INTRODUCTION
The audience who assembled in the Theatre of Dionysos under a spring sky—behind them the Akropolis, and before them the amethyst hill of Hymettos and the sea—to listen to the plays of the Athenian tragedians, when they were first given to the world, expected, unlike a modern audience, to watch the unfolding of a story already familiar to them. Effects were calculated on this supposition. The allusions, the "tragic irony," of which the plays were full, would otherwise have missed aim. And it is, I suppose, the business of a translator to reproduce in the mind of a reader, so far as that is possible, the impressions, which came to those for whose eyes and ears the plays were originally designed. But if so, it would seem an essential part of his business to give some preliminary account of the story and the persons of the drama, as they already existed in the mind of an Athenian citizen, when he took his seat in the theatre twenty-three centuries ago.
The ideas of the Greeks as to what happened in the marvellous childhood of the world were derived from two sources. One was the mythology which had taken form, had become canonical as it were, in the poets from Homer and Hesiod onwards. The other source was the local myths attached to the various shrines. It was from this chaos of local legend that the poets had in the first instance drawn, combining elements of diverse origin into more or less harmonious systems. These systems, it is true, influenced in their turn the local myths, so that an action and re-action between the two sorts of mythological tradition was continually going on. But there remained many local myths which had not been taken up into literature, many which were inconsistent with the systems of Homer or Hesiod or any other of the recognised literary authorities. Aeschylus in the Prometheus has regard to both lines of tradition.
For the first beginnings of things, the time in 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 his brethren, and Okeanos; Atlas, moreover, was not put into Tartaros, but compelled to stand in the utmost West, holding up the sky "with his head and tireless hands." (Hesiod, Theog. 519.) So the new generation of gods were established, and Zeus divided to them their several honours. (Hesiod, Theog. 885: Aesch. Prom. 230.) But thereafter Prometheus was brought into a quarrel with Zeus by his favouring of the race of men, and when at last he stole fire from heaven in a hollow fennel-stalk and gave it to men, Zeus for punishment chained him up, and set an eagle upon him to devour his liver. In this evil case Prometheus continued, till Herakles, the son of Zeus by a mortal woman, killed the eagle and set him free. (Hesiod, Theog. 520–569.)
In these outlines of the story Hesiod and Aeschylus agree. But in other respects they show divergence. For Aeschylus, in taking over the old myth, modified it freely to suit his central thought, omitting here and adding there, till the vague legendary figures acquire a new actuality of being, are raised to transcendent characters, wherein Man may see projected on an ideal scale the forces and motives at work in the ground of his heart. Some constituents of the Hesiodic story are absolutely discarded. While, for instance, in Aeschylus Zeus is simply said to have "taken no account" of mankind on his accession to power, and to have regarded them rather as rubbish than with any active hostility, in Hesiod a set quarrel between Zeus and Man is traced to the fraud which men, as instructed by Prometheus, had perpetrated upon the gods in the matter of sacrifice. The somewhat low cunning, which Prometheus displays in that episode, could only have misrepresented that subtlety of wit which Aeschylus meant his Prometheus to embody. So too the episode of Pandora and Epimetheus, the slow-witted brother of Prometheus, is taken no notice of in our play, where it would only have clogged the ruling motive, although it is true that the fragment of another play (which may have belonged to the Promethean trilogy) refers to Pandora, the "mortal woman begotten of moulded clay." (τοῦ πηλοπλάστου σπέρματος θνητὴ γυνή. Frag. 369.)
