Prometheus Bound and Other Plays

Summary

This volume gathers the four plays of Aeschylus that survive outside the Oresteia, in E. D. A. Morshead's rhymed and blank-verse English of 1908: The Suppliant Maidens, The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes and Prometheus Bound. Each was once part of a connected group of plays; only The Persians was written to stand without its companions, and the others are the surviving panels of lost trilogies. Read together, they show Athenian tragedy close to its beginning, when the chorus still carried much of the drama and a single choice by a ruler could fill an entire play. In The Suppliant Maidens the fifty daughters of Danaus arrive at Argos fleeing marriage to their Egyptian cousins and claim kinship through Io, the Argive priestess loved by Zeus. King Pelasgus faces a true dilemma: to refuse the suppliants is to bring the wrath of Zeus and the pollution of their threatened suicide on his city, but to protect them means war with the sons of Aegyptus. He refuses to decide alone, puts the question to the assembly of Argos, and returns with its vote to defend them. The Persians, staged in 472 BC, eight years after Salamis, sets the Athenian victory inside the Persian capital of Susa. Queen Atossa dreams of disaster, a messenger lists the dead, the ghost of King Darius rises to name his son's bridging of the Hellespont as a madness against the gods, and Xerxes enters in rags. The Seven Against Thebes (467 BC) closes a trilogy on the house of Laius. Eteocles posts a champion against each of the seven attackers at the seven gates, learns that his brother Polynices stands at the seventh, and goes out under his father's curse to a death in which the brothers kill each other. Prometheus Bound is the strangest of the four. Every speaker but the wandering Io is a god. Prometheus, nailed to a Scythian crag by Hephaestus at the command of Zeus, recites the gifts he gave a race Zeus meant to destroy: fire, number, writing, the yoking of animals, ships, divination and the mixing of healing drugs. He refuses the mediation of Oceanus, foretells Io's wanderings and her descendant who will free him, and will not tell Hermes the secret marriage that could unseat Zeus. The play ends with the rock collapsing in thunder. Whether Aeschylus wrote it is still argued, and its Zeus is harsher than the Zeus of his other plays; the lost sequel seems to have reconciled the two. The collection is a strong introduction to how the Greeks thought about suppliancy, the limits of kingship, inherited curses and the gap between human and divine power. It also offers a rare case of a victor writing a tragedy for the defeated, and a Titan whose defiance can be read as courage, as pride, or as both.

Plot or Argument

• The Suppliant Maidens: sanctuary at Argos

  The Danaids and their father Danaus sit at the altars of Argos with suppliant branches. Pelasgus weighs divine wrath against war, refers the decision to the people, and wins their vote; a herald of Aegyptus tries to drag the women away and is driven off with a threat of war.

• The Persians: the news from Salamis

  Persian elders wait at Susa. Atossa describes her ominous dream, a messenger narrates the sea battle and the retreat, the ghost of Darius blames Xerxes' presumption in yoking the Hellespont and foretells Plataea, and the play closes in a long antiphonal lament with the defeated king.

• The Seven Against Thebes: the shields at the gates

  A scout describes each attacking captain and the device on his shield; Eteocles answers each with a Theban defender. When Polynices is named at the seventh gate, Eteocles chooses to face him. Both die, the city is saved, and Antigone and Ismene mourn while a herald forbids burial for Polynices.

• Prometheus Bound: the chaining

  Strength and Force supervise as a reluctant Hephaestus fastens Prometheus to the rock. Alone, the Titan cries out to the elements; the daughters of Oceanus arrive in sympathy and Oceanus himself offers to intercede, but Prometheus sends him away.

• Prometheus Bound: the gifts and Io

  Prometheus catalogues the arts he gave mortals. Io, transformed and driven by a gadfly, enters; he recounts her past and future wanderings and reveals that a descendant of hers will one day release him.

• Prometheus Bound: Hermes and the abyss

  Hermes demands the secret of the marriage that threatens Zeus. Prometheus refuses with contempt, the chorus chooses to stay with him, and the crag is shattered by earthquake and lightning.

Characters

• Prometheus, Titan, protagonist of Prometheus Bound

  Benefactor of mortals, punished by Zeus; foresighted, eloquent and unyielding to the end.

• Io, Argive princess

  Loved by Zeus and persecuted by Hera, she wanders in a frenzy; ancestress of the Danaids and of Prometheus's future deliverer.

• Hephaestus, smith god

  Chains Prometheus unwillingly, pitying a kinsman while obeying Zeus.

• Hermes, messenger of Zeus

  Delivers the final ultimatum and is answered with scorn.

• Pelasgus, King of Argos

  A ruler who will not commit his city to war without the consent of its people.

• Danaus and the Danaids, suppliants

  A father and his fifty daughters fleeing forced marriage, whose chorus carries most of the play.

• Atossa, Persian queen mother

  Widow of Darius and mother of Xerxes, who receives the news of defeat with dignity.

• Ghost of Darius, dead king

  Raised from the tomb, he interprets the defeat as divine punishment for presumption.

• Xerxes, Persian king

  Appears only at the end, ruined, to lead the lament.

• Eteocles, King of Thebes

  A capable defender of his city who walks knowingly into his father's curse.

Lessons

• A king asks his people

  Pelasgus will not choose between sacrilege and war on his own authority. Aeschylus stages an early picture of a ruler binding his city by consent, while showing that consent does not make the choice painless.

  • What does Pelasgus fear on each side of his decision?
  • Is putting the choice to the assembly an act of wisdom or a way of avoiding blame?
  • Which present-day decisions resemble his?

