Study guide
Prometheus Bound
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Overview
- Author
- Transmitted under the name of Aeschylus (c. 525/524–456/455 BC), but its authenticity has been seriously doubted since the nineteenth century; many specialists now think it the work of another, probably slightly later, dramatist
- Date
- Unknown. If by Aeschylus, probably from the last years of his life (the 460s or 450s BC); if not, perhaps between about 450 and 425 BC. No record of the first performance survives
- Genre
- Athenian tragedy; probably the first play of a connected group about Prometheus, whose other plays are lost
- Setting
- A desolate crag at the edge of the world, in Scythia; the hero remains fixed in one place from the first scene to the last
- Length
- 1,093 lines in modern editions of the Greek (the standard line numbers used in this guide)
- Companion plays
- Ancient sources name a Prometheus Unbound (Lyomenos), of which fragments survive, and a Prometheus the Fire-Bearer (Pyrphoros), known only by its title
- Main source
- Hesiod's Theogony (507–616) and Works and Days (42–105), where Prometheus is a trickster punished by Zeus; the play turns him into a benefactor of humanity and a prophet
- Characters
- Prometheus; Kratos (Strength) and Bia (Force, silent); Hephaestus; a chorus of Oceanids; Oceanus; Io; Hermes
- Translation quoted
- E. D. A. Morshead (1908), a Victorian verse translation that renders Kratos and Bia as 'Strength' and 'Force'
- Afterlife
- The defiant Titan became a hero of the Romantic age: Goethe, Byron, Percy Shelley (Prometheus Unbound), Mary Shelley (The Modern Prometheus) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who translated the play
Context
Prometheus Bound has come down to us among the seven tragedies preserved under the name of Aeschylus, the oldest of the three great Athenian tragedians and the author of the Oresteia. For centuries no one doubted the attribution, and the play was read as one of the grandest expressions of the Aeschylean spirit. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, scholars began to notice that its language, metre and dramatic technique differ in many small ways from those of the six other plays. Mark Griffith's systematic study of 1977 concluded that the differences are too many and too consistent to be explained by a late change of style, and that the play is probably not by Aeschylus (Griffith 1977). Others, notably C. J. Herington, have defended it as a late work, written perhaps during the poet's last years in Sicily (Herington 1970). The question is still open, and this guide calls the author 'the dramatist' or, following convention, 'Aeschylus' with that caution in mind.
The story was old. In Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, the poems of the late eighth or early seventh century BC that are the earliest full accounts, Prometheus son of Iapetus is a cunning trickster who deceives Zeus over the division of a sacrificial ox, steals fire back for mortals after Zeus has hidden it, and is punished by being bound to a pillar while an eagle eats his liver; mortals are punished by the creation of the first woman, Pandora (West 1966). The dramatist kept the theft of fire and the binding, but transformed nearly everything else (Solmsen 1949). His Prometheus is the son of Themis, who is identified with Earth; he has taught humanity all its arts, from building and astronomy to writing, medicine and prophecy; he fought on Zeus's side against the Titans; and he knows a secret on which the future of Zeus's power depends. The trickster has become the champion of mankind.
The play was almost certainly part of a connected set. Ancient sources mention a Prometheus Unbound (Prometheus Lyomenos), of which some fragments survive, including a long passage that Cicero translated into Latin verse, and a Prometheus the Fire-Bearer (Pyrphoros), of which nothing but the title is left. In the Unbound, it seems, the Titans whom Zeus had imprisoned in Tartarus appeared as a chorus, released by a Zeus now more merciful; Heracles shot the eagle; and Prometheus at last revealed his secret and was reconciled with Zeus. Bound by itself shows only the first and harshest stage of a conflict that the lost plays resolved, and every interpretation of its Zeus has to reckon with this (West 1979) (Griffith 1983).
Prometheus Bound is unusual in form. Its hero cannot move: he is nailed to a rock at the beginning and remains there until the earth swallows him at the end. The action consists of a series of visits: Strength (Kratos), Force (Bia) and Hephaestus, who bind him; the daughters of Ocean, who form the chorus; their father Oceanus; the wandering Io, a mortal woman tormented by Zeus's desire and Hera's jealousy; and Hermes, Zeus's messenger. What moves the drama is speech: Prometheus's account of the past, his prophecies of the future, and the slow revelation of the secret that Zeus will one day fall unless Prometheus saves him. The stage problems this raises, from the binding itself to the winged arrival of the chorus and the final cataclysm, have been much discussed (Taplin 1977).
Few Greek plays have had a larger afterlife. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Titan who defies a tyrant god for the sake of humanity became a central myth of revolt and of creative genius. Goethe wrote his ode 'Prometheus' in the 1770s; Byron, who read the play as a schoolboy, wrote 'Prometheus' in 1816; Mary Shelley subtitled Frankenstein 'The Modern Prometheus' (1818); Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated the play (1833, revised 1850); and Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound (1820) to replace the lost Aeschylean sequel with an ending in which the Titan never submits (Trousson 1964) (Curran 1975). Shelley's drama has its own guide on this site and is best read alongside this one.
Plot overview
At the edge of the world, in the wastes of Scythia, Strength and Force bring Prometheus to a cliff, and Hephaestus, the smith of the gods, unwillingly nails him to the rock as Zeus has commanded. Prometheus, they say, stole fire and gave it to mortals. Strength mocks the prisoner's name, which means 'Forethought'. Left alone, Prometheus calls on the sky, the winds, the sea, the earth and the sun to witness his sufferings, and hears a rustle of wings. The daughters of Ocean have come in pity to see him.
Prometheus tells the nymphs how, when the gods were at war, he joined Zeus and helped him imprison Cronos and the Titans in Tartarus, and how Zeus repaid him: when the new king planned to destroy the human race, Prometheus alone saved it, giving mortals blind hopes in place of foreknowledge of their death, and fire. Oceanus arrives on a winged steed and offers to plead with Zeus if Prometheus will soften his tongue; Prometheus scornfully sends him away. After the Chorus describes the whole world mourning, Prometheus lists the arts he gave to humanity, from building houses to prophecy, and hints that Zeus himself cannot escape what Fate has ordained.