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 with the language of our play, when it speaks of the "harmony of Zeus" (l. 551), that is the ordered world-plan, which no man can evade. "I see not any way," the Chorus sings later on, "by which I can escape the metis of Zeus (l. 906). Here already is matter of rivalry. Accordingly we find Hesiod actually saying that Prometheus "contended in counsels with the mighty son of Kronos." (Theog, 534.) And Aeschylus makes Kratos desire that Prometheus may learn σοφιστὴς ὢν Διὸς νωθέστερος, "that he is a nimble wit, but that Zeus is a nimbler" (l. 62). In Hesiod, however, it is not further explained in what way Prometheus disclosed his shrewdness beyond his attempt to cheat Zeus in the sacrifice, his warning to Epimetheus not to receive the gifts of the gods, and his successful theft of the fire. In Aeschylus on the other hand all human invention, all ways of fitting means to ends, go back to Prometheus. "All arts men have from the Provider come" (l. 506). He has become almost a personification of human intelligence, of human craft, in vain war with the greater powers.
In Aeschylus also a wisdom of an altogether different kind is added, the power of prophecy. But this Prometheus has less of himself, than as informed by his mother, the oracular goddess, Earth. And it is to be noticed that here is a point where Aeschylus and the Hesiodic tradition diverge. In Hesiod, Prometheus is the son of Iapetos, one of the twelve Titans, and of Klymene, a daughter of Okeanos. Aeschylus drops all mention of any father and makes Prometheus simply a son of Earth, of Gaia, who is also Themis. In identifying Gaia and Themis (who in Hesiod are distinct) Aeschylus was drawing from the other mythological source, local tradition: Athens worshipped Ge-Themis as one deity. (Pausanias, i. 22: Corp. Inscr. Attic. iii. Nos. 318, 350.) Perhaps he was also following the Athenian tradition in making Prometheus her son. At any rate, his poetical purpose was advanced by removing the colourless Iapetos and Klymene, and allowing no parent to appear for the person who embodies the idea of Wisdom, but the ancient, wise, universal Mother herself.
We may digress for a moment from Prometheus to speak of his mother. The ideas of the Earth and of Justice (Themis) seem at first so far apart that one might wonder how they could coalesce. But Themis is not primarily goddess of justice: she is primarily an oracular power. At Delphi the local myth knew of a time, when the oracle was that of Themis, not of Apollo, and of a still earlier time, when it belonged to Gaia. (Aeschylus, Eum. 2 f.) Themis and Gaia are not, it will be observed, identified at Delphi, as they are at Athens, but they are closely associated as oracular powers: Themis is the daughter and successor of Gaia. According to a common Greek idea it was out of the earth that prophetic inspiration and dreams mainly came; and not only Gaia herself, but the other earth deities, the chthonic powers, gave men good counsel in oracle and vision, delivered them divine boulai. Even the Pythoness at Delphi was inspired by a vapour arising out of the ground. Euboulos is found as an epithet of Hades (Orph. Hym, 17, 12; 29, 6; 55, 3) and one of the chthonic gods worshipped in Attica was called Eubouleus. Gaia, as the giver of good advice, plays a great part in Hesiod. She it was who prompted Kronos in the deed whereby he overthrew his father Uranos. She and Uranos foretold to Kronos his own doom, and showed Rhea how the infant Zeus was to be preserved. It was Gaia by whose "sage instructions" Kronos was compelled to disgorge his children. It was by her admonishings that Zeus won his ultimate victory: "for she told the gods everything from beginning to end." (Theog. 627, cf. 884). It was, finally, she and Uranos who saved Zeus from doing that which would bring about his own overthrow (l. 891). In Pindar, by whom also Aeschylus was largely influenced, Themis plays the part assigned in Hesiod to Gaia. According to this version, Zeus is restrained from doing the fatal thing by Themis, who is given the epithet "euboulos" (Isthm. viii. (vii.) 67) as the expounder of oracles (θέσφατα). This passage was, no doubt, in Aeschylus' mind, when he calls Themis in this play "orthoboulos" (l. 18) "right-areading." But the part played by Gaia-Themis in the Prometheus is somewhat altered. It is still she alone who knows directly the decrees of fate and things to come, but she speaks only by the mouth of her son Prometheus (ll. 211, 873). From him Zeus got the boulai to which his victory was due (l. 219): no one but Prometheus can tell him what the peril is which hangs over his head, and how it may be removed (l. 913).
