia into a conflict of cosmic magnitude. To appreciate fully the scope of the drama we must take a final look at the significance of Prometheus as a dramatic character.

The most obvious peculiarity of Prometheus in the play is the fact that he is a god, a theos. Indeed, what is conspicuously unusual about the play—that all its personae are nonhuman—has received frequent notice. However, what sets Prometheus apart is not his divine status as such, but the effect that the attribute of immortality has on his person and his experience. Because he is virtually indestructible, Prometheus in fact can ask at one point: Why should I fear, I whose destiny is not to die (τὶ δ’ ἄν Φοβοίμην ᾦ Θανεῖν οὖ μόρσɩμον, 933)? The immediate purpose of this question, assuredly, is to remind an alarmed chorus that his own being is immune to the ultimate threat of Zeus. Yet within the larger dramatic context, Prometheus’s seemingly audacious words have a noteworthy ramification, for his immunity also renders inappropriate and irrelevant the kind of maxim so often dispensed in Greek dramas to their human heroes—that the mortal must be mortal-minded (ὄντας δε Θνητοὺς Θνητà καὶ Φρονεῖν χρεών). Such respectful regard for one’s mortality, long held to be an attitude essential to the attainment of prudence or self-control,³¹ is hardly to be possessed by someone like Prometheus.

actually points up the almost impenetrable paradox of an infinite being subjected to the agonies of time. What Prometheus is ever conscious of is the present moment of pain that, insofar as he is immortal, has no prospect of termination by death or destruction. That this plight of his receives recurrent emphasis is perhaps Aeschylus’s way of indicating to us that his hero is extraordinary, that some of the expectations normally held for the human protagonist must be waived.

Despite those characteristics of him that boggle the imagination, however, Prometheus makes his strongest impact and appeal not because he is endowed with superhuman qualities, but because he has identified himself with the cause of mankind. Throughout the play, Prometheus is shown to have a far more intimate relation with man than with the gods.³² He is, in the words of Kratos, a god utterly hateful to the gods (τὸν Θεοῖς ἔχΘίστον … Θεόν) for being the champion of man. This characterization of Prometheus reveals that not only Aeschylus’s theology but also his anthropology depart from Hesiod.

In the Theogony, Prometheus is, most of all, a trickster; he is called crafty and full of various wiles (ποɩκίλον αἰολόμητɩν), the expert in the art of deception (δολίης τέχνης). The contest with Zeus stresses Prometheus’s devious intent to deceive as well as Zeus’s ability to avert his treachery. Man in such a situation is hardly more than a pawn in the midst of a duel of Olympian wits.

In Aeschylus, however, there is far less emphasis on Prometheus’s cunning, for the entire weight has now been shifted to the portrayal of the Titan as a lover of man. To be sure, Prometheus’s motive is variously interpreted, and in the eyes of his opponents, this inordinate passion is a sure sign of his hubris (82); but Prometheus’s movingly eloquent description of precivilized humanity (note the phrase βλέποντες ἔβλεπον μάτην,/ κλύοντες οὐκ ἤκουον, which, curiously, has parallels in both the Old and New Testaments) lends substance to his claim of genuine affection for mankind. In this fashion, Prometheus differs again from most other Greek tragic heroes, who, at least according to much traditional interpretation, are doomed because of their hubris or not thinking mortal thoughts. On the other hand, Prometheus offends the gods and suffers for exactly the opposite reason—an excessive regard for man.

Furthermore, the note constantly sounded in Prometheus’s depiction of the human situation does not dwell on man’s achievement in the arts and sciences. His lengthy speeches are, rather, documentations of man’s “weakness and nothingness, his absolute insignificance.”³³ What the poet has done in the play is to sharpen the characteristic tragic distinction drawn by the Greeks between divinity and humanity, the latter being at once δεɩλοὶ βροτοὶ and δεɩνόν in contrast to the blessed immortality of the gods.³⁴ This accentuation of human wretchedness makes Prometheus’s love for man all the more noble and magnanimous, for he alone refuses to accept the orthodoxy of the gods that man deserves no more than contemptuous toleration because he is merely the creature of a day (ἐΦήμερος). That he should deign to help someone who, from a realistic point of view, does not seem to be worthy of his efforts and who certainly cannot come to assist him in his hour of defeat is an act that draws Prometheus still closer to the side of man and wins for him deeper sympathy and admiration from a human audience.