Io, daughter of the river-god Inachus, enters, changed into a woman with cow's horns, driven by a stinging gadfly. Zeus desired her; her father, ordered by oracles, drove her from home; Hera's hatred pursues her. Prometheus foretells her long wanderings through Europe and Asia to Egypt, where Zeus will restore her with a touch and she will bear Epaphus, ancestor of the Danaids and, thirteen generations later, of the archer who will free Prometheus. He also reveals that Zeus is planning a marriage that will produce a son stronger than his father. Io rushes off in a fresh fit of madness.
Prometheus boasts that Zeus will fall unless he learns the secret. Hermes arrives and orders him to say which marriage threatens Zeus. Prometheus refuses with contempt, and Hermes announces the punishment: Zeus will bury him under the rock and then, after long ages, send an eagle to feed daily on his liver, until some god agrees to go down to Hades in his place. The Oceanids refuse to leave him. The earth shakes, lightning flashes, and Prometheus, calling on his mother Earth and on the sky to see his wrongs, sinks into the abyss.
Part by part
Part 1: Prologue: The Binding
1–127
Summary
Strength (Kratos) and the silent Force (Bia), servants of Zeus, lead Prometheus to a desolate cliff in Scythia. Strength orders Hephaestus to chain him there, since Prometheus stole fire, Hephaestus's own element, and gave it to mortals. Hephaestus obeys reluctantly, pitying a kinsman and a fellow god, and warns Prometheus that he will hang there without hope of release, scorched by the sun and frozen by night. Strength answers each of his expressions of pity with brutal impatience, urging him on as he fastens the arms, drives a wedge through the chest and chains the legs.
When the work is done, Strength taunts the prisoner: let him go on stealing the privileges of the gods for creatures of a day, and let him now use his famous forethought to escape. The three leave. Prometheus, who has kept silent throughout, at last speaks, calling on the elements to witness his torment. He knows the future, he says, and must accept what Necessity ordains; his crime was to give mortals fire, hidden in a fennel stalk, the teacher of every art. A rustle and a scent in the air make him afraid.
Analysis
The prologue sets out the play's conflict in the starkest terms. Strength and Force are personifications of the qualities by which Zeus rules: in Hesiod they are the children of Styx who always stand beside him. Hephaestus, by contrast, voices the claims of kinship and pity, and the contrast between the bullying minister and the reluctant craftsman is the first of many in which the play shows different responses to Zeus's power. Strength's maxim that only Zeus is free defines tyranny as a world in which everyone else is a servant (Griffith 1983).
Prometheus's silence is one of the great dramatic silences of Greek tragedy. He refuses to speak in front of his torturers and breaks into speech only when alone, in a sequence that moves from spoken iambics to chanted anapaests and sung lyric. His first words are not to the gods but to the natural world, the sky, the sea and the earth, and his first claim is that he, a god, suffers at the hands of gods. The tension between his foreknowledge and his suffering is announced at once: he knows everything that will happen, yet knowing does not make it bearable (Conacher 1980).
The prologue also raises the most famous staging problem of the play. Prometheus must be fastened to the rock in full view and then speak and remain there for over a thousand lines; older scholars imagined a giant dummy with an actor speaking behind it. The more economical view is that the actor himself was bound to a structure at the back of the acting area (Taplin 1977).
Lo, the earth’s bound and limitary land, The Scythian steppe, the waste untrod of men!
The setting is the very edge of the inhabited world, a place without human beings. Prometheus, the friend of mortals, is punished where no mortal can see him.
Hard is the heart of fresh-usurpèd power!
Hephaestus's comment is the first statement of the play's view of Zeus as a new ruler, harsh because his power is recent. The idea that Zeus may learn to be gentler with time is one of the keys to the lost sequel.
All hath its burden, save the rule of Heaven, And freedom is for Zeus, and Zeus alone.
Strength's maxim describes absolute rule: one free master and a world of servants. It is the creed that Prometheus will defy and Hermes will embody.
O deep delusion of the powers that named thee Prometheus, the Fore-thinker!
Strength puns on the name, which the Greeks heard as 'forethought'. The irony cuts both ways, since Prometheus does foresee his fate and the fall of Zeus.
O Sky divine, O Winds of pinions swift, O fountain-heads of Rivers, and O thou, Illimitable laughter of the Sea!
Prometheus's first words appeal to the elements. 'The countless laughter of the waves' (anerithmon gelasma) is one of the most celebrated images in Greek poetry.
Part 2: Parodos: The Daughters of Ocean
128–192
Summary
A chorus of Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, arrives through the air in a winged vehicle. They heard the hammering in their sea caves and came without stopping to put on their sandals. In an exchange of songs and chants, they weep at his shame and condemn the new rule of Zeus, who governs by new laws and has crushed the old gods. Prometheus wishes that Zeus had hurled him beneath the earth, where no one could gloat over him.
Then he makes his first great claim. The day will come, he says, when Zeus will need him to reveal the plan by which he is to be stripped of his power, and neither sweet persuasion nor threats will make him speak until he is freed and compensated. The Chorus is frightened by his boldness. Prometheus answers that Zeus is harsh and keeps justice in his own hands, but that one day his anger will soften and the two of them will come together in friendship.
Analysis
The parodos (the entrance song of the chorus) brings into the play a group of young, gentle and sympathetic witnesses. Unlike most tragic choruses, which are citizens or servants of the place where the action happens, the Oceanids are divine, and as nieces of Prometheus they come out of kinship and pity. Their sympathy guides the audience, but they are also cautious and conventional, and their repeated advice to show moderation will finally be tested in the exodos.
Prometheus's prophecy of reconciliation is important for the meaning of the whole. Already at the start, before he has told his story, he predicts both Zeus's danger and a future 'concord' between them. Whatever the lost sequel contained, the play itself points beyond the conflict it dramatises, and the Zeus who is a 'new tyrant' here may not be the Zeus of the end (Lloyd-Jones 1983) (West 1979).
