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Contents

Page

Argument...................................................................................................................3

Chapter 1. Myths and Mythology, from Ancient Greeks to Modern Day...........4

1.1. The origin of myths and mythology................................................... 4

1.2. Recurrent Themes. ..............................................................................4

1.3. Older Interpretations of Myths........................................................... 5

1.4. Modern Theories. .................................................................................6

Chapter 2. The Promethean Myth...........................................................................7

2.1. Prometheus In Greek Culture........................................................... 7

2.2. Prometheus in Greek Mythology....................................................... 8

Chapter 3. Prometheus in Literature......................................................................12

3.1. Hesiods Version of the Promethean Myth ...................................... 12

3.1.1. Prometheus in Theogony.................................................... 12

3.1.2. Prometheus in Works and Days.......................................... 13

3.2. Aeschyluss Prometheus Bound......................................................... 16

3.3. Conclusion............................................................................................ 18

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Chapter 4. P.B. Shelleys Prometheus Unbound.................................................... 19

4.1. The Life and work of P.B. Shelley...................................................... 19

4.2. Genesis................................................................................................ 23

4.3. Act I of Prometheus Unbound............................................................ 25

4.3.1. First part of Act I................................................................... 26

4.3.2. Second Part of Act I............................................................... 27

4.4. Act II of Prometheus Unbound.......................................................... 30

4.5. Act III of Prometheus Unbound.......................................................... 35

4.5. Act IV of Prometheus Unbound............................................................ 36

Conclusions...............................................................................................................39

Bibliography.............................................................................................................48

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Argument

As a little child I was always fascinated by the legends of the Ancient Greece and the

legends about Gods and Heroes. Last year I went on my summer vacation in Greece and one of

my goals was to visit Athens and especially the Acropolis. What I saw is beyond words. It still

amazes me how a place can have so much memories. To think that thousands of years ago the

Acropolis was a place of adulation, a place were the Greeks brought sacrifices to their gods and

goddesses.

So I decided to choose as a theme Romantic Revisitations of the Greek Promethean Myth .

The goal of this paper is to show the evolution of the Promethean myth in literature from ancient

time to the Romantic period.

The works I choose to discuss are Greek myths and mythology, Hesiods Theogony and

Works and Days , Aeschyluss Prometheus Bound and of course P.B. Shelleys Prometheus

Unbound .

I intend to structure my paper in four chapters. In the first chapter I will try to define

myths and mythology. My second chapter is about Prometheus and how he was presented in

Greek mythology and culture. In the third chapter I analyzed 3 important works: Hesiods

Theogony and Works and days , and also Aeschyluss Prometheus Bound . My last chapter and the

most important and most is P.B. Shelleys Prometheus Unbound. It contains both the life of Shelley and an analysis of Prometheus Unbound .

I start by reading different books about the Greek myths and work my way up to P.B.

Shelleys Prometheus Unbound. For my research I used books form the universitys library and

also I used internet resources, the online library Questia .

Every work was analysed separately and in my conclusion I did some parallels between

Hesiods Theogony and Works and Days and between Aeschyluss Prometheus Bound and P.B.

Shelleys Prometheus Unbound , and also I analyzed the Promethean persona from Hesiod until

Shelley.

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CHAPTER 1

MYTHS AND MYTHOLOGY, FROM ANCIENT GREEKS TO

MODERN DAYS

1.1. The origin of myths and mythology

While ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish mythologies are the best known to mankind, other

important mythologies are the Norse, which is less anthropomorphic than the Greek; the Indian,

which tends to be more abstract and otherworldly than the Greek; the Egyptian, which is closely

related to religious ritual; and the Mesopotamian, which shares with the Greek mythology a

strong concern for the relationship between life and death .1

Myth has been employed for the enrichment of literature since the time of Aeschylus and has

been used by some of the major English poets for example: Milton, Shelley, and Keats. Some

great literary figures, notably William Blake, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot,

and Wallace Stevens have consciously constructed personal myths using the old materials and

newly constructed symbols. 2

1.2. Recurrent Themes

Studies of the myths of North and South American natives, Australian aborigines, the

peoples of South Africa, and others have revealed how widespread the mythological elements

and motifs are. 3 Although there is no specific universal myth, there are many themes and motifs

that recur in the myths of various cultures and ages. Some cultures have myths of the creation of

the world; these range from a god making the earth from abstract chaos to a specific animal

creating it from a handful of mud. Other myths of cyclical destruction and creation are paralleled

by myths of seasonal death and rebirth. In Greece the concern with renewed fertility wasseasonal. Certain other cultures, for example Mesopotamia, were concerned with longer periods