Besides thwarting the murderous intent of Zeus, Prometheus’s kindness is concretely manifested in his gifts. Blind hopes, fire, and the various arts and sciences all contribute toward the improvement of the human condition. Before receiving them, man does everything without intelligent calculation (ἄτερ γνώμης, 456), but the revelation of fire, as Prometheus himself observes, is a means to great ends (μέγας πόρος, 111). Reversing his emphasis elsewhere that it is Zeus who “leads man upon the way to thought (Φρόνημα),”³⁵ Aeschylus makes Prometheus specifically responsible for endowing childlike humans with sense and reason (ὥς σΦας νηπίους ὄντας τὸ πρὶν / ἔννους ἔΘηκα καὶ Φρενῶν ἐπηβόλους, 443–444).

The meaning of the phrase τυΦλὰς ἐλπίδας is somewhat enigmatic; but taken together with the sentence of Prometheus (“I caused mortals to cease foreseeing doom”) spoken immediately before it, blind hopes may signify that man is preserved in this world of suffering by a sense of motivation, although his aspiration will ultimately come to naught because of his mortality.³⁶ What Aeschylus seems to be saying here is that man can enjoy the other gifts of Prometheus—fire and the arts—and thereby rise above his dreamlike state of existence (448) only through a delusion granted by Prometheus paradoxically as a boon. Science and civilized life cannot be achieved by man unless he transcends the haunting sense of his own mortality. Read in this manner, the Aeschylean interpretation of human civilization and human destiny provides an interesting commentary on the Hebraic myth of the fall of man with which it has often been compared. Whereas man in the Genesis story is doomed to die on account of his acquisition of knowledge and his aspiration to be like Yahweh himself, Aeschylus seems to imply that man cannot lead a specifically human life, in the sense of being an inventive maker of culture and an intelligent controller of natural forces, unless he deliberately defies his own ontological limitation. Whether these two views are representative of Hebraic “pessimism” and Greek “optimism” about man is too controversial and complicated a subject to be taken up here. What is germane to our discussion is that this kind of human action inevitably threatens the divine powers, thus provoking, in both strands of religious mythology, the hostility of the deity. A study of Prometheus’s “humanity” must therefore conclude with some appraisal of the meaning of his rebellion.

Prometheus has been punished not only because he has stolen fire from heaven and given it to man on earth, but because, in doing so, he has remained unrepentant and defiant to the end. His action is thus usually taken to mean that he has overstepped his boundary and transgressed his limit by being a rebel of the gods. His person and his deeds engender the crisis in the Olympian hierarchy. Although his punishment is unjust and overly severe, even the most sympathetic critic today is not inclined to adjudge Prometheus wholly innocent.³⁷ And on the surface of the matter, it is relatively easy to quote a poet like Pindar or Aeschylus himself to maintain that Prometheus, when weighed by the norms of accepted Greek morality, will be found guilty of certain excesses.³⁸ In sum, he has violated the classic maxim of μηδὲν ἄγαν in thought and in speech. Yet going deeper into the implication of this kind of reasoning, one begins to wonder whether the golden rule of moderation in all things can be an appropriate canon for measuring the hero’s conduct in the play. Those who apply this criterion seldom seem prepared to risk such questioning as: What kind of alternative is really open to Prometheus? Should he beg for Zeus’s pardon? Should he comply with Hermes’ command and reveal the secret? Should he cease from his vociferous complaining about his pain?

The answers to these questions should be self-evident, for the drama is built irreversibly on the premise that the hero’s action cannot be anything but in accordance with “probability and necessity.” This is not to engage in any special pleading for Aristotelian principles so much as simply to acknowledge the truth of the dramatic situation. For, what is it to speak of probability but to indicate a narrowing of choices, and of necessity but to denote an absence of alternatives? In the drama itself, it is quite clear that Prometheus has little choice but to resist Zeus. Of course, the impious defiance of the gods can have its dire consequence, and the poet makes that point with no uncertainty in a play like The Persians; but the Zeus of Prometheus Bound is a god in whom there is more to blame than to praise. “In a single word,” says Prometheus to Hermes, “I am the enemy of all the gods that gave me ill for good.” To prostrate himself in submission will mean only the further perpetuation of an unjust condition as well as the violation of his own integrity.