The rudder and the rule of Heaven Are to strange pilots given: Zeus with new laws and strong caprice holds sway,
The image of Zeus as a new helmsman, steering by new laws, makes the change of divine rulers sound like a revolution in a Greek city.
One day, far hence, my help shall need, The destined stratagem to read, Whereby, in some yet distant day, Zeus shall be reaved of pride and sway:
The first hint of the secret on which the plot turns. Prometheus's weapon is knowledge, and his bargaining power is the future.
And he and I with mutual will In concord’s bond shall go.
Prometheus himself foresees a reconciliation, a hint that the trilogy would end not in Zeus's fall but in agreement.
Part 3: First Episode: The War in Heaven, and Oceanus
193–396
Summary
Prometheus tells the Chorus his story. When the gods were divided, some wishing to overthrow Cronos and make Zeus king, others resisting, he tried to advise the Titans, who scorned his counsel. His mother Themis, who is also Earth, had warned him that victory would go not to force but to cunning; so he went over to Zeus, and by his advice Cronos and his allies were shut in Tartarus. Zeus repaid him with this punishment, for tyranny always distrusts its friends. Once enthroned, Zeus distributed privileges among the gods but planned to destroy the human race and make a new one. Prometheus alone resisted, and saved them.
In a rapid exchange of single lines with the Chorus he explains what he gave mortals: he stopped them from foreseeing their death and gave them blind hopes, and he gave them fire, from which they will learn many arts. He admits that he did wrong willingly, but did not expect so terrible a punishment. Oceanus then arrives, riding a winged creature, and offers his help: Prometheus should know himself, adapt to the new order and curb his tongue, and Oceanus will go and plead with Zeus. Prometheus mocks the offer, warns him of the danger, and recalls the fates of his brother Atlas, who holds up the sky, and of the monster Typhon, crushed beneath Etna, which will one day pour out its lava over Sicily. Oceanus leaves.
Analysis
The narrative of the war in heaven reworks Hesiod's Theogony, in which Prometheus plays no part in the battle against the Titans. By making him Zeus's ally and adviser, the dramatist turns Zeus into an ungrateful ruler and Prometheus into a wise counsellor betrayed. The maxim on the 'disease' of tyranny, distrust of friends, comes from the political thought of fifth-century Athens, in which the tyrant was a stock figure, and the language of the whole play is coloured by it (Podlecki 1966) (Saïd 1985).
The gifts of 'blind hopes' and fire are carefully paired. Ignorance of death, which in Hesiod's Pandora story is a mixed blessing locked in a jar, here becomes the condition of human action: mortals can work because they do not know when they will die. Fire is the beginning of all technology. Prometheus's frank admission that he 'willed to sin' shows that he does not deny the offence; he denies only that it deserved this punishment.
Oceanus is the play's portrait of the prudent courtier. He is well meaning, talkative and anxious to keep on good terms with power, and his advice to 'know thyself' and not to kick against the goad is the traditional wisdom of Greek moralists. Prometheus's contempt for him clarifies, by contrast, the uncompromising character of his own resistance. The Typhon passage, which closely resembles Pindar's description of Etna in the First Pythian ode (470 BC), has often been used in arguments about the date and Sicilian connections of the play (Herington 1970) (Griffith 1983).
But, for my sake, my mother Themis oft, And Earth, one symbol of names manifold,
The dramatist identifies Themis, the goddess of established right, with Earth. Prometheus's prophetic knowledge comes from his mother, and so does his claim to justice.
For ’tis the inward vice of tyranny, To deem of friends as being secret foes.
A political maxim from the language of fifth-century Athens. Zeus is analysed like a human tyrant.
Ay, man thro’ me ceased to foreknow his death.
Before fire comes hope; two lines later he names the cure, blind hopes. Prometheus takes away the knowledge of death that he himself, as a god of foresight, cannot escape.
I willed to sin, and sinned, I own it all—
Prometheus admits his offence freely. The issue of the play is not whether he broke Zeus's law but whether that law was just.
Thou must not kick against the goad.
Oceanus's proverb, from the image of an ox kicking the farmer's spike, is the voice of conventional prudence.
Part 4: First Stasimon: The World Laments
397–435
Summary
Left with Prometheus, the Chorus sings that it weeps for him and that the whole earth mourns: the peoples of Asia, the warrior maidens of Colchis, the Scythians by Lake Maeotis, the warriors of the Caucasus. Only one other god, they say, has suffered so: Atlas, who bears the vault of the sky on his shoulders. The sea, the underworld and the rivers groan in sympathy.
Analysis
The first stasimon (a choral song sung after the chorus has taken its place) widens the scene from the rock to the whole inhabited world. The list of peoples anticipates the geography of Io's journeys later in the play and makes Prometheus's suffering cosmic. The text of this song is damaged in the manuscripts, and some of the names are uncertain (Griffith 1983).
Morshead turns the song into long rolling lines in the manner of Swinburne; in the text on this site several of them run over into a short second line. The comparison with Atlas recalls Prometheus's own lament for his brother in the previous scene and reminds us that he is one of a family of defeated Titans.
Strange is thy sorrow! one only I know who has suffered thy pain— Atlas the Titan, the god, in a ruthless, invincible chain!
Atlas is the only parallel the Chorus can find, a reminder that Prometheus is suffering as a member of the defeated generation of Titans.
Part 5: Second Episode: The Gifts of the Arts
436–525
Summary
Prometheus breaks his silence again. Leaving aside the privileges he won for the new gods, he describes what mortals were before he helped them: they had eyes but did not see, ears but did not hear, lived like ants in sunless caves and knew nothing of the seasons. He taught them the risings and settings of the stars, number, writing, the yoking of animals, chariots and ships; then medicine, every form of prophecy (dreams, omens, the flight of birds, the reading of entrails and of sacrificial fire) and mining. In a single phrase, all human arts come from Prometheus.
The Chorus hopes to see him freed and as powerful as Zeus. Prometheus replies that this is not yet ordained: craft is weaker than necessity, and necessity is steered by the three Fates and the Furies. Even Zeus cannot escape what is fated for him. When the Chorus asks what that fate is, Prometheus refuses to say; by keeping this secret he will one day be freed.
