This article is about the classical Greek plays concerning the titan Prometheus. For the comic book series written by Alan Moore, see Promethea. For the festival in honour of Prometheus, see Prometheus.
The Prometheia (
tragedian Aeschylus. Though an Alexandrian catalogue of Aeschylean play titles designates the trilogy Hoi Prometheis ("the Prometheuses"), in modern scholarship the trilogy has been designated the Prometheia to mirror the title of Aeschylus' only extant trilogy, the Oresteia. Unlike the Oresteia, only one play from this trilogy—Prometheus Bound—survives. Inasmuch as the authorship of Prometheus Bound continues to be debated, the very existence of a Prometheus trilogy is uncertain. To the extent that modern scholars postulate the existence of such a trilogy by a single author, the consensus holds that it comprised Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, and Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, in that order.[1]
Cratus (Power), Bia (Violence), Hephaestus, the mortal woman Io, Oceanus, Hermes and a chorus of Oceanids. The play is composed almost entirely of speeches and contains little plot since its protagonist is chained and immobile throughout. At the beginning, Cratus, Bia and Hephaestus the smith-god chain Prometheus to a mountain in the Caucasus and then depart. According to Aeschylus, Prometheus is being punished not only for stealing fire (theft of fire), but also for thwarting Zeus' plan to obliterate the human race. This punishment is especially galling since Prometheus was instrumental in Zeus' victory in the Titanomachy
. The Oceanids appear and attempt to comfort Prometheus by conversing with him. Prometheus cryptically tells them that he knows of a potential marriage that would lead to Zeus' downfall. Oceanus later arrives to commiserate with Prometheus, as well; he urges the Titan to make peace with Zeus, and departs. Prometheus is then visited by Io, a maiden pursued by a lustful Zeus. The Olympian transformed her into a cow, and a gadfly sent by Hera has chased her all the way from Argos; Prometheus forecasts her future travels, telling her that Zeus will eventually end her torment in Egypt, where she will bear a son named Epaphus. He adds that one of her descendants (Heracles), eleven generations hence, will release him from his own torment. Finally, Hermes the messenger-god is sent down by an angered Zeus to demand that Prometheus tell him who threatens to overthrow him. Prometheus refuses, and Zeus strikes him with a thunderbolt that plunges Prometheus into the abyss.
Only eleven fragments of Prometheus Unbound survive, in the form of quotations preserved by later authors.
Twelve Labours
. Heracles then frees Prometheus from his chains and kills the eagle that tortured him daily. The play thus concludes with Prometheus free from the torments of Zeus, but the Titan and Olympian have yet to reconcile.
Athenian Areopagus provided by Aeschylus' Eumenides, it has been suggested that the drama concludes with Zeus' foundation of the yearly torch race that took place in Athens to honor Prometheus.[4]
A minority of scholars believe that Prometheus the Fire-Bringer is actually the first play in the trilogy. One reason is that Prometheus Bound begins in medias res; some have observed that after the reconstructing the Bound and Unbound as the first and second play, there simply isn't enough mythic material left for a third-position Fire-Bringer. According to his theory, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer would dramatize the Titan's theft of fire as described in the Theogony.[5]
Notes
^For an introduction to the issues surrounding the trilogy's reconstruction, see (e.g.) D.J. Conacher, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound: a Literary Commentary. Toronto, 1980; and the relevant chapter in Alan Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy. Bari, 1996.