On the other hand, to suffer evil from one’s enemy, as he tells Hermes, is surely no disgrace (πάσχεɩν δὲ κακῶς / ἐχΘρὸν ὑπ’ ἐχΘρῶν οὐδὲν ἀεɩκές, 1041–1042.) In that sense, his suffering in fact is the least tragic because it has the simplest of explanations. That which wants explanation, and even justification, is the savage manifestation of what Paul Ricoeur has called the “hostile transcendence” against which Prometheus cannot hope to prevail in open warfare nor to which he can yield in abject submission. Thus, to read the play as I have attempted to do, and to interpret his words as constitutive of his action, is to recognize the fact that Aeschylus has developed his hero with consistency (τὸ ὁμαλόν). Like many other tragic protagonists, Prometheus is placed in a situation in which the circumstances—indeed, the structures and institutions of the cosmos—are strangely at odds with his personal being. To affirm himself, his dignity as a god and his regard for humanity, he must speak as he has done, even though his action may prove to be finally self-defeating if not self-destructive.

If such an understanding of the play is not far off the mark, does it mean that Prometheus is a martyr? A writer like Simone Weil has indeed thought of Prometheus’s love for man and his passion as a kind of prefiguration of the Christian Christ.³⁹ With a different accent, Albert Camus also has discovered in the Titan “a touching and noble image of the Rebel and … the most perfect myth of the intelligence in revolt.”⁴⁰ Lest we should be tempted to treat the play as merely a glorification of romantic titanism, however, we must take note of its ambiguity in the way the poet seeks to transcend the purely tragic condition of the hero. With the hope of future change, the finality of the protagonist’s doom is at least partially mitigated. Already the prophecy concerning Io’s restoration hints at a change in Zeus by referring to the touch of his harmless hand (ἀταρβεῖ χεɩρί). In the prediction of his own release, Prometheus mentions not only the abatement of Zeus’s anger, but also union and friendship, a state of affairs that must presuppose some reciprocity of goodwill. How this will come about is unfortunately lost to us. What is usually taken to be Prometheus’s address to Heracles, his deliverer, preserved in the fragments (ἐχΘροῦ πατρός μοɩ τοῦτο Φίλατατον τέκνον) certainly does not amount to the grandiloquent concession of Shelley’s “I hate no more…. The curse / Once breathed on thee I would recall.” Yet this and other tantalizing glimpses of what is to come do hold out to the audience a thread of expectancy for moving beyond the disaster of the final scene when the next play of the trilogy begins.

1. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet from the 2nd German ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1939–1944), 1:266.

2. H. J. Rose denies the existence of any trilogy (A Commentary on the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus [Amsterdam: N. V. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1957–1958], 1:9–10). Gilbert Norwood takes the traditional view that Prometheus Bound is the second play (Greek Tragedy [New York: Hill & Wang, 1960], p. 93), but George Thomson seems to me to have given the most convincing arguments for considering Prometheus, The Firebearer the last play (The Prometheus Bound [Cambridge: The University Press, 1932], pp. 32–38).

3. D. W. Lucas, The Greek Tragic Poets (Aberdeen, Scot.: The University Press, 1950), p. 62. J. B. Bury contends that the Grundgedanke of the Aeschylean trilogy often has to do with three moments of a moral doctrine: (1) an ἔργμα (crime) has been committed, for which (2) the transgressor must endure πάΘος (suffering), out of which (3) a learning experience (μάΘος) is attained (“Notes on (I), The Trilogy and (II), Certain Formal Articles of Aeschylus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 6 [1885]: 167–175). Thus, in the Oresteia, “the Agamemnon contains the ἔργμα, the Choephoroi contains the πάΘος, the Eumenides the μάΘος.” The problem with Bury’s thesis is that it works well for the Oresteia but not for the Prometheia. From what we know of the surviving fragments, the Firebearer will almost have to be the first play if his theory is adopted. For a more recent attempt at reconstruction based on the theme of the four elements and parallels in Aristophanes’ the Birds, see C. J. Herington, “A Study in the Prometheia,” parts 1, 2, Phoenix 17 (1963):180–197, 236–243.

