INTRODUCTION
manner are perhaps beyond our ascertaining to-day. There may have been at that moment, with the expansion of Athenian commerce, a great interest in remote half-fabulous countries, the same sort of appetite, which we fed in our younger days with Mr. Rider Haggard's stories. It is to be noted that similar geographical descriptions came again in the next play of the trilogy, the Prometheus Unbound, so that an Athenian audience was not expected to grow quickly tired of them. Whether they add anything to the drama from the poetic point of view may be a matter of disagreement. I think we may say that they give the figure of Prometheus a certain universal importance by extending our field of vision over the whole world: all the lands inhabited by men are seen at a sweep stretching from the feet of him who is the great Friend of man.
The Prometheus Bound was one play of a trilogy of which the other two lost ones were the Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-bearer. It is now the general opinion that our play was the first, and the Fire-bearer the last of the series. In
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