INTRODUCTION
The three leading characteristics of Prometheus, as he appears in Aeschylus, were already indicated in a slight way by Hesiod: Aeschylus threw them into stronger relief and developed them more largely. The most fundamental idea, of course, connected with him was that of practical wisdom: he was the embodiment of intelligence, which grasps the means to all ends, which can plan and arrange and advise, fertile in what the Greeks called βουλαί, "counsels," or μῆτις, contriving wit. So in Hesiod his epithets are ποικίλος, αἰολόμητις, ποικιλόβουλος, ἀγκυλομήτης, πολύιδρις, πάντων πέρι μήδεα εἰδώς. And this was the ultimate cause of his coming into collision with Zeus. For this fertility of counsel, this capacity for far-reaching design was exactly one of the attributes, by which Zeus was distinguished. His epithets also are μητιόεις (Hesiod, Erg. 51; Theog. 457), μητίετα (Erg. 104; Theog. 56, &c.), ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδώς (Theog. 545). Metis personified is his first wife (Theog. 886). "It is impossible to cheat or overreach the mind of Zeus." (Theog. 613.) This corresponds closely
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