4. Thomson, Prometheus Bound, p. 4.

5. Hugh Lloyd-Jones, “Zeus in Aeschylus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 76 (1956): 55–67.

6. H. D. F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1939), p. 54.

7. Lewis Campbell, Tragic Drama in Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare (London: Smith, Elder, 1904), p. 138; B. H. Fowler, “Imagery of the Prometheus Bound,” American Journal of Philology 78 (1957): 175; Kitto, Greek Tragedy, p. 33; Lucas, Greek Tragic Poets, pp. 113–114. David Grene argues that “the most striking difference, formally, between the Aeschylean drama and dramas subject to the Aristotelian criticism centers in their treatment of probability” (Three Greek Tragedies in Translation [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942], p. 21). The difference lies in the fact that dramas “subject to the Aristotelian criticism” have an internal and autotelic view of probability; incidents and characters are to be manipulated “in terms of the play itself.” Aeschylean dramas, on the other hand, draw their probability “from the community of man’s experience” (pp. 22–23); so that what was a familiar mythological story of the “Zeus-lygdamis versus Prometheus-rebel struggle” is transformed by the poet into a high tragedy having multiple levels of symbolic significance. Prometheus is at once the symbol of the rebel against the tyrant, of Knowledge against brute Force, of the champion of man against man’s persecutor, and of Man in opposition to God. Though in substantial agreement with Professor Grene, I would maintain that the rich overlay of symbolic meanings in the Prometheus Bound is not painted at the expense of structural beauty and symmetry, aspects of the drama that I hope to bring out in my own analysis. For further discussion of the Aeschylean symbolic dramas, see F. M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (London: Edward Arnold, 1907), pp. 140–149; and, more recently, E. A. Havelock, The Crucifixion of Intellectual Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), pp. 3–112.

8. For example, there is no better evidence of Zeus’s cruelty than the appearance of Io, and her entrance is all the more startling and shocking because it comes when the unbelief and skepticism of the chorus is at its height (526–560). Io’s arrival cannot be earlier, for Prometheus’s suffering must first have our undivided attention. It is only when he has rejected the seemingly good-natured intercession of Oceanus, which leads the chorus to berate him for his lack of reverence and for his stubbornness, that Io’s entrance achieves its stunning impact.

9. The Greek text is that edited by Gilbert Murray (Aeschylus: Works, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955]). Most of the translations in the course of the discussion are my own, but those in formal quotations are by David Grene (Three Greek Tragedies). H. J. Rose thinks that hamartias must indicate “error” and not “sin” in a document of this date (Commentary, p. 247). That may well be the case, but I fail to see how Hermes’ accusation later in 945 could only have the meaning of an intellectual mistake.

10. Louise E. Matthaei, Studies in Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: The University Press, 1918), p. 16. A convenient summary of the various functions of the chorus may be found in Grene, Three Greek Tragedies, pp. 5–10.

11. Herbert W. Smyth, Aeschylean Tragedy, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1924), pp. 107–109.

12. E. E. Sikes and J. B. W. Willson, The Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus (London: Macmillan, 1898), p. xxvi; W. C. Greene, Moira: Fate, Good, and Evil in Greek Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1944), p. 121.

13. For a comprehensive study of the “word-deed” antithesis in Greek drama, see Gino Salciccia Di Raimondo, “Word and Deed in Greek Tragedy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1958).