Analysis
The speech on the arts is the most influential passage in the play and one of the classic statements of the idea of human progress in antiquity. Against the old myth of a golden age from which humanity declined, it imagines a primitive condition from which mortals rose through knowledge and technology. Similar accounts appear in the work of fifth-century thinkers such as Protagoras and in the Ode on Man in Sophocles' Antigone, and the passage has often been read as a reflection of the intellectual movement associated with the sophists (Dodds 1973) (Saïd 1985).
Yet the speech is not simply secular. Its longest section concerns prophecy and sacrifice, the means by which human beings communicate with the gods, and the giver of the arts is a god. Prometheus describes his gifts in the language of a craftsman and a sophist, and at the end turns ironically on himself: the inventor of every device has none to free himself. The exchange about the Fates introduces a striking claim, that Zeus too is subject to necessity, and so prepares the revelation of the secret in the Io scene (Conacher 1980) (Griffith 1983).
For, in the outset, eyes they had and saw not; And ears they had but heard not;
Early humans are described as sleepwalkers. Morshead's phrasing deliberately echoes the English Bible, a typical Victorian touch.
I taught to them withal that art of arts, The lore of number, and the written word
Number and writing are placed at the centre of civilisation. In the Greek, writing is called the memory of all things and the 'mother of the Muses'.
All arts, for mortals’ use, Prometheus gave.
The summary line: Prometheus names himself in the third person as the source of all technē, human skill.
The triform Fates, and Furies unforgiving.
Asked who steers necessity, Prometheus names the three Fates and the Furies. Above even Zeus stand the Fates, which is why Zeus's power has a weak point that only Prometheus knows.
Part 6: Second Stasimon: The Frailty of Mortals
526–560
Summary
The Chorus prays never to oppose the will of Zeus, never to neglect the sacrifices, and never to offend with its tongue. Sweet, they sing, is a life spent in hope and contentment, but they shudder to see Prometheus's torment. He feared Zeus too little and loved mortals too much, yet mortals, feeble and dreamlike, can give him no help. Watching him, they say, they have learned a new song, very different from the wedding hymn they sang when Prometheus married their sister Hesione.
Analysis
The second stasimon expresses the conventional piety of the Chorus and its sense of the gap between gods and mortals. The description of human beings as feeble, dreamlike and blind answers the speech on the arts: whatever Prometheus has given them, mortals remain weak, and his love for them is, from the Chorus's point of view, a misplaced generosity (Conacher 1980).
The closing memory of Prometheus's wedding contrasts past joy with present suffering, a common movement in Greek lyric. It also introduces the theme of marriage, which will dominate the rest of the play: Io's persecution by Zeus's desire, the marriage that threatens Zeus, the forced marriages of the Danaids and the Chorus's own prayer, in the next song, to escape the love of a god.
Could’st thou not see? they are as dreams that drift;
The Greek image of mortals as 'dreamlike' recalls a familiar idea in archaic poetry, that humans are creatures of a day.
When by the lustral wave I sang to see My sister made thy bride, Decked with thy gifts, thy loved Hesione,
The only glimpse of Prometheus's private life, and of a time when the gods celebrated together.
Part 7: Third Episode: Io
561–886
Summary
Io enters, a girl with cow's horns, maddened by the sting of a gadfly and haunted by the ghost of the herdsman Argus with his many eyes. In a frantic song she asks where she is, who the prisoner is, and what she has done to deserve her suffering. Prometheus recognises her as the daughter of Inachus, loved by Zeus and hated by Hera. At the Chorus's request she tells her story: night after night dreams urged her to yield to Zeus; her father consulted the oracles at Delphi and Dodona and was told to drive her out; she was transformed, watched by Argus until his sudden death, and has been driven over the earth ever since.
Prometheus then foretells her future wanderings: east across the Scythian plains, past the Chalybes, to the Caucasus, through the land of the Amazons, across the strait that will be called Bosporus after her, into Asia; in a later speech he takes her farther, past the Graiae and the Gorgons, the griffins and the Arimaspians, to Ethiopia and the Nile. When Io wishes to die, he reveals that his own torment will last until Zeus is overthrown; Zeus is planning a marriage that will produce a son stronger than his father, and only a descendant of Io, thirteen generations later, will set Prometheus free.
To prove his knowledge, he recounts her past journey to Dodona, where the oaks hailed her as the future bride of Zeus, and along the sea that will be called Ionian. Finally he tells her end: at Canopus in Egypt Zeus will restore her mind by a touch of his hand, and she will bear Epaphus. Five generations later fifty maidens, the Danaids, will flee to Argos to escape marriage with their cousins and will kill them on their wedding night, all but one; from her line will come the great archer who will free Prometheus. Io is seized by a new fit of madness and rushes away.
Analysis
The Io scene occupies nearly a third of the play and is its emotional and structural centre. Io is the only mortal who appears, and she is the victim of the same Zeus who has punished Prometheus, but in a different way: not for defiance, but because of his desire. Her story makes Zeus's rule personal and makes the charge of tyranny concrete. Prometheus draws the moral himself, telling the Chorus that the tyrant of the gods is violent towards all (Conacher 1980) (Ruffell 2012).
The two sufferers are carefully contrasted. Prometheus is fixed in one place; Io is condemned to perpetual motion. He is immortal and cannot die; she longs for death. He is in full possession of his mind; she is driven mad. Yet their stories are joined: her descendant Heracles will free him, and her restoration by the 'touch' of Zeus suggests that Zeus's harshness will also end in gentleness. The long genealogy that links Io to the Danaids and Heracles is a reminder that Prometheus's time is measured in generations of mortals.
The geography of Io's wanderings is famously difficult. It mixes real places with mythical peoples at the edges of the world and cannot be fitted on a map; the Caucasus, for example, lies on Io's road away from the rock, which is therefore not the Caucasus of later tradition but a cliff somewhere in Scythia. The aetiologies of the Bosporus ('ox-ford') and the Ionian Sea connect the myth to the known world of Greek geography (Griffith 1983) (West 1966).