• Mourning the enemy

  The Persians honours the fallen Persians while celebrating Greek freedom. Darius's ghost explains the defeat as the fruit of Xerxes' presumption, so the play teaches restraint to the victors as much as it mourns the vanquished.

  • Why would an Athenian audience that had fought at Salamis watch a Persian lament?
  • What exactly does Darius condemn in his son?
  • Can a nation celebrate a victory without contempt for the defeated?

• Choosing the seventh gate

  Eteocles plans the defence of Thebes rationally until he hears his brother's name. The chorus begs him not to go; he goes. The play asks how far an inherited curse explains a choice that is still his own.

  • Where in the shield scene does Eteocles stop deliberating?
  • Is he a victim of the curse or its willing agent?
  • How does the closing burial dispute reopen the conflict the battle seemed to end?

• The giver of arts in chains

  Prometheus's speech on the arts is a compact history of civilization: shelter, astronomy, number, writing, husbandry, ships, medicine and divination. It sets up the play's question whether knowledge given against the will of the ruling god is a gift or a theft.

  • Which of Prometheus's gifts seems most important to you, and why does he list medicine first among the later boons?
  • Is Prometheus a hero, a rebel, or both?
  • How does Aeschylus's Zeus differ from the God of Scripture who gives wisdom freely?

Context

Aeschylus wrote for the City Dionysia at Athens, where each tragedian offered three tragedies and a satyr play. His career spans the Persian Wars, in which he fought at Marathon, and the early years of the Athenian democracy. The Persians reflects the confidence after Salamis (480 BC); The Suppliant Maidens, with its king who defers to the vote of the people, is often read against the democratic reforms of the 460s.

Composition

The Persians was produced in 472 BC (with Pericles as choregus) and The Seven Against Thebes in 467 BC. Morshead's introduction treats The Suppliant Maidens as the earliest surviving play, the standard view in 1908; a papyrus published in 1952 placed it in the 460s instead. Prometheus Bound has no secure date, and many scholars since the nineteenth century have questioned whether Aeschylus wrote it. Morshead's translation was published in 1908.

Reception

Prometheus became a central figure for the Romantics: Goethe's poem, Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Byron's lyric all draw on this play. Christian writers from the early Church onward compared the suffering benefactor with Christ, while also noting how unlike the biblical God Aeschylus's Zeus appears. The Persians remains the only surviving Greek tragedy on a contemporary event.

Comparisons

• The Oresteia

  The Oresteia ends with Zeus's justice settled in a court at Athens; Prometheus Bound shows the same Zeus as a new and harsh tyrant, which suggests that Aeschylus imagined divine rule itself maturing over time.

• The Theban Plays

  Seven Against Thebes covers the brothers' duel that precedes Sophocles' Antigone; its closing burial scene is the seed from which Sophocles grew a whole tragedy.

• The Histories

  Read these together: Persians (Salamis as tragic memory) beside Herodotus’ inquiry into Eastern and Greek power. Our hosted Histories file is Volume I (Books I–IV) only. Companion essay on the Comparisons hub.

• Theogony and Works and Days

  Hesiod tells the Prometheus story as a warning about a trickster punished; Aeschylus turns the same Titan into a suffering benefactor with a claim on our sympathy.

• Frankenstein

  Mary Shelley subtitled her novel The Modern Prometheus; set Victor's stolen fire of life beside the Titan's gifts and ask which maker cares for those he gives them to.

• The Bible

  The Book of Job sets a righteous sufferer protesting before God, as Prometheus protests before Zeus; but Job is answered from the whirlwind and humbled, while Prometheus is buried still defiant.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Prometheus Bound contains one of the earliest literary accounts of medicine as a human art: before Prometheus, the sick had no remedy, and he taught them to mix healing drugs. The Suppliant Maidens credits Apis, a son of Apollo, with healing by knife and charm. Io's god-sent frenzy is described as a goading madness; it is a mythic affliction, not a clinical picture, and any reading of it as illness is interpretive.

• Prometheus Bound, Prometheus's catalogue of arts

  Prometheus lists medicine first among his later gifts: the sick once wasted for lack of food, ointment or draught until he taught the mixing of mild drugs.

  Ancient Medicine Pharmacology Poisons
• The Suppliant Maidens, Pelasgus's account of Argos

  The king explains that the land is named for Apis, a seer and healer who cleansed it of monsters and devised cures by knife and charm.

  Ancient Medicine
• Prometheus Bound, the Io episode

  Io enters driven by the gadfly and cries out in a frenzy sent by Hera; Prometheus foretells the end of her wanderings.

  Madness Psychosis

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the debate in the Argive assembly that Pelasgus reports only in summary, giving one speech for defending the suppliants and one against.

• Fiction

  Retell the battle of Salamis as a Persian survivor might describe it to his family in Susa, using details from the messenger's speech.

• Classroom

  Design the seven shields of the attackers at Thebes from the scout's descriptions, and explain how each Theban defender answers the boast on his opponent's shield.

• Essay

  Prometheus calls his gifts arts; Strength calls the gift of fire a theft. Argue which description Aeschylus wants the audience to accept, using the opening and closing scenes.

Further Reading

• The Oresteia, Aeschylus

  The one complete surviving trilogy.

• The Histories, Herodotus

  Books VII-VIII narrate Xerxes' invasion and Salamis.

• Prometheus Unbound, Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Shelley's 1820 lyrical drama reworking the lost sequel.

• Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod

  The earlier Prometheus myth.