1 Robin Hard , The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology , Routledge, London, 2004, p. 81

2 Andr Bonnard , Greek Civilization, Allen and Unwin, London, 1957, p. 16.

3 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return , Pantheon books, New York, 1954, p 25.

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of vegetative death through prolonged drought. The idea of a golden age in which humanity is

viewed as having come from an earlier perfection is another common theme, for example

Hesiods Golden Age and the Garden of Eden in Jewish and Christian thought 4. The flood motif

is extremely widespread and is one element of a group of myths that concern the destruction and

re-creation of the world. Myths treating the origin of fire, or its retrieval from some being who

has stolen it or refuses to share it and the dead or the relation between the living and the dead, are

also common. 5

1.3. Older Interpretations of Myths

There have been many theories as to the reasons for similarities among myths. Many

have viewed myths merely as poor versions of history, and have attempted to analyze andexplicate them in no sacred ways to account for their apparent absurdity. Some ancient Greeks

explained myths as allegories, and looked for a reality concealed in poetic images. Theagenes of

Rhegium was an early proponent of this method of interpretation; it was most fully developed by

the Stoics, who reduced the Greek gods to moral principles and natural elements. 6 Euhemerus

considered the gods to have been renowned historical figures that became altered or exaggerated

through the passage of time. Another interpretation sees myths as developing from an improper

separation between the human and nonhuman; animals, rocks, and stars are considered to be on a

level of intelligence with people, and the dead are thought to inhabit the world of the living in

spiritual form.

1.4. Modern Theories

4 Robin Hard , op. cit., p. 55.

5 Mircea Eliade, op. cit., p 25.

6 Jan N. Bremmer, Andrew Erskin, The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations , EdinburghUniversity Press,Edinburgh. Publication, 2010, p. 170.

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Sir James Frazer, whose book The Golden Bough (1890) is a standard work on

mythology, believed that all myths were originally connected with the idea of fertility in nature,

with the birth, death, and resurrection of vegetation as a constantly recurring motif. 7

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung believed that there is an inherent tendency in all people to form certain

of the same mythic symbols. 8 Religious scholar Mircea Eliade contended that myths are recited

for the purpose of ritually recreating the beginning of time when all things were initiated so one

can return to the original, successful creative act. 9 Those who characterize the ordinary as

profane and secular, view myths as a form of sacred speech.

Sigmund Freud believed that the irrationality of myth arises from the same source as the

disconnectedness of dream; they are both symbolic reflections of unconscious and repressed

fears and anxieties. Such fears and anxieties may be universal aspects of the human condition, or

particular to distinct societies. 10

7 Mircea Eliade, op. cit., p. 67.

8 Idem, Ibidem , op. cit., 69.

9 Idem, Ibidem , op. cit., p 75.

10 Idem, Ibidem , op. cit., p. 80.

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CHAPTER 2

THE PROMETHEAN MYTH

2.1. P rometheus In Greek Culture

The importance of fire to civilization and the importance of the one who first delivered

fire to the people cannot be understated. Fire is the element that, once mastered, enables the

human animal to eat cooked food, which thereby separates him from the other animals that eat

raw food. Mastery of fire enables one to provide artificial heat and light, to burn waste, and to

fashion objects from metal. Recognition of the variety of uses and of the great power, bothconstructive and destructive, of fire may have led to the discovery of fire as a divine force and

thus secured the place of fire in religious acts such as the burning of incense, oil, and sacrifices.