Most important for the plot is the revelation of the secret. In the dialogue with Io Prometheus reveals that Zeus will fall through a marriage, but he does not reveal the bride's name. Readers who knew the myth would think of Thetis, the sea-goddess of whom it was prophesied that she would bear a son greater than his father; Zeus married her to the mortal Peleus, and her son was Akhilleus. The play never names her, and the secret remains the instrument of Prometheus's resistance.
I am Prometheus, who gave fire to men.
Prometheus names himself to Io by the gift that defines him, in a line of epigrammatic simplicity.
Zeus, by intent; Hephaestus, by his hand.
A neat statement of responsibility: Hephaestus did the work, but the will was Zeus's.
And Bosporos shall be that channel’s name, Because the ox-horned thing did pass thereby.
The name Bosporus was understood as 'cow's ford'. Io's suffering will be written into the map of the world.
Wooing a bride, his ruin he shall win.
The secret begins to emerge, line by line, in stichomythia (dialogue in alternating single lines).
The child she bears him shall o’ercome his sire.
The threat of a son stronger than his father repeats the pattern of the succession myth, in which Ouranos was overthrown by Cronos and Cronos by Zeus.
A hero shall arise, an archer great, And he shall be my saviour from these woes.
Heracles is not named, but the archer descended from Io will be Prometheus's liberator in the lost sequel.
Part 8: Third Stasimon: Marriage in One's Own Rank
887–906
Summary
Moved by Io's fate, the Chorus sings in praise of the old saying that one should marry within one's own rank. They pray never to become the bride of Zeus or of any god: a marriage with a more powerful partner is a struggle that cannot be won, and they would have no means of escaping the will of Zeus.
Analysis
The short ode draws a moral from Io's story in the Chorus's characteristic manner, turning a cosmic drama into a lesson of prudence. Its subject, the danger of a marriage between unequal partners, applies to Io, but it also applies ironically to Zeus, whose own planned marriage will, as Prometheus is about to say, threaten his rule. The Oceanids' fear of the shining glance of a god prepares the final scene, in which they will be threatened by Zeus's lightning (Conacher 1980).
In thine own order see thou wed!
The proverb behind the ode, attributed in antiquity to the sage Pittacus, sums up the Chorus's ethic of moderation.
Never may I by Zeus be wooed— Never give o’er my maidenhood To any god that dwells on high.
The nymphs, themselves divine, still fear the love of a more powerful god. Desire, in this play, is another form of force.
Part 9: Exodos: Hermes and the Cataclysm
907–1093
Summary
Prometheus declares that Zeus, for all his pride, is planning a marriage that will hurl him from his throne and fulfil the curse that Cronos uttered when he fell; only Prometheus can tell him how to escape. The Chorus warns him; he answers with contempt for those who bow to power. Hermes enters and orders him, on Zeus's behalf, to reveal the marriage. Prometheus insults him as a lackey of the new gods, declares that he has seen two rulers of heaven fall and will see the third, and refuses to speak until he is freed.
Hermes describes the punishment awaiting him: Zeus will shatter the cliff with lightning and bury him in the rock; after a long time he will return to the light, and Zeus's eagle will come every day to feed on his liver, until some god agrees to take his suffering on himself and go down into Hades. The Chorus urges Prometheus to listen, but he challenges Zeus to do his worst, since he cannot kill him. Hermes tells the Oceanids to leave, but they refuse to abandon him and declare that they hate traitors above all. Thunder roars, the earth heaves, the winds clash, and Prometheus, calling on his mother and on the sky, sinks with the rock into the depths.
Analysis
The final scene raises the conflict to its greatest intensity. Hermes, Zeus's messenger, is the opposite of Prometheus: a young, obedient servant of the new order, who speaks with the arrogance of a man sure of his master's support. Prometheus's famous declaration that he hates all the gods, and his preference for his own suffering to Hermes's servitude, made him an emblem of rebellion for later readers; Karl Marx quoted these lines in the preface to his doctoral dissertation (1841) (Trousson 1964).
The Chorus's last decision is one of the most surprising moments in Greek tragedy. Throughout the play the Oceanids have urged moderation, and Hermes expects them to withdraw. Instead they choose to share Prometheus's fate, declaring that betrayal is the worst of all things. The gentle, cautious chorus ends with an act of loyalty that changes the meaning of their earlier advice (Taplin 1977).
Hermes's prophecy also points towards the lost sequel. The eagle, which in Hesiod is the punishment itself, here belongs to the future; and the condition that some god must go to Hades in Prometheus's place is usually connected with the centaur Chiron, who, wounded incurably by Heracles' arrow, gave up his immortality. The closing cataclysm, in which the hero disappears beneath the earth, ends the play with a spectacular effect that must have been suggested largely by sound and words rather than staged literally (Griffith 1983) (West 1979).
Let him put forth his power, attest his sway, Howe’er he will—a momentary show, A little brief authority in heaven!
Morshead borrows a phrase from Isabella's speech in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure to render Prometheus's claim that Zeus's rule will not last long.
Mark a plain word—I loathe all gods that are, Who reaped my kindness and repay with wrong.
The most famous expression of Prometheus's defiance, quoted by Marx and many others as the creed of rebellion.
He shall! Time’s lapse bringeth all lessons home.
Prometheus answers Hermes's claim that Zeus knows nothing of grief. Time teaching all things is the idea on which the reconciliation in the lost sequel may have rested.
He cannot crush my life away!
Prometheus's final defiance rests on his immortality. Zeus can make him suffer but cannot destroy him.
Nay, at his side, whate’er befall, I will abide, endure it all! Among all things abhorr’d, accurst, I hold betrayers for the worst!
The Chorus's unexpected loyalty. The cautious nymphs become partners in his resistance.
O holy Earth, O mother mine! O Sky, that biddest speed along Thy vault the common Light divine,— Be witness of my wrong!
The play ends as Prometheus's speech began, with an appeal to Earth and Sky. The Greek ends 'you see how unjustly I suffer', a claim the audience is left to weigh.
