INTRODUCTION
yet, as in Aeschylus, the type of splendid scorn maintained in the face of overmastering power, of
"The unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome."
Aeschylus takes over the old myth and makes it the vesture of a higher spirit. He has also woven into the story of Prometheus another mythological idea with which his hearers were familiar, but which Aeschylus was perhaps the first to connect with Prometheus—the idea that not only had the reign of the present Supreme Being a definite beginning, but that its termination was not inconceivable. The idea is already in Hesiod. Here it is Metis, the first wife of Zeus, who is destined to bear the future king: fortunately for himself, Zeus, being warned in time by Gaia and Uranos, swallows her while she is pregnant (Theog. 886 f.). In Pindar (Isthm. viii. (vii.) 51 f.) it is Thetis the Nereïd who is destined to bear "a royal son better than his father." When Zeus and Poseidon contend for her, not knowing
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