While Hermes was believed to have invented fire sticks and fire, according to the Homeric

Hymn to Hermes, Prometheus, the one with foreknowledge (pro=before or fore, and

manthano=to know) was believed to have been the one who gave fire to mortals. 11

From at least the fifth century B.C., Prometheus was worshipped at Athens with a cult,

shared, significantly, with Hephaistos, who as god of the smithy also has ties with fire and

creation, and the lampadephoria, a special torch race. Yet, the appearance of Prometheus in any

work of art is rare in proportion to his status as a benefactor of the human race. In fact, the only

time when one might notice a proliferation 12 of art in which Prometheus is the subject is during

the sixth century, the same century that saw the expulsion of the tyrants from Athens; and Attic

vase painting, not epic, lyric, or drama depicted the story of Prometheus.

Prometheus, however, is more than the culture hero who brought fire to the human race.

While his reputation as the fire-bringer may be the single most important aspect of the

Promethean persona because of the many important associations between fire and human11 William Fairfield Warren, The Earliest Cosmologies:The Universe as Pictured in Thought by Ancient Hebrews,

Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Iranians, and Indo-Aryans: A Guidebook for Beginners in the Study of Ancient Literatures and Religions , Eaton & Mains,New York, 1909, p. 75.

12 H. B. Cotterill, Ancient Greece: A Sketch of Its Art, Literature & Philosophy Viewed in Connexion with Its External History from Earliest Times to the Age of Alexander the Great , Frederick A. Stokes, New York, 1913, p.70.

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advancement, it is by no means the only component of this characters complex identity.

Prometheus the creator, rebel, and philanthropist is present in the myths about the acquisition of

fire. Prometheus is also present in these early stories in his role as trickster, as companion of the

first woman, and as primordial figure in the history of the concept of hope.

2.1.P rometheus In Greek Mythology

Traditionally the Greek civilization is one of the oldest civilizations the world had ever

known to mankind. Knowing the full content of Greek Mythology isnt a simple task. There is an

endless series of stories from different times and different origins on which there where attempts

of classification, and studies and verifications with parallel myths or different historical stories

and events. It may seem odd, but the Hellen myth its not entirely a story , it represents far away

ages, it completes historical voids, and above al is an index of the cultural level. 13

The word mythology is Greek and had stayed common in other languages, thus revealing

the great value of this saved wealth until these days. The legacies of Homer, Hesiod, of the great

tragedies and other ancient writers represent the pride of the Greek civilization for without this

European culture would have not existed.

The myths of the ancient Greeks, like the myths of most other cultures, were forever in

constant change as they were passed on by word of mouth and retold in different ways byauthors of successive ages. A good impression of the nature of the resulting vulgate or standard

tradition, as conceived by mythographers of the Hellenistic or early Roman period, can be gained

from the Library of Apollodorus. 14 The main myths and legends were organized into a pseudo-

historical pattern to provide a remarkably coherent history of the universe and divine order and

of the Greek world in the heroic era; and this history was underpinned by rigorous systems of

divine and heroic genealogy, which were essential if consistent chronologies were to be

developed. The individual myths within this time could be recorded in a variety of forms; even

within the earlier literature, between the time of Homer and that of Euripides, they could undergo

a multitude of variations.

13 Ken Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology , Routledge, London, 1992, p. 10.

14 Idem, ibidem , p. 13.

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a godlike beauty from clay and water. The girl will be the source of all evil for Prometheus men,

a woman named Pandora, name which in ancient Greek means all-gifted. After Hephaistos

creates the woman, Zeus endows her with all kinds of gifts by the will of the gods. Athena

dresses her in a silver gown, an embroidered veil, garlands and a crown of silver. Hephaistos also

makes a copper box in which Zeus puts all the miseries of the world. He then sends her to Earth

as a gift for Prometheus, but Prometheus becomes suspicious, and refuses her, but his brother,

Epimethius falls in love with her and marries her. When Pandora gives him the box he becomes

curious and by opening it thus releases the miseries, but when he realises what he has done he

quickly closes it, without knowing that he left Hope in the box. Zeus was not satisfied with this

punishment, and he has Prometheus chained to a rock on Mountain Caucasus, and sends a

vicious eagle to feed daily from his liver. The liver would regenerate over night so that the next

day the eagle would feed again on his liver. This endless suffering would be Zeuss punishmentof Prometheus for creating mankind and giving them the gift of fire. According to some versions

of the myth, Prometheuss liver would have been the daily meal of the eagle, until the end of

time, if it hadnt been for Hercules who released him and killed the eagle, thus saving him from

his torment.

