Fasten them round his arms with all thy strength! Strike with thy hammer! Nail him to the rocks!
~ ‘Prometheus Bound’ by Aeschylus (G. M. Cookson translation. p40. line 55)
The play starts with Kratos and Bia carrying Prometheus to a remote mountain with Hephaestus following them with tools like hammer, chains, etc. With Kratos’ constant urging, Hephaestus fastens Prometheus to the rock. After they leave, Prometheus says that he has met this fate because he stole and gave humans fire and taught them every art to make them mighty. One by one, many characters visit Prometheus to lament and they try to persuade him to ask for forgiveness. The chorus (daughters of Oceanus) come first, followed by Oceanus, then Io and then Hermes. The dialogue with Io is the longest, and the dialogue with Hermes shows Prometheus in his most arrogant state. When Io recounts her backstory, it was a reiteration of the story in ‘The Suppliant Maidens’. Prometheus mentions that one of her progeny will be responsible for Zeus’ downfall but doesn’t divulge further. The play ends with Zeus meting out the punishment that Hermes talked about. There is an earthquake and Prometheus sinks into the abyss.
I haven’t read Prometheus Bound, but it feels so familiar. The earlier plays like The Suppliant Maidens and The Seven Against Thebes were stories that I hadn’t heard before, but when I saw this title on the Contents page towards the beginning of the book, I was eager to reach this point. It seems like this story has been told many times in different formats or as a substory of a story. It also seems like references to Prometheus as a code word for someone who goes beyond the norms and is defiant beyond all odds, exists in multiple places in modern life. Ridley Scott’s movie Prometheus comes to mind immediately, but I’m sure I’ve seen the references of Prometheus in many other places before - Ship names, team names, project names, etc.