His wisdom, then, is one of the three characteristics of Prometheus, which Aeschylus has taken from the old myth and expanded. And this he has also done with the other two, love of men and defiance of the new gods. Already in Hesiod, Prometheus is a "kindly" god. (ἀκάκητα Προμηθεύς. Theog. 614.) He schemes to secure the good part of the sacrifice for men. He steals fire for men. But he is not yet the universal benefactor, the one moved always with a divine compassion, who because of his great love for men drew wittingly upon himself the wrath of God. Again, in Hesiod Prometheus already acts in opposition to Zeus, he belongs to the Titan brood, whom only the utmost strength of Zeus could overthrow, but he is not 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 how the matter stands, Themis declares the peril, and Thetis is married to Peleus. It was this passage of Pindar which Aeschylus had in his mind, as the echo of its phrases proves. But the situation is complicated by making Themis herself dumb: Prometheus alone is privy to her secret, and thus holds the fate of Zeus in his hands.
It remains to say as much of the minor characters of the play as may give some idea of the associations presupposed in the mind of an Athenian spectator.
Hephaistos was closely associated with Prometheus in the Attic cult.[1] Both, indeed, were originally perhaps only different forms of the same Fire-god. They were, at any rate, worshipped together, and had many things in common. This is one reason for the strong sympathy with Prometheus shown by Hephaistos in this play. An allusion is made to their old friendship (l. 39).
The companions of Hephaistos, Kratos, and Bia, are taken from Hesiod, where they are children of the river Styx, come to the aid of Zeus against the Titans, and remain beside him for ever after. (Theog. 385 f.) They are to be conceived as brother and sister, not two brothers, as Flaxman's familiar illustrations would make us think.
Okeanos is brought into the play for two main reasons apparently. In the first place, he marks the scene of the action—at the extreme verge of the earth, round which revolves the circular all-encompassing river, whose name he bears. And the same purpose is served by making the Chorus consist of his daughters. Their visible presence in itself brings home to the spectator how very far away this place is. But secondly, Okeanos is morally the foil to Prometheus. Both belong to the old race of gods. And just because they belong to the same order, the personal contrast of the two is exhibited in sharper relief. There were two main elements in the traditional idea of Okeanos. One was his immense age. According to Homer, he was the beginning of all things. (Iliad xiv. 246.) In Hesiod he does not hold quite so primal a position, being himself the son of Uranos and Gaia (Theog. 133); but the idea of great age, no doubt, clung to him in popular thought. The other element was his remoteness, not only local, but involving the moral quality of holding aloof. The great war, in which Zeus vanquished the Titans, did not reach to his dwelling-place. (Iliad xiv. 202.) It left him unscathed, when his brethren fell. This conception of Okeanos gives to much in the play of Aeschylus a point which the contemporary Athenians would readily seize. His first words are to complain of the length of his journey, although we know that the scene is laid close to his River. The journey was long in regard to the effort it cost him to move. He was full of senile apprehension even at his daughters' going to visit Prometheus, and was only with difficulty persuaded to consent (l. 129). Had commentators appreciated these things, they would not have been mystified by the obvious sarcasm of Prometheus, when he congratulates Okeanos upon being clear of the doom, although he had had a part in all the enterprise (l. 331). The whole point of the character of Okeanos was that he never had a part in anything. "Be still," Prometheus counsels him, "and keep thy safe remove" (l. 344).
Hermes, the herald of Zeus, appears at the end of the play as a sort of foil to Hephaistos at the beginning. In his tone of insolent triumph the spirit of the new rule finds voice. Where Hephaistos is sympathetic and sorrowful, Hermes preaches and exults. In one way this scene would appeal to an ancient spectator as it does no longer to a modern reader. Hermes was the patron and typical rep esentative of a class with which he was familiar—the class of heralds. And the qualities shown by Hermes on this occasion are just those for which heralds were unpopular: they had the insolence of flunkeys; their office was considered one unworthy of a free man, while the haughtiness and brutality, with which they exercised it, made them detested. (Compare the Egyptian herald in the Supplices, and Euripides, Troades, 423 f.; Herakleidai, 293 f.)