Characters
Titans
- Prometheus
- Son of Themis (identified with Earth) and a Titan of the older generation of gods. His name was understood to mean 'Forethought'. He sided with Zeus in the war against Cronos, but saved the human race from Zeus's plan to destroy it and gave mortals fire, hope and all the arts. Nailed to a rock as punishment, he remains defiant, proud and bitterly eloquent, sustained by his knowledge of the future and by a secret that threatens Zeus. He is at once a benefactor, a prophet, a sophist and a rebel; whether he is wholly in the right is one of the central questions of the play.
- Oceanus
- The god of the river that encircles the earth, father of the Chorus and brother-in-law of Prometheus. He arrives on a winged steed and offers to intercede with Zeus if Prometheus will moderate his speech. Well meaning, talkative and prudent, he embodies the art of accommodation with power. Prometheus dismisses him with irony.
Olympians (offstage)
- Zeus
- The new king of the gods, who never appears. He is presented almost entirely through the eyes of his victims and servants as a young, harsh and suspicious tyrant, ruling by force and by 'new laws'. Yet the play also implies that he is subject to Fate, that his power is threatened, and that he will in time be reconciled with Prometheus. How far this harsh Zeus can be reconciled with the just Zeus of Aeschylus's other plays is the main theological problem of the work.
Servants of Zeus
- Kratos (Strength) and Bia (Force)
- Personifications of Zeus's power, as in Hesiod, where they are the children of Styx. Kratos is a brutal, sneering overseer who mocks Prometheus and bullies Hephaestus; Bia never speaks. Their presence turns the binding into a picture of government by violence.
Olympians
- Hephaestus
- The smith god, whose fire Prometheus stole. He binds Prometheus because he must, lamenting his own skill and pitying a kinsman. He represents decency without the courage to resist, and his reluctance shows that even Zeus's servants are uneasy at the punishment.
- Hermes
- Zeus's messenger, who comes at the end to demand the secret. Haughty and contemptuous, he is the obedient servant of the new order. Prometheus calls him a lackey. He announces the punishment that awaits Prometheus and warns the Chorus to leave.
Daughters of Ocean
- Chorus of Oceanids
- Sea-nymphs, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, and so related to Prometheus; one of their sisters, Hesione, is his wife. They are sympathetic, gentle and pious, often frightened by his boldness and inclined to advise moderation. At the end, ordered by Hermes to leave, they choose to stay and share his fate.
Mortals
- Io
- Daughter of the river-god Inachus, king of Argos. Desired by Zeus, persecuted by Hera, driven from home on the orders of an oracle, partly transformed into a cow and maddened by a gadfly, she wanders the earth. The only mortal in the play, she is a second victim of Zeus, and Prometheus's prophecy of her future joins her destiny to his: her descendant will free him.
Mortals (future)
- Heracles (unnamed)
- The 'archer' of Io's line, thirteen generations after her, who will free Prometheus. In the lost Prometheus Unbound he seems to have shot the eagle.
Offstage
- Thetis (unnamed)
- The sea-goddess fated to bear a son mightier than his father. The play reveals only that Zeus is planning a dangerous marriage; audiences who knew the myth would identify the bride, whom Zeus gave to the mortal Peleus, so that her son was Akhilleus.
Themes
Power and tyranny
The play repeatedly describes Zeus's rule in the language that fifth-century Athenians used for the tyrant: a new ruler, holding power by force, harsh because his rule is recent, suspicious of his friends, answerable to no one, served by Strength and Force. Strength's maxim that only Zeus is free sums it up. The language links the cosmic myth to the political world of Athenian democracy, which defined itself against tyranny (Podlecki 1966) (Saïd 1985).
But the play is not a simple political allegory. Prometheus, too, has something of the tyrant in his pride and his refusal to listen, and his weapon, the secret, is a form of power. The question is not only whether Zeus is a tyrant but how power, once won by violence, can become just.
Knowledge and foreknowledge
Prometheus is the god of forethought. He knows the future, and his knowledge is both his torment and his strength: he knows how long he must suffer, and he knows the secret that will force Zeus to free him. The play explores the paradox that knowledge does not give freedom: Prometheus foresaw his punishment and could not avoid it.
For mortals the gift of Prometheus is the opposite of foreknowledge: he took away their knowledge of the day of their death and gave them blind hopes. Human civilisation, the play suggests, depends on not knowing the future. Io, who longs to know her fate, discovers that knowledge only adds to her suffering.
Civilisation and the arts
The speech on the arts presents human history as a progress from darkness to civilisation, achieved through technē: building, astronomy, number, writing, the use of animals, navigation, medicine, prophecy and mining. Fire is the beginning of all of them. This is one of the earliest and most eloquent statements of the idea of progress in European literature (Dodds 1973).
The play does not, however, celebrate technology without reservation. Craft is weaker than necessity, Prometheus's own skill cannot free him, and the Chorus sees mortals as feeble and dreamlike. The gift of the arts is both a glory and a source of conflict with the gods.
Suffering, justice and time
Prometheus protests that he suffers unjustly, and the last words of the play in the Greek are 'how unjustly I suffer'. The Chorus and Oceanus regard his punishment as cruel but also as the predictable consequence of offending a stronger power. The play does not settle the question; it presents both sides in their sharpest form.
Yet the play repeatedly points to a resolution in time: Zeus will soften, the two will make peace, time teaches all things. If the lost sequel showed a Zeus who learned mercy and a Prometheus who gave up his secret, the trilogy as a whole may have shown justice emerging from conflict, as the Oresteia does (Lloyd-Jones 1983) (West 1979).
Pity and loyalty
Almost every visitor pities Prometheus: Hephaestus out of kinship, the Oceanids out of love, Oceanus out of friendship, Io out of shared suffering. But pity takes different forms, from Hephaestus's helpless reluctance and Oceanus's self-interested caution to the Chorus's final decision to share his fate. The play distinguishes between pity that costs nothing and loyalty that risks everything.
Motifs
Binding and release
Words for chains, fetters, bonds and nailing recur throughout. Prometheus is bound, Io is 'yoked' to her wandering, Zeus is threatened with worse bonds, and the hoped-for release gives the lost sequel its title. Physical binding becomes an image of every kind of compulsion.
