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The Paradox of the Prometheus Vinctus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Lewis R. Farnell
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Extract

The student of Greek religion has no more difficult problem to face than that of the Prometheus Vinctus. In previous writings I had always evaded it, because I had not found any solution and I hoped that there might be one. Failing to find anything satisfactory myself or in the writings of others, I have spoken of it in the title of this paper as a paradox rather than a problem. And I am only now setting down my thoughts on it in outline, because I do not find that the religious difficulties of that play are appreciated in their full gravity either by the commentators or by the writers on Greek religion.

The play is unique among (a) the dramas of the Attic stage, (b) the literature of Greece, (c) the religious literature of the world. The truth of the first two statements can be proved by a rapid glance through the existing and recorded literature of Greece, especially through the products of the Attic drama.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , 1933 , pp. 40 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1933

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References

1 Vide Monier-Williams, Dictionary, s.v. Śiva.

2 Vide my Cults of the Greek States, v, p. 381, and i, Athena, Ref. 98.a

3 1. 190.

4 Apollod, 1, 7, 2.

5 Ibid. 3, 8, 2, mentions the view that the flood was caused by the wickedness of Lykaon.

6 He does not allude to the vile Oriental torture of impaling, to which a phrase in Hesiod appears to hint Theog. 522.

7 Vol. i, p. 288; vol. ii, p. 380.

8 Attributes of God, pp. 163–67.

9 On the other hand, Hephaistos shows some kindly sympathy with Prometheus, no doubt because he was affined to him as a brother-god in the Attic cult.

10 E.g. Dio. Chrys, . Or. vi, pp. 91–92Google Scholar M.

11 ‘The wrath of Zeus is a disease, the unrestraint of Prometheus is a disease,’ p. 11.

12 Müller, , FGH. ii, Fr. 19Google Scholar: his new version blurs the violation, but that is implied.

13 ll. 180–90; 939–59; 985–95; 1019–28.

14 Vide my Hero-Cults, pp. 276–77.

15 ll. 997–1002.

16 ll. 169–83.

17 pp. 294–95.

18 It has been thought that ll. 566–67, expresses the poet's intuition of some higher purpose of Zeus which Prometheus has wrongly tried to thwart. The context is against this: the phrase is only a beautiful expression of the impotence of man: if Prometheus relied on man to save him from the wrath of Zeus he relied on a rotten reed.

19 Vide Thomson, , Prometheus Bound, p. 12Google Scholar, n. 4.

20 Aeschylos-interpretationen, p. 150, and Glaube der Hellenen, ii, pp. 133–4.

21 Quoted by Thomson, op. cit., p. 12, n. 4.

22 It is certain that in the Aeschylean as in the later versions Prometheus gives up the secret before he is finally released (Philod, . Π Εὐσϵβ ii, 41Google Scholar): this is a departure from his previous determination, P. V. 177; but the passage in Hyginus, , Fab. 54Google Scholar, ‘itaque fide data…’ suggests that a mutual treaty was made between the two antagonists, and this might be drawn from the Aeschylean source.

23 According to Plutarch, Vit. Pomp. c. I, Prometheus says this to Herakles after he has been rescued.

24 This pardoning of the Titans had been mentioned by Pindar, , P. iv, 1Google Scholar. 291: vide my edition, vol. ii, p. 167: the date of P. iv was 462 B.C., probably near to the date of the Prometheus trilogy.

25 E.g. on the Vulci vase, where he is represented standing majestically before Hera, who offers him a libation. Vide Roscher, , Lexikon, iii, 3086Google Scholar.

26 Haig, , Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 112Google Scholar, quotes Milton's admiration for Satan versus Jehovah; but if we scrutinise it we find no real parallel there.

27 Haig, op. cit., p. III, expressed the opinion that the Athenian people would not have been shocked by the portrait of Zeus given in the Prometheus Vinctus. But he wrote without knowledge of the popular religious psychology.

28 11. 201–15.

29 In Protag. pp. 320 D–322 there is no hint of the Aeschylean handling of the fire-myth. In Gorg. p. 523D Zeus is said to have ordered Prometheus to deprive mankind of foreknowledge of death, from moral motives: we discern the debt to Aeschylus, P. V., 11. 250–52, but there is no acknowledgment.

30 1456a2.

31 O. I, iii, 17–33.

32 Georg, i, 123–35.

33 Zeus is here the confirmed man-hater: he releases Prometheus as soon as he has told his secret: there is no mention of Herakles.

34 In the opening scene describing the binding of Prometheus, and in Prometheus' appeal, §3,

35 There is nothing definite to be detected in Apollodoros; nor in Hyginus, , Fab. 54Google Scholar, and in Astronom. xv (‘Sagitta’) he only refers to the authority of Aeschylus for one detail, that Prometheus was bound for thirty thousand years.

36 Paus. V, xi, 6.