INTRODUCTION
which the action of the play is laid, Hesiod was of course the standard authority. And the story of the strife between the old and the new gods, as it is told by Aeschylus, corresponds in the main with the story, as it is given by Hesiod. And this is how it runs: The gods who now rule the world, Zeus, his brothers and sisters and children, have not always been. Before them an older generation, Kronos, the father of Zeus, and the brothers and sisters of Kronos, bore rule. These elder gods were the children of Uranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), and were called Titans. But even the Titans were not from the beginning. Before them Uranos himself had been lord of the world. But Kronos rose up against Uranos his father and cast him down from the citadel of heaven. And in process of time, Zeus, the son of Kronos, rose up against him in his turn and overpowered him by the pre-eminence of his wisdom and his peculiar arm, the thunder. Then Kronos and the other gods of the Titan generation were imprisoned in Tartaros, far under the earth, in thick darkness—all but a few; for Prometheus escaped the fate of
xix
