This event, as we see, is only remotely connected with Io, although the connexion is precise and clear. In point of time, if chronology is the least use in such a case, it is several generations nearer to us than she is. Yet we have only to cast one glance at the story of Cadmus to see at once its youthful element of marvel. Its wonders are so crude as almost to raise a smile—the half amused, half tender smile with which we turn over in our hand some grotesque plaything of our childhood. It is indeed only the humorous aspect of these old stories which seizes us when we look back at them from a detached standpoint, and with minds bent to the critical attitude. But that was not the poet’s attitude; not, at least, when he was making poetry. Doubtless there must have been moments when the Comic Spirit rebelled, since even poets do not live alone by the emotions. But when tragedy first entered life’s deep waters its captains bound the mischievous laughing spirit securely under hatches. It could be of no service in such a stern battle with the elements.
So we find that the tragic poets (except perhaps Euripides occasionally) treat these strange old stories in what is called ‘the grand manner.’ Do not be disturbed by something stiff and formal in the expression. Like all definitions, it is smaller and harder than the thing it tries to define. For the poet has not the least intention of being ‘grand,’ and is as far as possible removed from any conscious ‘manner.’ On the contrary, it is true as a rule that the greater he is, the simpler his thought and expression are. He comes to these old themes with the eye and the heart of a child as well as the brain of a great genius; and the spirit of poetry, with all the knowledge of all the ages, utters its message through his lips in limpid song. Matters of probability and questions of logic, which seem so important to the mere intellect, bow their chastened heads before him. The whole scheme of values is changed, and that which appeared to the arrogant intellect as wild and ludicrous is perceived by the poet full of strange beauty and significance.
In this way Sophocles approached the Theban legend, as we shall see when we come to Jocasta and Antigone, presently. In this way, too, Æschylus gave us the story of Io in his Prometheus Bound. Just when Io is supposed to have lived we do not know. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus; and she was a priestess of Hera in Argos. But Æchylus has made her coeval with the Titans. In this poem, therefore, she is a denizen of that early world which saw the overthrow of Cronos from the throne of heaven, and the rise of his son Zeus. All the Titans save one had opposed the new god when he rose in rebellion against the primeval powers. But Prometheus, far-seeing from the first, and knowing that Zeus must conquer, lent him aid. It was a long and bitter struggle in the youth of the world. But at last Cronos and the Titans who had opposed him were hurled by Zeus into Tartarus—“under the misty darkness ... in a dank place, at the verge of the earth.” Typhon was buried under Etna; and Atlas, far in the West, was bowed beneath the pillar of the heavens, “where night and day meet and greet one another, as they pass the great threshold of bronze.”
All now seemed calm and fair for the establishment of the new Hierarchy. Too calm and fair; for Zeus, with all his enemies subdued and possessing absolute power, soon grew tyrannical. With leisure now from Olympian warfare, he looked down upon the earth and the feeble race of men. It seemed to him a contemptible thing, struggling weakly against pitiless forces and groping its way, by minute degrees that were imperceptible from his lofty height, toward a larger and a better state. It was a mean and futile and impotent race, he pondered. Surely it would be better to wipe it out of existence altogether, than let it continue to blot the face of the fair world.
So concluded the youthful ruler of Olympus, in his haughty strength. But Prometheus knew mankind better than Zeus. The hills and valleys of earth were his kin, dear and familiar to him; and he had come to love the imperfect human soul that had just managed to get itself born in those rude cave-men. He saw the violent act that the Lord of Olympus was planning in his mind; and resolved to save humanity. So, as the old poet Hesiod says in his Works and Days, “he stole fire for men from Zeus the Counsellor in a hollow fennel stalk, what time the Hurler of the Thunder knew not.” But the boon to man meant sheer disaster to himself, as he knew when he filched it from Olympus. The purpose of Zeus could not be thwarted with impunity. Prometheus was condemned to age-long punishment, chained to a rock on an icy mountain top until such time as a deliverer should come, and an immortal being could be found willing to give up life for him. The punishment of Prometheus is the subject of the present drama. It is believed to have been the middle play of a trilogy, of which the last was the Prometheus Unbound, and the first probably related the bringing of fire to earth. The Prometheus Bound is not dramatic in the sense that the Agamemnon and the Choephorœ are. There is hardly any action in it, for the suffering Titan continues chained to his rock throughout the poem. From the nature of the theme, too, the characters are too colossal and remote to make an intimate appeal to us. Yet the drama is charged with the deepest emotion, transcending the pity or fear of common experience. If it does not start into life before our eyes as an actual conflict, that is because it is rooted in a deeper and more crucial struggle between cosmic forces. And if the persons of the drama are unapproachable and unfamiliar, it is from the very reason of their sublimity. We see the protagonist first as he is being riveted to the rocky wall by the god Hephæstus. The Fire-god reluctantly performs the task, bidden to it roughly by Force, who is invested for the moment with the strength of Zeus, but without his dignity. Hephæstus is indignant at the sentence on his kinsman, the titan, and declares that he has no heart to chain him in this stormy mountain region, merely because of his beneficent help to man. But Force is inexorable: he urges on the work until every limb of the titan is secured, and an adamantine wedge is driven through his breast. When all is accomplished, Prometheus is left alone; and then for the first time he breaks silence. He invokes the elements that are his kindred: the sky, the winds, the rivers, the smiling sea, the sun, the great earth-mother.
“See me tormented by the gods, a god!
Behold me, what agony
Through the measureless course of the ages
Racked, I shall suffer;
I by the upstart Ruler in heaven