14. This is how Lloyd-Jones translates the epithet teleios (“Zeus in Aeschylus,” p. 59).

16. on Zeus himself as suppliant, see Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, 4th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 86, 275–276. Cf. Odyssey, IX, 270–271: ζεὺς δ᾿ ἐπɩτɩμήτωρ ὶκετάωυ τε ξείνων τε ξείνος, δς ξείνοɩσɩν ἄμ᾿ αἰδοίοɩσɩν ὀπηδεῖ. XIII, 213–14: ζεύς σΦεας τίσαɩτο ἱκετήσɩος, ὅς τε καὶ ἄλλους ἀνΘρώπους ἐΦορᾷ καὶ τίνυταɩ ὄς τɩς ἁμάρτῃ XIV, 57: πρὸς γὰρ Δɩός εἰσɩν ἄπαντες / ξεῖνοί

17. Anthony J. Podlecki, The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), pp. 101–122.

18. L. R. Farnell, “The Paradox of Prometheus Vinctus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 53 (1933): 40–50; W. J. F. Knight, “Zeus in the Prometheia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 58 (1938): 51.

19. Otto Stählin and Wilhelm Schmid, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur, Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, 6th ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck’sche, 1912–1924), 1:296. For defenses of its authenticity, see Thomson, Prometheus Bound, pp. 38–46; C. J. Herington, The Author of The Prometheus Bound (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970).

20. Leon Golden, “Zeus the Protector and Zeus the Destroyer,” Classical Philology 57 (1962): 20–26.

21. Leon Golden, In Praise of Prometheus: Humanism and Rationalism in Aeschylean Thought (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962), pp. 111, 125.

22. Podlecki, Political Background, pp. 107–109.

23. Friedrich Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 30 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1949), pp. 152–153; see also O. J. Todd, “The Character of Zeus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound,” Classical Quarterly 19 (1925): 67.

24. Solon 1.32, Artabanus 7.10.

25. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), pp. 29–31.

26. Ibid., pp. 31–32.

27. This defect in Zeus may be best discerned if it is contrasted with the scene in book 9 of the Iliad. There, it is on the basis that the immortals themselves are not impervious to entreaty and supplication and that the spirits of prayer are the daughters of Zeus that the aged Phoenix begs Achilles to beat down his great wrath (9.495ff.).

28. J. A. K. Thomson thinks that Zeus will eventually release Kronos and the Titans, and he quotes Pindar (Pyth. iv.518) to that effect (“The Religious Background of the Prometheus Vinctus,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 31 [1920]: 34). See also Solmsen’s lengthy discussion of this problem (Hesiod and Aeschylus, pp. 155–177); E. T. Owen, The Harmony of Aeschylus (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1952), p. 61; G. Glotz, La solidarité de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grèce (Paris: Fontemoing, 1904), pp. 08–413. A comprehensive study of this theme in the Oresteia can be found in Richard Kuhns, The House, the City and the Judge: The Growth of Moral Awareness in the Oresteia (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962).

29. Louis Séchan, Le mythe de Prométhée (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), pp. 56–58.

30. Gilbert Murray, Aeschylus, the Creator of Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 20. Karl Reinhardt has the interesting argument that Prometheus attains the full stature of a Titan only in Aeschylus (Aischylos als Regisseur und Theologe [Bern: Francke, 1949], pp. 27–41).

31. Helen North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 35 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966).

32. Sikes and Willson, Prometheus Vinctus, p. xxvi; Jaeger, Paideia, p. 261; Havelock, Crucifixion, pp. 48–53.

33. Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus, p. 144.

34. The difference between humanity and divinity is put this way by Karl Kerényi: “Die Verwundbarkeit gehört danach ebenso zu den Eigenschaften der Götter, wie sie für die menschliche Existensweise charakteristisch ist. Der Unterschied der beiden Pole—der Sterblichkeit, in der der Mensch umfangen steht, unter der Unsterblichkeit, die jene umfängt—ist ungeheuer. Ein Gott kann verwunden und ist verwundbar, heilend und heilbar: der Mensch verwundend und verwundbar, als Arzt heilend und als Verwundeter wohl auch heilbar, doch als Mensch unheilbar” (Prometheus: Die menschliche Existens in griechischer Deutung [Zurich: Rhein, 1946], pp. 35–36). Perhaps the difference may be most keenly felt in the pathos of a single line in the Odyssey. Contrasting his own wife with the queen, Kalypso, odysseus confesses to the goddess: ἡ μὲν γὰρ βροτός ἐστɩ, σὺ δ᾿ ἀΘάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως (5.218).