We come lastly to a character, which Aeschylus has introduced into this play, although little connected with Prometheus—that of Io. The myth of Io had already become complicated with all sorts of alien elements before the time of Aeschylus: its nucleus, of course, was the local legend of the people of Argos. According to the belief of the Argives, the personality embodied in the Inachos, the river of the Argive plain, was that of the first king of the land. Like all rivers, Inachos was the son of Okeanos (l. 636, cf, Hesiod, Theog. 336): from the great world-river all lesser ones sprang. Io, according to the form of the story here followed, was King Inachos' daughter. The first phase in her story is that Zeus falls in love with her. The next is that she is changed into a cow. The connection of the second phase with the first is somewhat obscure. According to one version, Zeus turned her into a cow to elude the jealousy of Hera; according to another, it was Hera, who did it, in order to conceal her from Zeus. In the Supplices (l. 291 f.) Aeschylus chooses the latter view: in our play it is left vague: Io merely says that the transformation was θεόσσυτος, wrought by no earthly power. It is at any rate Hera who sends the gadfly, which now drives Io over the world (ll. 592, 601, 900). What part Zeus plays in this is not clear, or why, if he recognises Io in her new shape, he does not interfere, since his passion has not yet been gratified. He is spoken of as the author of Io's miseries (l. 759), and reproached with causing them (l. 736): but it must rather be by being selfishly indifferent to them, so long as his own object is attained, that he is responsible for them. It was also, of course, Hera (though the play does not say so) who set Argos to watch lo in her cow shape. Argos was one of the monstrous creatures which, like Typhoeus, sprang from the womb of Gaia. Aeschylus at any rate follows the view that makes him a son of Earth (ll. 567, 677, cf, Supplices, 305). His monstrosity consisted in his having eyes all over his body. The charge laid upon him was to watch Io straitly, so that Zeus might have no communication with her. Zeus accordingly sent Hermes to kill him. Since the abnormal number of eyes of Argos allowed him to have always some open and vigilant, it was necessary for Hermes first to lull him to sleep by means of the syrinx, the shepherds' mouth-organ of reeds joined with wax (l. 574, cf. Ovid. Met. i. 687; Valerius Flaccus, Arg. iv. 384), and then fall upon him suddenly and unawares (l. 680).
Traces of the wanderings of Io were detected by the Greeks all over the earth. The identification of her with Isis brought her to Egypt; there, as Prometheus is made to describe it, Zeus at last comes near to her, and she conceives miraculously by the touch of his hand. Her son Epaphos is a Greek transformation of the Apis bull, taking shape originally, no doubt, among the Greek traders and mercenaries who frequented Egypt: he appears here simply as a king of Egypt. His descendant Danaos returns with his fifty daughters to Argos, and thus renews the link between Io and her native land.
All this was legend which the tragedians found already current. But if Io was to be brought on to the stage one modification was necessary. A cow could not be a dramatis persona. Her change of shape was therefore reduced to her merely having horns. It is thus that she appears in the Prometheus, and thus also in the numerous works of art, which were influenced by the dramatic tradition.[2]
Why Io comes at all into the Prometheus is not easy to say. Her connections with the main story are of the slightest. They are simply that she, like Prometheus, is a monument of the tyranny of Zeus, and that she is the ancestress of Herakles, the destined deliverer. It is obvious, however, that in order to bring these points of contact into prominence, it was not necessary for Prometheus to narrate her wanderings, past and future, at elaborate length. No one can fail to see that these geographical descriptions are an object in themselves and the main purpose for which the poet introduced Io. The geographical parts of the play were perhaps considerably longer even than they now appear, in the original text. The motives, which led Aeschylus to amplify his drama in this 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 the other two the deliverance of Prometheus by Herakles, his reconciliation with Zeus, and restoration to dignity and worship, with especial reference probably to the Attic fire-ceremonies in his honour, were duly set forth.