You can find my previous essay on a Greek tragedy (Medea) here. I wrote this for a university class, and I figured I might as well share it with you lot.
Aeschylus creates one of Greek tragedy’s most sympathetic figures in Prometheus Bound’s eponymous protagonist. The titan Prometheus’s choice to defy Zeus for the sake of humanity is a celebration of freedom, a bold repudiation against tyranny. What makes this choice all the more meaningful is Prometheus’s full cognizance of the severe consequences that he will be forced to suffer. The power of prophecy—which charts that most defining and unbreakable law in Ancient Greek mythology, fate—has given him foreknowledge of the imprisonment to come. Fate, also, offers the certainty of escape, knowledge that empowers rather than serving as a burden. This fortifies Prometheus’s resolve in his continued refusal to give up the information Zeus demands through his messenger Hermes. What strengthens Prometheus does not only come from within, however: contact with such notable characters as Oceanus, Io, and the Naiad Chorus all serve to bolster the sense of rightness to Prometheus’s cause. This essay, then, examines the three central threads of Prometheus Bound illustrated thus far—tyranny, prophecy, freedom. Special attention is given to the dynamics of power at play in Aeschylus’s work; Zeus’s depiction, so contrary to Hesiod’s own, warrants a Foucauldian approach to this question.
Prometheus Bound opens with the titan’s binding at the hands of Hephaistos, himself forced into the act by Zeus’s servants, Kratos and Bia. Prometheus’s crime warrants it, as Kratos argues over the initial scene of the tragedy, since he has disobeyed Zeus’s decree and has plundered “the gods’ treasure and give[n] it” (11) to the mortals, those “creatures of a day” (35). This act denies Prometheus his freedom, sees him bound with “chains of adamant, unbreakable” (5). At the same time, the act gives humanity its chance at freedom through Prometheus’s gift, “the bright and dancing fire” which possesses “wonderworking power” (5). The adjective “wonderworking” suggests that humanity, through the manipulation of fire, has claimed something hitherto bound exclusively to the sphere of the divine. This is Prometheus’s crime: by giving mortals the power to work wonders, he has made the borders between gods and mortals more porous than they were before. At an even more fundamental level, Prometheus has given the powerless power—the benefit of which is freedom. Kratos’s words suggest a link between the two: when he speaks of Zeus’s implacable vengeance, he notes that the tyrant’s “power is new, // and everyone with newborn power is harsh” (6) and also that “There are no carefree gods, except for Zeus. // He rules us all, so he alone is free” (8). The absolute freedom herein suggested is the purview of Zeus, yet it’s clear that humanity benefits from at least some degree of freedom through its access to Prometheus’s wonder-working gift of fire.
For all the good that can be written of Prometheus, he is as flawed a Greek deity as any other. Aeschylus’s portrayal does not shy away from showing these flaws. Prometheus is wrathful and bitter over his situation, his frustration delivering a sting to even so stalwart an ally as Okeanos: “Where did you summon the courage, / and why” (22). His knowledge of Zeus’s fate—a fate the king of Olympus cannot avoid save for Prometheus’s telling him—is the sole claim to power the bound Prometheus still has, the only proverbial ace up the titan’s sleeve. Yet it is a dubious kind of power that can be drawn from prophecy. To give it up to Zeus is to abandon resistance in the face of tyranny and grovel instead. This, Prometheus cannot do—Zeus (through his intermediary Hermes) never offers the sole price the titan would accept for the prophecy: his freedom. To hold onto it is to face worse punishment yet, as Hermes notes: “Consider the storm that will rise up against you / … / a threefold tidal wave of misery, / impossible to escape” (64). The power the prophecy grants Prometheus, then, crystallises into a way of frustrating Zeus’s continued rule, a way of casting a cloud of that, Hermes says, which Zeus “has never learned”: namely, “misery” (61). Thus, the chained Prometheus casts a shadow over Zeus’s rule, sowing the seeds that all tyrants fear to reap: an end to their reign. The absolute freedom that Kratos claims belongs to Zeus has its own borders, too.