Disease and cure
The language of sickness and medicine runs through the play: tyranny is a disease, anger is a disease that words can cure, Prometheus is like a doctor who cannot heal himself, and medicine is one of his gifts. The metaphor links his role as healer of humanity to his own incurable suffering (Griffith 1983).
The newness of Zeus
Zeus is again and again called new, young, recent: a new ruler with new laws and new gods around him. The emphasis implies that his power is still unsettled and that he may change with time.
Marriage
Prometheus's wedding to Hesione, Zeus's desire for Io, the dangerous marriage that threatens Zeus, the forced marriage of the Danaids and the Chorus's prayer to marry within its rank weave a pattern in which marriage is a place where power and desire meet.
Wandering and fixity
Prometheus cannot move, while Io cannot stop moving. The long catalogues of places in Io's prophecies give the static play a vast geographical sweep, from the edges of Scythia to the Nile.
Symbols
Fire
Stolen from Hephaestus and given to mortals in a fennel stalk, fire is the 'teacher of every art', the source of technology and civilisation. It is also Zeus's weapon in the lightning that ends the play, so that the play begins with fire given and ends with fire hurled.
The rock
The desolate cliff at the end of the world, far from any human being, is the image of Prometheus's isolation and of the absolute power of Zeus. At the end it is shattered and swallows him.
The gadfly
The sting that drives Io from land to land is the image of the cruelty of divine desire and jealousy; in Greek the same word (oistros) can mean frenzy, and the insect becomes Io's madness.
The eagle
The 'winged hound of Zeus' that will feed on Prometheus's liver is the traditional emblem of his punishment, announced here as part of the future. It became the most familiar image of the myth in later art.
Critical debates
Is the play by Aeschylus?
No ancient source doubts that Aeschylus wrote Prometheus Bound, but from the middle of the nineteenth century scholars noticed features unlike his other plays: simpler lyric metres, a smaller role for the chorus, many exchanges between actors and chorus in lyric dialogue, a distinctive vocabulary, and a dramatic technique that resembles later tragedy. Mark Griffith's monograph of 1977 analysed metre, vocabulary, syntax and stage technique and concluded that the play was probably not written by Aeschylus; he suggested that it might date from the 440s or 430s (Griffith 1977).
Defenders of authenticity, such as C. J. Herington, have argued that the differences reflect Aeschylus's last period and the influence of his stay in Sicily, and that the play's grandeur and its cosmic theology are Aeschylean (Herington 1970). Martin West proposed that it was written by Aeschylus's son Euphorion and staged as his father's work after his death (West 1990), while Robert Bees argued, from the play's relation to other datable texts, for a date well after Aeschylus's death (Bees 1993). Most specialists now treat the authorship as uncertain, and many think it more likely than not that the play is by another hand (Sommerstein 2010) (Ruffell 2012).
The lost trilogy and the reconciliation
Ancient sources name three Prometheus plays: Bound (Desmotes), Unbound (Lyomenos) and Fire-Bearer (Pyrphoros). Fragments show that in the Unbound Prometheus, now returned to the light and tormented by the eagle, was visited by the freed Titans; Heracles killed the eagle; and Prometheus, it seems, revealed the secret of Thetis and was reconciled with Zeus. The Fire-Bearer may have shown the institution of his cult at Athens, where he was honoured with a torch race, but its place in the series and even its existence as a separate tragedy are disputed (West 1979) (Griffith 1983).
The debate matters because the meaning of Bound depends on what followed. If the trilogy ended in reconciliation, the harsh Zeus of this play would be the first stage in a story of change, as in the Oresteia, where violence ends in justice. If not, the play stands as a protest against divine tyranny, which is how the Romantics read it.
Does Zeus change?
One influential view held that the trilogy showed the 'evolution' of Zeus from a young tyrant into a wise and just ruler, and that the dramatist was thinking about the development of divine justice through time. Critics of this view, among them Hugh Lloyd-Jones, argued that the idea of a god who becomes morally better is foreign to Greek religion, and that Zeus's justice in Aeschylus is consistent: what changes is not his nature but the circumstances of his rule, or our understanding of it (Lloyd-Jones 1983).
The play itself gives material for both sides. It insists on Zeus's newness and predicts his softening, but it also presents his harshness as the normal behaviour of a ruler whose power is threatened. D. J. Conacher's commentary offers a careful discussion of these possibilities (Conacher 1980).
Prometheus, the sophists and the idea of progress
The speech on the arts, with its picture of human beings rising from a primitive state through technology, has been compared to the theories of fifth-century thinkers such as Protagoras and Democritus. E. R. Dodds used it as a key text for the ancient idea of progress, while showing that the Greeks also held opposing views of decline (Dodds 1973).
Suzanne Saïd argued that the play presents its hero in the double image of the sophist, the clever teacher of skills, and the tyrant, and that its picture of Zeus and Prometheus reflects the debates of Athenian intellectual life (Saïd 1985). Others note that the speech gives a large place to religion and prophecy, which prevents a purely rationalist reading.
Politics and the image of tyranny
The play's language of tyranny has led some critics to read it in terms of Athenian politics. Anthony Podlecki examined it in the context of the political background of Aeschylean tragedy (Podlecki 1966); the Marxist scholar George Thomson read the trilogy as a mythic image of the development of society from conflict to reconciliation, and Prometheus as the representative of human progress and labour (Thomson 1941).
More cautious readings warn against seeing the play as an allegory of particular events, but most agree that its vocabulary of power draws on the political experience of fifth-century Athens, in which the fall of tyrants and the creation of new institutions were still living memories.
How was it staged?
The play raises problems of staging: how Prometheus was fastened to the rock in front of the audience, how the chorus arrived in its 'winged car', how Oceanus entered on his four-legged bird, and how the final cataclysm was represented. Older scholars thought Prometheus was a giant dummy voiced by an actor hidden behind it; Oliver Taplin argued for simpler solutions and examined the evidence for the use of stage machinery in the play (Taplin 1977).
The question of staging is linked to the question of date and authorship, since some features, like the use of the theatrical crane, might point to a later date than Aeschylus's death (Griffith 1977) (Griffith 1983).