Prometheus not only created mankind in Greek mythology, but he is also its protector. He

created, but also he helped develop it, he taught mortals to raise and control the animals, but also

he taught them how to grow crops and harvest them. 16

In other versions of the myth, Prometheus moulded men from water and earth and gave

them fire which he had hidden in a fennel stalk unknown to Zeus. When Zeus learned of it, he

ordered Hephaistos to nail Prometheus to Mount Caucasus in Scythia. Prometheus was pinned

there for many years. An eagle swooped down upon him daily and ate his liver, which grew back

during the night. This is the penalty Prometheus paid for stealing fire, until Heracles freed him.

Prometheus had a son, Deucalion, who was king of the region around Pythia. He married

Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, who was the first woman and was made by the

gods. Now when Zeus wished to destroy the race of bronze, Deucalion, following Prometheuss

advice, built an ark, put in provisions, and entered it with Pyrrha. Zeus caused a heavy rain to fall

and submerged the greater part of Greece, with the result that all of mankind was drowned

except for a few who fled to nearby high mountains. At that time the mountains of Thessaly were16 Jan N. Bremmer, Andrew Erskine The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations , EdinburghUniversity Press, Edinburgh, 2010, p. 179.

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separated and all the land outside the Isthmus and the Peloponnese was flooded. Deucalion was

carried through the sea in the ark for nine days and nine nights and then came to rest on

Parnassus. When the rain stopped he emerged from the ark and brought offerings to Zeus as the

god of Escape. Zeus sent Hermes to him and granted him a wish. He asked for mankind to come

into being. On Zeus instructions he and Pyrrha picked up stones and threw them over their

heads. The stones he threw became men, the ones Pyrrha threw, women. From this comes the

word people , metaphorically from stone .17

17 Jan N. Bremmer, Andrew Erskine, op. cit., p. 195.

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CHAPTER 3

PROMETHEUS IN LITERATURE

2.1. Hesiods Version of the Promethean Myth

2.1.1. Prometheus in Theogony

The story of Prometheus receives its first full literary treatment during the eighth century

B.C. in the Theogony and the Works and Days of Hesiod. Hesiod, an epic poet who wrote in the

Boeotian dialect, creates in Theogony an elaborate genealogical account of the origins of the

gods; Works and Days describes the hardships of rural life and includes some folk wisdom and

comments on the calendar.

The Hesiodic poems, together with the Homeric epics, are the earliest full-length texts in

ancient Greek. The composition of the first literary Prometheus stories during this time speaks to

the importance of the myth, for one writes down what one does not want to forget. Moreover, the

appearance in eighth-century B.C. literature of this particular myth with its rebel-hero coincides

with the Age of the Tyrants. 18

Theogony contains the longer of the two Hesiodic accounts of Prometheus. According to

Hesiod, Prometheus is the son of the Titan Iapetos and the Okeanid Klymene. His brothers

include Atlas, Menoitios, and Epimetheus. Hesiod explains that Zeus punished the deviousness

of Prometheus by binding him to a column, not a mountainside as in Aeschylus, where each day

an eagle came to eat Prometheuss vital organs. The organs grew back by night, and on the

following day, the eagle would atack again. This happened, Hesiod relates, until Heracles killed

the eagle and freed Prometheus from his suffering.

The section in Theogony which deals with the punishment of Prometheus comprises four

lines. The longer part of Hesiods Prometheus story tells about how Prometheus, after killing anox, contrived so that he might save the better part of his quarry for himself and serve up to Zeus

as a sacrifice the fat and bones. Strangely, this Zeus of the poem is aware of Prometheuss trick

and permits the Titan to con him. Only after Prometheus serves the fat and bones, which are

18 Ken Dowden, op. cit. , p. 86.

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made to look like a hearty sacrifice, does Zeus reprimand him and, interestingly, punishes him by

presenting him with the first woman.

