This is a play by Aeschylus. It is in GB Volume 5 - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes.
Characters
- Prometheus
- Kratos
- Bia
- Hephaestus
- Chorus of the Oceanides
- Oceanus
- Io
- Hermes
Summary
Prometheus Bound (Prometheus Vinctus) is a tragedy centered on the intellectual and moral rebellion of the Titan Prometheus against the newly established reign of Zeus. The play begins in a desolate mountain gorge in Scythia, where Prometheus is being chained to a rock by Hephaestus, acting under the brutal supervision of Kratos (Strength) and Bia (Force). His crime is his “excess of love for humankind”: he stole the “blossom of all-forging fire” and gave it to mortals, along with the “mighty teacher of all arts”—reason, number, writing, medicine, and navigation. Zeus, characterized as a “new-born power” that is “ever pitiless,” had intended to destroy the human race and replace it with something else, a plan Prometheus alone thwarted.
The action of the play consists of a series of visitors who come to witness Prometheus’s torment. The Chorus of Oceanides (daughters of Oceanus) offers sympathy and marvels at his defiance. Their father, Oceanus, arrives on a winged monster to advise Prometheus to submit to the “tyrant of the gods,” but Prometheus rejects his “politic counsel” as cowardice. He reminds Oceanus of the fate of other rebels like Atlas and Typhon, who were crushed by the weight of Zeus’s wrath. Prometheus remains steadfast, asserting that he chose his path freely: “Of my free will, my own free will, I erred.”
A significant portion of the play involves the arrival of Io, a mortal maiden who has been transformed into a heifer and is pursued across the earth by a stinging gadfly. Her condition is a direct result of Zeus’s lust and Hera’s jealousy. Prometheus, the “Forethinker,” provides Io with a prophecy of her future wanderings and her eventual release from suffering. He also reveals that one of her descendants (Heracles) will be the one to eventually unbind him. This meeting between two victims of Zeus’s power underscores the arbitrary and destructive nature of the new Olympian regime.
The climax of the drama occurs when Prometheus hints at a secret knowledge that threatens Zeus’s throne—a marriage the king will make that will produce a son mightier than his father. Zeus sends Hermes to demand the details of this secret, but Prometheus responds with increasing scorn, refusing to trade his “sorry lot” for the “service of a lackey.” The play ends with a cataclysmic storm and earthquake as Zeus executes his final threat, burying Prometheus and the rock to which he is bound in the depths of the earth.