PROMETHEUS BOUND.
Prometheus, the good Titan, has been raising mankind from the condition of primeval brutes by teaching them the arts of civilisation. At last he steals fire from heaven for their use. By this he incurs the wrath of Zeus, who, having deposed his father Chronos, has become king of the gods. As a punishment Prometheus is condemned by Zeus to be chained to a rock in the Caucasus, with an eagle always feeding on his breast. But Prometheus knows the secret of a mysterious marriage which is destined in time to take place, and by the offspring of which Zeus in his turn is to be dethroned. Strong in his consciousness of this, he defies Zeus, who by the agency of Hermes tries in vain to wrest the secret from him. The persons of the drama, besides Prometheus, are Hephaestus, better known by his Latin name of Vulcan, Might and Force personified, Hermes the messenger of Heaven, and the wandering Io. The chorus consists of sea- nymphs, who sympathise with the suffering Prometheus. This drama is a sublime enigma. Aeschylus was conservative and deeply religious. How could he write a play the hero of which is a benefactor of man struggling against the tyranny of the king of the gods, and the sequel of which found a fit and congenial composer in Shelley, whose sentiment and manner the "Prometheus Bound" wonderfully anticipates and perhaps helped to form? Again, how could the Athenians, in an age when their piety had not yet given way to scepticism, have endured such dramatic treatment of the chief of the gods? It is almost as if a Mystery Play had been presented in the Middle Ages with Satan for the hero and the First Person of the Trinity in the character of an oppressor. Perhaps the position of Zeus in the drama as a usurper may, in some degree, have softened the religious effect.
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Prometheus is brought in by the Spirits of Might and Force,
Hephaestus accompanying them.
LINES 1-113.
SCENE: The Caucasus.
MIGHT.
Unto earth's utmost boundary we have come,
To Scythia's realm, th' untrodden wilderness.
Hephaestus, now it is thy part to do
The Almighty Father's bidding, and to bind
This arch-deceiver to yon lowering cliff
With bonds of everlasting adamant.
Thy attribute, all-fabricating fire,
He stole and gave to man. Such is the crime
For which he pays the penalty to Heaven,
That he may learn henceforth meekly to bear
The rule of Zeus and less befriend mankind.
HEPHAESTUS.
Spirits of Might and Force, by you the word
Of Zeus has been fulfilled; your task is done.
But I—to bind a god, one of my kin,
To a storm-beaten cliff, my heart abhors.
And yet this must I do, for woe is him
That does not what the Almighty Sire commands.
Thou high-aspiring son of Themis sage,
Unwilling is the hand that rivets thee
Indissolubly to this lonely rock,
Where thou shalt see no face and hear no voice
Of man, but, scorched by the sun's burning ray,
Change thy fair hue for dark, and long for night
With starry kirtle to close up the day,
And for the morn to melt the frosts of night,
Still racked with tortures endlessly renewed,
And which to end redeemer none is born.
Such is the guerdon of thy love for man.
A god thyself, thou gav'st, despite the gods,
To mortals more than is a mortal's due.
And therefore must thou keep this dreary rock,
Erect, with frame unbending, reft of sleep,
And many a bootless wail of agony
Shalt utter. Change of mind in Zeus is none,
Ruthless the rule when power is newly won.