Prometheus’s rigidity can thus be read as an act of resistance. His defiance is a dark reflection of Zeus’s own inflexibility and seeks to repay the ruler of Olympus for the suffering which the titan must endure. But what of Zeus’s own intransigence? For one, this shared trait invites a mirroring between the two figures. In his reading of the text, critic Andrew Karp argues that Aeschylus portrays both Prometheus and Zeus “as gods whose minds are rigid or unbending” (2). “Unbending” is apt. No mention of Zeus across the play suggests anything in the god but his implacability: the Chorus early on notes that “Zeus in their command respects / no law but that of willful rule, / and all who once were great he now destroys” (14); Okeanos succinctly describes his rule in comparable terms: “the King who rules by his own right, is harsh / and owes account to no one” (23). Whether by the standards of Aeschylus’s time or those of the contemporary world, Zeus is painted as a tyrant, and a harsh one. Prometheus’s punishment best exemplifies the extent of Zeus’s harshness—the titan was an ally, “the friend of Zeus,” who, in his own words, “helped create the tyrant’s rule,” yet is nevertheless “twisted in agony by his command” (23). The image of Prometheus as sage advisor and friend to Zeus comes to mind, in the times before the titan’s decision to disobey Olympus’s ruler by stealing Hephaistos’s flame and aiding humanity. Prometheus’s own words strongly suggest this vision: “There is a sickness / among tyrants: They cannot trust their friends” (18). These two lines add a touch of personal drama to the narrative, as well as an additional layer to the tyrant’s portrayal: supreme authority isolates. To better understand why, it is necessary to examine the mechanisms of power at work within Aeschylus’s play.
Michel Foucault, in Power/Knowledge (1980), describes the way in which monarchical power operates, calling it “a violent form of power which tried to attain a continuous mode of operation through the virtue of examples” (155). Clearly, the same apparatus of power is at work in Aeschylus’s play. Prometheus is the example through which Zeus’s authority is to be promulgated. The issue of this form of power is that it demands the exercising of a great amount of power. Violent power, no less, which ultimately only has “the force of an example” as its result, a result that “risks provoking revolts” (Foucault, 155). There is inherent vulnerability to what Foucault dubs “monarchical” (and what can just as easily be called “tyrannical”) power in relation to Aeschylus’s play: in short, tyranny breeds resistance. Karp makes a persuasive case about the ways in which, through Aeschylus’s lexical choice, the concept of inflexibility suggests “vulnerability that lurks behind Zeus’ tyrannical behavior. In his actions and his attitude, Zeus is as inflexible, and as potentially breakable, as the bones of a mortal” (3). This inflexibility has been shown several times already, but is perhaps best captured in the following lines:
Who would not groan with pity
at your sight—except for Zeus?
His wrath is constant, his resolve
to crush the Progeny of Heaven
will not relent
until his heart is satisfied (15)
Tyranny is undone by pity. For Zeus to temper his punishment or offer Prometheus his freedom—even at the price of a prophecy that might allow the Olympian to escape or change his fate—would be to weaken the authority of his throne.
Zeus’s tyranny may be further assessed by the nature of his godly henchmen. Kratos and Bia are unrepentant, uncaring, spouting threats and wholly incapable of even a modicum of pity—thugs, in a word. Their lines are interchangeable—in the translation used across this paper, Joel Agee chooses to have only Kratos speak while Bia, one assumes, glares in strict disapproval, the threat of physical force palpable (other translators have split the lines Agee gives to Kratos between him and Bia). Hephaistos, under this threat, is an unwilling craftsman in the employ of Zeus in the literal sense of the word: “Not of my own will but compelled / by the same power that holds you captive,” he notes as he nonetheless hammers Prometheus’s chains in place (6). Though the fire Prometheus stole to give to the humans is the smithing god’s own—his “flower” (5)—Hephaistos does not act from a position of personal injury; the stakes for him are not ones of personal conviction. The god of the forge is all the more loathsome for this. That Prometheus never says a word to him can be read as highest contempt towards one who has the choice of resisting but chooses instead survival.
Prometheus deems to speak to only one of Zeus’s cronies: “his lackey, / the carrier pigeon of our new commander in chief,” Hermes (58). The messenger of the gods is well-spoken, full of “barbs that do not miss their mark,” as Agee puts it, even as they fail to goad the titan from giving the information Zeus demands (xxix). Prometheus’s rigidness and wrath are best exemplified across this episode, as he chides and mocks Hermes time and again. The titan reduces the god from messenger to a pompous “mouthpiece of the gods” (59) and assures Hermes that he “would not exchange / [his] own misfortune for [Hermes’s] slavery” (59). Disdain and fury colour nearly every one of the choice lines Prometheus has for Hermes; owed, perhaps to the fact that the messenger god, just as much a creature of Zeus’s as Kratos and Bia, is cruel in subtler ways. His cruelty is again Zeus’s own, but this time dressed up in loquaciousness and acumen. Hermes shows sensitivity to the likeness between Zeus and Prometheus, noting that the latter’s arrogance is what “brought [Prometheus] here” (59). His position states that arrogance, intransigence, severity all belong to the domain of the supreme god himself. For another to show these traits, and in such a way as to enter into conflict with Zeus, is to stand in opposition to the very ordering of the world—or so Hermes’s position suggests. “You’re blaming me for your misfortune?” (60) is one of the most illustrative lines for Hermes’s character, showing indignation at the possibility of accepting any personal responsibility or culpability for Prometheus’s punishment. This reiterates Hermes’s inability to imagine the radicalism Prometheus stands for. The god is a fully willing agent of Zeus’s ordered world, and above reproach—in his own eyes.