The first woman is not named in Theogony . She is created at Zeuss request by

Hephaistos, and is clothed and decked with wreaths of new herbs by Athena and a gold crown

from Hephaistos. This nameless creature is a beautiful evil, a wonder for mortals and immortals

alike to behold, but otherwise a creature that is not helpful in times of poverty, which causes

mischief, who is greedy and lazy, and who has an inborn propensity for working evil. The catch

is that the man who avoids woman will also be unhappy, for he will have no one to take care of

him in old age.

2.1.2 Prometheus in Works and Days

The story of the first woman who is sent as a punishment for Prometheuss trickery is

repeated and expanded in Works and Days within the context of that poems version of the

Prometheus myth. The story in Works and Days is told to explain that humans must work hard

because Zeus hid the means of making a living after Prometheus had tricked him. Zeus hid fire,

which Prometheus thereafter stole. Zeus, in return for this new transgression, sends an evil to

men. In this account Hephaistos is again the one ordered to fashion woman from earth and water;

here, his gifts to her are specified. He gives her the voice and strength of a human, a beautiful

maiden-shape with a goddess-like face. Athena is charged to teach her needlework and weaving;

Aphrodite is to pour grace and grievous longing and limb- stirring cares on her head; Hermes is

to put in her the mind of a bitch and deceitful ways .19 Hermes then conducts this first woman,

who is named Pandora, Hesiod explains, because all the gods had given her a gift, to

Epimetheus, not Prometheus. Epimetheus, forgetting the advice of his brother to refuse all gifts

from Zeus and living up to his reputation as an idiot, accepts Pandora. The story follows of how

Pandora releases all the miseries and evils from a closed jar into the world by removing the jars

lid. Only Hope remains sealed in the jar and while hope dispels certain disaster, it also implies

fear or uncertainty. There is expectation of good, of reconciliation, but the outcome hangs in the

balance.

19 M. L. West, Theogony And Works and Days , Oxford University Press, Oxford,1999, p. 34.

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The story in Works and Days repeats and redevelops some of the major themes found in

Theogony. A chief repetition occurs in the appearance in both poems of Prometheus as a trickster

or at least trickster-like character. The trickster, according to Paul Radin, is typically creator and

destroyer, giver and negator. 20 He deceives others and is himself deceived. He acts from impulse,

causing good and evil, but is conscious neither of what he does nor of the moral consequences of

his actions. In fact, the trickster has neither moral nor social values. Passions and appetites drive

him. Stories of his adventures overlap with the stories of animals, supernatural beings, and

monsters, as well as human beings, who share traits similar to his.

Prometheus, therefore, appears as a trickster-god in Works and Days who has deceived

Zeus, a supernatural force who, like Prometheus, is noted for his intelligence, and who steals for

men the fire Zeus had hid as a punishment for the deception. There is no mention anywhere in

Works and Days of the violent punishment known from Theogony and Prometheus Bound .Works and Days only shows Zeus meeting Prometheus with trickery, not force. Thus, he sends

Pandora, a ravishingly beautiful woman, whose beauty will be unequal to all of the misery she

will bring to mankind.

We have to raise the question of how significant is Prometheuss control of fire. 21 The

question is clouded by the importance later myths achieved which emphasized Prometheus the

fire-bringer or Prometheus the creator, and neglected the other characteristics of the Promethean

persona. If length of poetic treatment is a valid indicator of significance, then in Theogony, the

earliest extant literary portrait of Prometheus, the trickster surpasses the fire-stealer. If, however,

one uses more subjective standards of judgment and argues that, although the story of

Prometheus the fire- stealer is shorter, its impact is greater (since the punishment for the theft of

fire is more severe than the punishment for deceiving Zeus at sacrifice), then the fire-stealer

surpasses the trickster. However, if we stop to reflect that in both stories, fire is the common

element. In one story, fire is the element stolen from the gods; in the other, it is an element that

enables the sacrifice to be made. In both instances, Prometheus has mastery of fire and knows its

qualities and uses. He is able to smuggle the far-seen brilliancy of untiring fire to men in the

stem of a fennel stalk and to offer a sacrifice to Zeus. Moreover, we might argue, that

20 J. T. Sheppard Aeschylus & Sophocles:Their Work and Influence. Contributors , Longmans, Green, New York,1927, p. 10


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Prometheus the fire- stealer is punished with fire. Therefore, length of poetic treatment alone is

not enough to make the trickster more important than the fire-stealer. However, it will be

important to keep in mind the trickster-like qualities of the Promethean persona from the

beginning through to his much later transformation into Faust, even though the outstanding

feature of the character is his mastery of fire.

