Prometheus BoundAeschylus
About Prometheus Bound
, traditionally ascribed to Aeschylus, presents the Titan fixed to a rock in Scythia for giving fire and the arts of civilization to humankind. Kratos and Bia, power and force, oversee the chaining. Hephaestus drives the spikes against his will. Prometheus is left alone, then visited by the chorus of Oceanids, by Oceanus who urges submission, by Io driven mad by Hera, and finally by Hermes, who demands the secret Prometheus holds: which marriage will overthrow Zeus.
Prometheus refuses. He recounts how he taught men writing, medicine, number, and craft. He prophesies Io's wanderings and the descendant (Heracles) who will free him. He will not yield the secret. The play ends in earthquake and storm as Zeus blasts him toward Tartarus. Related plays, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, survive only in fragments; the full trilogy's resolution is lost.
The drama is an argument about tyranny, knowledge, and the price of benefaction. Hesiod's Prometheus is a trickster. This Prometheus is a benefactor who endures rather than recant. Later poetry, from the Romantics to Shelley, takes him as the image of defiance against unjust power. The questions the play leaves open (whether Zeus can learn, whether necessity rules gods and men alike) remain the tradition's questions.