Much of the criticism Prometheus throws at Hermes can be aimed at all of Zeus’s servants and is illustrative of their slavery to the tyrannical will of Olympus’s ruler. Those who are friends to Prometheus tell a different story. His fellow titan Okeanos risks his own freedom to come to the bound Fire-Bringer not due to obligation but out of love: “even kinship aside, in my heart / no one dwells higher than you,” he tells Prometheus (22). Yet another subject of Zeus, Okeanos is in a vulnerable position: a fellow titan who has sided with Zeus and so not an Olympian but allied to them—for this, logic dictates that he would be among the first to be suspected by a cautious Zeus, were impropriety to be found. As David Konstan notes in his analysis of what he dubs “The Ocean Episode in Prometheus Bound”, “the critics have not been kind to Ocean,” neglecting and disparaging him for his perceived role variously as either lackey or buffoon (63). The present essay views this figure, rather, as a comrade incensed to see a close family relation struck so low. Okeanos is wise enough to caution Prometheus against the latter’s rigidity and ill temper: “Humility, just / a small touch of it, would serve you well, Prometheus” (Aeschylus, 23). This is advice the bound titan cannot heed insofar as the Olympians are concerned, as the Hermes episode shows; yet humility can be found in Prometheus’s interactions with Io, discussed later.
Despite the danger to Okeanos, he is still willing to advocate for Prometheus’s release before the latter dissuades him. Konstan makes an apt point when he states that Okeanos “does not demand that Prometheus recant, but only that he be reconciled” (64) with Zeus through arbitration, as illustrated when the free titan cautions his nephew against further rash words: “But you, be quiet and don’t talk so freely” (Aeschylus, 23). This is Okeanos’s attempt to ensure that Prometheus not incur Zeus’s wrath further. It serves to show the depth of awareness the free titan has for his nephew’s most dangerous flaws in the present circumstance, and further demonstrates a political sensitivity the chained Prometheus clearly lacks. Though Okeanos’s desire to act as intermediary comes to naught, he shows sensibilities far beyond those of either a buffoon or a mere flunky to Zeus. In any event, Konstan’s argument is persuasive, his reading of Okeanos’s character inviting a far more complex impression on the reader.
My interest in this episode, however, lies elsewhere; namely, in the power of prophecy, which condemns Okeanos’s attempts to mediate between Prometheus and Zeus to failure. Prometheus is privy to the workings of fate, as he makes evident in the following statement:
The fate who brings things to fulfillment
has made no such decree. I will be bent
by countless agonies before I am released. (33)
The chained titan thus makes clear his awareness that no matter what course of action Okeanos pursues, he is destined to fail. Attention must be paid to the following two lines: “Now leave it be and let it not concern you. / You won’t succeed, he will not be persuaded” (24). Prometheus’s words here are not an instruction meant to stop an old friend from making a dangerous mistake; rather, this utterance relates fact. Any frustration that can be read in Prometheus’s opening words to his fellow titan, then, may be ascribed to frustration with the bonds of fate itself. The mocking barb at Okeanos (cited on page 2 of this esssay) does not constitute words of dismissal but the frustration of a prisoner who recognises his stalwart ally’s best intentions but is cursed with foreknowledge that makes the said intentions moot: “I envy you, that you escaped all blame / though you risked everything to lend me your support” (24). Prophecy weighs heavy indeed on Prometheus across this episode.
No matter how heavy the burden of prophecy, it also offers the certainty of freedom. Nor is this certainty beneficial to Prometheus alone, as the Io episode showcases. Okeanos fails to ease Prometheus’s burden with his words:
OKEANOS
Prometheus, don’t you understand:
Words are physicians to a mind that’s sick with anger.
PROMETHEUS
Yes, if you soothe the heart at the right moment,
not try to check its swelling rage by force. (26)
In Io, however, Prometheus sees a kindred spirit. The “gadfly-frenzied daughter of Inachus” (37) suffers an injustice of similar make to the titan’s own, a punishment from Olympus at the root of which lay Zeus. The encounter provides both with an opportunity to experience their separate torments as a shared burden, despite initial reservation. When Io demands that Prometheus reveal her fate, he hesitates; at her prompting, “Then why refuse to tell me everything?”, Prometheus responds with “Because to do so might appall your spirit” (40). There is something of the quality of mercy in this exchange, relating to the weight of foreknowledge. Knowing one’s own destiny in the far-off future does not make the present any easier to bear, regardless of how promising this future may be, as Prometheus’s own circumstances across Aeschylus’s play show up to this point. The episode moves on to show Io and Prometheus chart the course of the unfortunate mortal’s life—she painting the past that has brought her to the bound titan, he offering her foreknowledge of the toils she is yet to face before her curse is ended when Zeus lays his “unharming hand” on her (53). The text does not explicitly make clear whether Prometheus’s words offer Io hope or ease her burdens, her last lines bewailing the gadfly’s return.