A number of meaningful associations might be made at this point. We can also argue that

is it unreasonable to look to the Hesiodic sacrifice story as a genesis of the myths about

Prometheus the creator of life? 22 Ironically, it seems that the story about offering dead parts to

immortal gods contains within its text a creation myth. The purpose of sacrifice is to please a god

or the gods; thus, one would assume that the sacrifice must be in some way valuable to the god.

Furthermore, if Prometheus wanted to please the gods with an animal sacrifice, then he would

have offered the most valuable animal: a human being, the creature of which he is so fond. InTheogony, Prometheus makes a sacrifice from animal fat and bones, not the choicest parts of the

beast, but the scraps. However, in spite of the fact that he is not offering the best parts, a

recognized problem posed by the text, Prometheus, in putting together a sacrifice, acts as a

creator, for he is assembling inanimate pieces to represent a once-living being. Although there is

a significant difference between creating an inanimate sacrifice and a breathing human, it may

not be irrelevant that Prometheus, who in later mythology was to become one who moulds

humans, began as one who moulded animals for sacrifice. We might imagine how from this

modest beginning as moulder of sacrificial animals, later mythology developed Prometheus into

the moulder of human beings. Although Prometheus ultimately fails in his attempt to deceive

Zeus, the one who would dare to match wits with the mind of Zeus must have given considerable

forethought to his plans, unless we are to assume that he is a fool. However, the brother of

Prometheus, Epimetheus, is in every way his opposite. Hesiod describes Epimetheus at first

mention in Theogony as one who is dull-witted and who from the beginning was trouble to men.

Commentators on the relationship between these two antipodal brothers have pondered whether

at one time these characters may have been one and the same and this would account for any

traces of the comic in the story of how a Titan tried and failed to trick Zeus. Moreover, the

inclusion of two opposite personalities striving against each other in one figure points back to the

archetypal and archaic trickster figure, again stressing the antiquity of the Promethean story. If

22 J. T. Sheppard, op. cit. , p. 28.

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the characters Prometheus and Epimetheus were never the same, their history is nevertheless

permanently linked. Thousands of years later, Goethe would still be trying to fit together these

two antipodal brothers in his own Prometheus dramas, Prometheus and Pandora .23

2.2. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound

Prometheuss belief that he will be able to deceive the mind of Zeus stands at the

beginning of a tradition that culminates in conflict between Zeus and Prometheus in Prometheus

Bound . The will to engage the supreme cosmic being in intellectual conflict is, in fact, another

important characteristic of the Promethean persona. The Hesiodic Prometheus, who dares to

attempt to outwit Zeus, shows hubris and pride. It is this moral fault, which leads toPrometheuss downfall and punishment in Theogony and it is the appearance of this moral fault

as a characteristic of the Promethean persona which enables one to bring the discussion into the

sphere of ideas shared by Solon, Aeschylus, and Herodotus.

The source of Prometheuss pride is his cunning, his deviousness, his intelligence, and it

is for asserting his intelligence that he is punished. In Theogony Prometheus is bound and

transfixed, and then attacked by Zeuss eagle. Moreover, Prometheuss favourites, mortal men,

are also punished because of Prometheuss deeds and are deprived of fire. We next learn from

Theogony that in retaliation the son of Iapetos utterly deceived him and stole the far-seen

brilliancy of untiring fire in a hollow fennel stalk, a report echoed in Works and Days. 24 For

Prometheuss thievery, man receives the first woman, the beautiful evil as a punishment.