Prometheus among the Romantics
From the late eighteenth century Prometheus became a symbol of rebellion against tyranny, of creative genius and of human self-assertion. Goethe's ode presents him as an artist who creates human beings in defiance of the gods; Byron's poem of 1816 praises his endurance and his 'firm will'; Mary Shelley's 'Modern Prometheus' turns the myth into a warning about scientific creation; and Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound rewrites the lost sequel so that the Titan never submits and Jupiter falls, because Shelley could not accept a reconciliation between the champion of humanity and its oppressor (Curran 1975).
Raymond Trousson's survey traces the theme of Prometheus through European literature from antiquity to modern times and shows how much of this tradition starts from Prometheus Bound (Trousson 1964). Karl Kerényi read the figure as an archetype of human existence (Kerényi 1962), and Carol Dougherty's short book follows the myth from Hesiod to the modern world (Dougherty 2006). Readers can compare this play with Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, which has its own guide on this site.
Key passages
All hath its burden, save the rule of Heaven, And freedom is for Zeus, and Zeus alone.
Zeus's servant states the principle of absolute rule. In this world only the king is free, and everyone else, gods included, serves.
O Sky divine, O Winds of pinions swift, O fountain-heads of Rivers, and O thou, Illimitable laughter of the Sea!
His first words after the binding appeal to nature, not to the gods. The 'laughter of the sea' became one of the most quoted images of Greek poetry.
For ’tis the inward vice of tyranny, To deem of friends as being secret foes.
A political diagnosis of Zeus. The tyrant cannot trust even those who helped him to power, which explains why Prometheus has been punished.
Blind hopes I sent to nestle in man’s heart.
Before fire, Prometheus gave mortals hope, by taking away their knowledge of the day of their death. Human striving depends on not knowing the future.
For, in the outset, eyes they had and saw not; And ears they had but heard not;
The beginning of his account of human progress. Mortals before Prometheus were like dreamers, without understanding.
All arts, for mortals’ use, Prometheus gave.
A proud summary of his gifts, from writing and number to medicine and prophecy. The line defines Prometheus as the god of human civilisation.
Art strives too feebly against destiny.
The limit of all skill: even the inventor of every device cannot free himself, and even Zeus is subject to Necessity.
The child she bears him shall o’ercome his sire.
The core of the secret. Zeus, who overthrew his own father, is threatened by the same pattern of succession.
Mark a plain word—I loathe all gods that are, Who reaped my kindness and repay with wrong.
His most defiant line, which made him a hero to later rebels, including Marx.
Nay, at his side, whate’er befall, I will abide, endure it all! Among all things abhorr’d, accurst, I hold betrayers for the worst!
The gentle Oceanids choose loyalty over safety. Their decision gives the end of the play its moral weight.
Questions for study
Why does Prometheus remain silent during the binding and speak only when he is alone?
Think about his pride, his relationship with Strength and Hephaestus, and the effect of his first words being addressed to nature.
How does the play portray Zeus, who never appears?
Look at what Strength, Hephaestus, the Chorus, Oceanus, Io and Hermes say about him, at the repeated word 'new', and at Prometheus's prophecies of reconciliation.
What does Prometheus give mortals, and why does he begin with 'blind hopes'?
Compare the stichomythia of the first episode with the speech on the arts, and think about the relation between foreknowledge and action.
What is the function of Oceanus in the play?
Consider his advice, his motives, Prometheus's response, and how he differs from the Chorus.
Why is the Io scene so long, and how does it relate to Prometheus's own story?
Contrast fixity and wandering, immortality and the wish to die, and look at how her descendants are connected with his release.
How does the play use the secret of the marriage to create suspense and drive the plot?
Trace how much Prometheus reveals in the parodos, in the second episode, to Io and to Hermes, and why he never names the bride.
Is Prometheus entirely in the right?
Weigh his admission that he sinned willingly, the Chorus's and Oceanus's criticisms, Hermes's charge of madness, and the play's last words.
How does the Chorus change in the course of the play?
Compare their timid advice in the stasima with their final refusal to leave, and think about loyalty and pity.
What does the uncertainty about authorship change for a reader of the play?
Consider how far our reading of Zeus depends on the Oresteia, and on the assumption that the lost sequel showed a reconciliation.
Why did the Romantics find Prometheus so attractive, and how does Shelley's Prometheus Unbound change the story?
Think about rebellion, creativity and the idea of progress, and about Shelley's refusal to let Prometheus be reconciled with his oppressor.
Further reading
- Bees, Robert. Zur Datierung des Prometheus Desmotes. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1993.
- Conacher, D. J. Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound: A Literary Commentary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
- Curran, Stuart. Shelley's Annus Mirabilis: The Maturing of an Epic Vision. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1975.
- Dodds, E. R. The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
- Dougherty, Carol. Prometheus. Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World. London: Routledge, 2006.
- Griffith, Mark. The Authenticity of 'Prometheus Bound'. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
- Griffith, Mark, ed. Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
- Herington, C. J. The Author of the Prometheus Bound. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.
- Kerényi, Karl. Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence. Translated by Ralph Manheim. London: Thames and Hudson, 1962.
- Lloyd-Jones, Hugh. The Justice of Zeus. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971; 2nd ed. 1983.
- Podlecki, Anthony J. The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966.
- Ruffell, Ian. Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound. Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012.
- Saïd, Suzanne. Sophiste et tyran, ou le problème du Prométhée enchaîné. Paris: Klincksieck, 1985.
- Solmsen, Friedrich. Hesiod and Aeschylus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949.
- Sommerstein, Alan H. Aeschylean Tragedy. 2nd ed. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010.
- Taplin, Oliver. The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
- Thomson, George. Aeschylus and Athens: A Study in the Social Origins of Drama. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1941.
- Trousson, Raymond. Le thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 1964.
- West, M. L., ed. Hesiod: Theogony. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966.
- West, M. L. 'The Prometheus Trilogy.' Journal of Hellenic Studies 99 (1979): 130–48.
- West, M. L. Studies in Aeschylus. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1990.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.