Yet there can be no question that Prometheus is soothed by Io’s short appearance. After revealing how Io’s own line will be instrumental in freeing him, the titan’s resolve is visibly strengthened, his words a daring challenge to the Olympian tyrant:
CHORUS
You threaten Zeus with what you hope will happen.
PROMETHEUS
I speak the future and what I desire.
…
CHORUS
Aren’t you afraid to say such words out loud?
PROMETHEUS
What should I fear? It’s not my fate to die.
CHORUS
He could inflict pains worse than those you suffer.
PROMETHEUS
Then let him do so. He cannot surprise me. (56-57)
If there is an air of resentment and frustration to Prometheus in his interactions with Okeanos, the Io episode serves to replenish his resilience. The titan’s spirit of resistance burns brightest in the lines cited above, the certainty of his foreknowledge at long last transformed into a drive to endure the hardships of his imprisonment with impunity. From this point hence, Prometheus’s voice speaks out against the injustice he is victim to, undaunted despite worse torments yet to come. His final lines
And here it comes,
in plain view,
the onslaught
sent by Zeus
for my own terror.
Oh holy Mother Earth,
oh sky whose light revolves for all,
you see me. You see
the wrongs I suffer. (68)
cast the titan in the role he continues to take up in the public imagination: that of revolutionary speaker of truth to power, the courageous sufferer who continues to endure in the face of terrible torment.
He does not face the final wrath of Zeus alone. The Chorus, made up of the Oceanid daughters of Okeanos, is a near-constant companion come to the side of their friend (and cousin, a blood kinship that is not explicitly acknowledged). From the very first line spoken, the Oceanids define themselves thus: “Don’t be afraid! We come as friends!” (13). By turns kind, cautioning, and pleading, the Chorus never abandons the bound titan; as Agee points out in his Introduction, “their kindness cloaks him in an aura of immense sympathy” (xxi). The Chorus is questioning, seeking the truth behind Prometheus’s current dire straights throughout the play. Most remarkable at the end of the tragedy is the Chorus’s final position regarding the conflict between Prometheus and Zeus. Rather than impotently accept the judgment of Zeus as sovereign of the godly powers atop Olympus as is common across many other tragedies (you must look no further than the Chorus in Euripides’s The Bacchae or the Chorus in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex), the Chorus chooses instead to share in Prometheus’s suffering. When bid by Hermes to “hurry // and leave this place // go far away, and quickly”, the Chorus, too, rebels “give me counsel I can follow! // None of what you say is bearable! // How can you ask such wickedness of me?” (66). This is sacrifice analogous to Prometheus’s own. Where he chooses to sacrifice himself so that humanity won’t be wiped out by the gods, the Chorus elects to stay with the titan, to share in his burden so that he may not be alone before Zeus’s renewed wrath. It is yet another example of revolt in the face of tyranny: “I want to suffer with him what he suffers. / For I have learned to despise traitors. / There is no plague more worthy of / being spat on” (66). The Chorus, having listened through the arguments of both sides, having witnessed Prometheus’s suffering, renders its own judgment. It is not the titan who is adjudicated traitor but the tyrant and his lapdogs.
Aeschylus’s tragedy continues to bear relevance to the contemporary world, some two and a half millennia following its composition. The central position of fate and the complex workings of destiny say much about the world as it was conceptualised by the Greeks: even Zeus is bound to the path charted him by “The triple Fates. The unforgetting Furies” (33). Still more compelling is the play’s examination of tyranny, as relevant today in what it says about the figure of the tyrant as in Aeschylus’s time, and perhaps even more so. Finally, Prometheus himself continues to inspire awe as a champion of humanity, an immortal who sacrifices his freedom so that mortals may exercise some small measure of liberty all their own. Prometheus Bound’s treatment of these varied topics invites a depth of interpretation that this essay has only begun to scratch at; yet even this short reading hopes to invite new appreciation of the richness that Aeschylus’s text continues to provide.
Works Cited
Aeschylus, and Joel Agee. Prometheus Bound. New York Review Books, 2015.
Foucault, M., & Gordon, C. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977. Vintage Books.
Karp, Andrew. “The Disease of Inflexibility in Aeschylus’ ‘Prometheus Bound.’” Mediterranean Studies, vol. 6, 1996, pp. 1–12. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41166842. Accessed 2 Dec. 2023.
Konstan, David. “The Ocean Episode in the ‘Prometheus Bound.’” History of Religions, vol. 17, no. 1, 1977, pp. 61–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062497. Accessed 2 Dec. 2023.
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