It may be worthwhile at this point to remember that attempts have been made to trace the

word Titan to the Hittite titas or father, that stories of the Titans are, as Karl Kerenyi notes,

characterized by a masculine aggressiveness, 25 and that Prometheus in both Hesiod and

Aeschylus stands in a relationship to humanity which, although ambiguous, may be termed

patriarchal. The idea of Prometheus as a father or at least as a father-figure is important. The fate

of Prometheus and man is linked in Hesiod and, as Kernyi remarks, the connection is made

23 Ken Dowden, op. cit. , p. 53.

24 M. L. West, op. cit. , p. 84.

25 C. Kernyi, Prometheus:Archetypal Image of Human Existence , Bollingen Foundation, New York 1963, p. 83.

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tacitly. 26 No explanation is offered for this particular bond in which Prometheus works on behalf

of man, and man suffers together with Prometheus for the Titans transgressions against Zeus.

However, although neither Hesiod nor Aeschylus offers any answer as to why this Titans story

is so intimately linked to that of the human race, Kernyi has made a few observations that merit

reflection and that can be used to construct a possible answer. 27

Hesiod states that gods and men share a common descent; according to this genealogical

scheme, there is reason to think of Prometheus as a being who shares a family connection to

man. Karl Kernyi presents the possibility that the Greek Prometheus and his Titan family have

taken on characteristics of another archaic divine family, the Kabeiroi. 28 He argues that these two

divine races, the Titans and the Kabeiroi, became nearly synonymous, but not interchangeable,

during antiquity. An inscription from Imbros, which invokes the Kabeiroi and includes the

names of Hesiods Titans, taken together with the words of a sixth century B.C. Orphic poet,who associated the Titans with the Kabeiroi, help establish the connection. Interestingly, each

family has a crime in its past. In the Orphic myth, the Titans were guilty of murdering Dionysus;

in the case of the Kabeiroi, the crime was fratricide. The main difference between the Titans and

the Kabeiroi may also establish the crucial link in this examination of the relationship between

Prometheus and the human race. The Titans, as descendants of Uranus and Gaia, are closely

related to the gods, whereas the Kabeiroi, as primordial beings, might be considered the original

men. Moreover, there appears to be some overlapping in the myths. Karl Kernyi observes that

in the myths in which Prometheus is associated with the Titans, he serves, at most, as their

messenger; in the myths in which Prometheus is associated with the Kabeiroi, he appears as the

most venerable of the Kabeiroi, their father and ancestor. 29 In a scheme in which the Titans stand

to the Kabeiroi as gods to lesser beings, where the lesser beings are the first people of earth, the

patriarchal character of the Titans emerges. 30 By extension, if Prometheus is a member of the

patriarchy that stands above the earthly orders, it is easy to see how Prometheus might have

26 C. Kernyi, op. cit. , p. 100.

27 Idem, Ibidem , p. 101.




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become in later myths a father of not only the Kabeiroi, but also the race of humans who actually

inhabit earth. 31

The Orphic variant of the Kabeiroi story merits mention. According to the Orphic priest

and poet Onomakritos, the Titans once captured the infant Dionysus, cut him into pieces, boiled,

roasted, and ate him. Zeus, in turn, hurled lightning at the Titans, and they were burned to ashes.

The human race grew from these ashes, thus explaining both the arrogant, Titan-like qualities

that show themselves in mortals, and the better, god-like attributes inherited from Dionysus.

Although there is uncertainty about the date of this Orphic story, the recognition of Titanic

hubris and Olympian divinity coexisting in mortals prepares the way at an early date for the two

souls that dwell within the breast of that late Prometheus, Faust.

The aboriginal quality of the Titan race is firmly established by the genealogy that Hesiod

supplies. The mysterious father of the second generation of Titans is Iapetos, who some havetried to identify with Japhet, son of the Hebrew Noah. His mate, Klymene, is an Okeanid. This

couple, then, comprises a figure almost certainly borrowed from Asiatic myth, who is the son of

the only masculine anthropomorph to survive the flood, and another figure who is the daughter

of the primal element Okeanos.

