And they who love most are the first suspected.”
“Nam regibus boni quam mali suspectiores sunt, semperque his aliena virtus formidolosa est.”—Sall. Cat. VII. “In princes fear is stronger than love; therefore it is often more difficult for them to tear themselves from persons whom they hate than to cast off persons whom they love.”—Richter (Titan).
“I only of the gods
Thwarted his will.”
This is one of the passages which has suggested to many minds a comparison between the mythical tortures of the Caucasus and the real agonies of Calvary. The analogy is just so far; only the Greek imagination never could look on Prometheus as suffering altogether without just cause; he suffered for his own sins. This Toepel. p. 71, has well expressed thus—“Prometheus deos laesit ut homines bearet: Christus homines beavit ut suae, Deique patris obsecundaret voluntati.”
“. . . in cunning torment stretched.”
ἀνηλεῶς ἐῤῥύθμισμαι—“so bin ich zugerichtet.”—Passow. A sort of studious malignity is here indicated. So we say allegorically to trim one handsomely, to dress him, when we mean to punish. The frequent use of this verb ρυθμίζω is characteristic of the Greeks, than whom no people, as has been frequently remarked, seem to have possessed a nicer sense of the beauty of measure and the propriety of limitation in their poetry and works of art. So Sophocles, Antig. 318, has ρυθμίζειν λύπην.