Guide Note: The Ancient Greek Tragedy

Prometheus Bound tells the story of Prometheus, who has been chained by Zeus for both stealing fire and giving it to the humans, and for preventing Zeus from eliminating humankind. The Oceanids try to comfort Prometheus by talking to him during his imprisonment. Prometheus tells the chorus that he gave humankind the gift of fire and the gift of civilized arts including astronomy, agriculture, writing, mathematics, and medical supplies.

Prometheus is also gifted with the power of foresight. When Io visits him, Prometheus tells her that Zeus will stop tormenting her when she goes to Egypt and has a son. He also tells her that one of her descendants will rescue him from his torment. Hermes visits and Prometheus refuses to tell Hermes who will overthrow Zeus, so Zeus hits Prometheus with a thunderbolt and he falls into the abyss.

The play is usually attributed to Aeschylus, but some modern scholars believe that it was not written by him, but during a much later period. It was the first part of the Prometheia trilogy, but only fragments of the other two parts Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Bringer survived.

Fast Facts:

1. Since the 19th century there has been doubt about authorship
2. Takes place during one day
3. Popular in antiquity
4. Originally written in Ancient Greek
5. Fire is a dominant symbol
6. Written around 456 B.C.
7. Set on a rocky mountain in the Caucasus
8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Lord George Gordon Byron wrote poems on same theme
9. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem titled Prometheus Unbound

Important Quotations:

1. For somehow this is tyranny's disease, to trust no friends.
2. Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
3. There is not a torture or an engine wherewithal Zeus can induce me to declare these things, till he has loosed me from these cruel shackles. So let him hurl his smoky lightning flame, and throw in turmoil all things in the world with white-winged snowflakes and deep bellowing thunder beneath the earth: me he shall not bend by all this to tell him who is fated to drive him from his tyranny.