THE PROMETHEUS BOUND.
[We present our readers with a new and careful translation of the tragedy of Æschylus, in which fidelity to the text, and to the best text, is what is mainly attempted. We are the more readily drawn to this task, by the increasing value which this great old allegory is acquiring in universal literature, as a mystical picture of human life, and the most excellent work in that kind that exists in Greek poetry. Coleridge said of this play, that "it was more properly tragedy itself in the plenitude of the idea, than a particular tragic poem."]
PERSONS OF THE DRAMA.
Kratos and Bia, (Strength and Force.)
Hephaistus, (Vulcan.)
Prometheus.
Chorus of Ocean Nymphs.
Oceanus.
Io, Daughter of Inachus.
Hermes.
Kratos and Bia, Hephaistus, Prometheus.
To the Scythian way, to the unapproached solitude.
Hephaistus, orders must have thy attention,
Which the father has enjoined on thee, this bold one
To the high-hanging rocks to bind,
In indissoluble fetters of adamantine bonds.
For thy flower, the splendor of fire useful in all arts,
Stealing, he bestowed on mortals; and for such
A crime 't is fit he should give satisfaction to the gods;
That he may learn the tyranny of Zeus
Already has its end, and nothing further in the way;
But I cannot endure to bind
A kindred god by force to a bleak precipice,—
Yet absolutely there 's necessity that I have courage for these things;
For it is hard the father's words to banish.
High-plotting son of the right-counselling Themis,
Unwilling thee unwilling in brazen fetters hard to be loosed
I am about to nail to this inhuman hill,
Where neither voice [you'll hear,] nor form of any mortal
See, but scorched by the sun's clear flame,