Presumptuous sin, recklessness, wickedness, all concepts covered by the Greek term

atasthalia, are the remaining characteristics of the Promethean persona, characteristics traceable

to the Titan clan of which Prometheus is a blood member. To identify the Hesiodic Prometheus

as a symbol of pure reason battling against a Zeus symbolizing pure might would be

oversimplification of Hesiod as well as of Aeschylus. The archaic Prometheus had a wild, even

crude side. Each one of the all-male offspring of Iapetos and Klymene combines his atasthalia

with hubris and rebels against Zeus; each one is punished for some arrogant act. 32 Furthermore,

one will recall that the Titans at one time engaged Zeus and the Olympian deities in a cosmic war

known as the Titanomachy. Their hope was to oust Zeus just as he had ousted Kronos, who had

ousted Uranus before him. The Titans who may have failed to listen to the counsel of

Prometheus, as in Aeschyluss Prometheus Bound, failed in their war effort and were for some

time confined to Tartaros. However, the fact remains that the arrogance of the Titans was such

that they believed they could defeat the Supreme Being in combat.

31 C. Kernyi, op. cit. , p. 127.


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2.3. Conclusion

A portrait of Prometheus, therefore, begins to emerge from the Hesiodic corpus. He is

first of all a member of the Titans, the race of gods older even than Zeus and the Olympians. He

is a trickster, a quick-thinker who is eager and unafraid to match wits with even the highest

authority in the universe. He is thus arrogant, and in his arrogance, a Titan family trait, dares to

challenge Zeus. This arrogance leads him to return fire to the human race after Zeus has taken it

away in punishment for the pathetic sacrifice Prometheus had offered. In the act of assisting the

human race, Prometheus asserts his love for man, while he rebels simultaneously against Zeus.

Ultimately, Zeus, who had permitted himself to be deceived regarding the sacrifice,

punishes Prometheus for his deviousness by fastening him to a column and subjecting him to theattack of the eagle. Prometheus would remain in this state of punishment until Zeuss son,

Heracles, killed the eagle and freed Prometheus.

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CHAPTER 4

P.B. SHELLEYS PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

4.1. The life and work of P.B. Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4 August 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, in

Sussex. He was the son of Sir Timothy and Lady Elizabeth Shelley. They christened him Percy

Bysshe, and his biographer and cousin, Thomas Medwin, has asserted that the first name was

given him in honor of an aunt who was distantly connected with the Northumberland family, and

we can be fairly certain that Timothy intended a compliment to his father, Bysshe Shelley, whenthe second name was given his young son.5 Two years later, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born to

Timothy Shelley and his wife. In 1796 a second daughter, Hellen, made her appearance, but died

four months later. Mary was born June 9, 1797; Hellen, second of the name, September 26,

1799; Margaret, January 20, 1801; and John, March 15, 1806, three weeks after his grandfather,

Bysshe Shelley, attained the rank of baronet. As their mother had been, the children were

singularly handsome.

Percy Bysshe, or Bysshe as he was known to all the family, grew up with his sisters and

was their beloved playmate. John, his only brother, because he did not enter the family until

Bysshe was in his second year at Eton, joined but little in the life of the elder lad, and was never

in any sense a companion for him. But Hellen has left the record of at least one incident

illustrating their rare good times:

My younger brother, John, was a child in petticoats, when I remember Bysshe playing

with him under the fir-trees on the lawn, pushing him gently down to let him rise and beg for a

succession of such falls, rolling with laughing glee on the grass; then,--the little carriage was

drawn through the garden walks at the rate a big boy could draw a little one, and in anunfortunate turn the carriage was upset, and the occupant tossed into the cabbages, or

strawberrybed. 33

33 Thomas Jefferson, Hogg, The life of Percy Bysshe Shelley , E. Moxon, London, 1858, p. 10,http://archive.org/details/lifeofpercybyssh01hoggiala

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At six years old, Shelley was sent to learn his quies, his quaes, and his quods 34 from a

Welsh parson, the Rev. Mr. Edwards, who ministered at Warnham.

In 1802, at the age of ten, he was sent to Sion House at Brentford, a private seminary

attended for the most part by sons of London tradesmen and by other boys who were higher in

the social scale.

In 1810, the year in which he removed from Eton to Oxford, was one of the most joyous

periods of Shelleys life. Here he met Thomas Jefferson Hogg, one of the few true friends of

Shelley. In 1811, he is expelled from Oxford, together with his fellow, Thomas Jefferson Hogg,

for having written an essay called, The Necessity of Atheism , essay which he signed with the

fictitious signature of Jeremiah Stukeley. As a result both students were expelled from Oxford.

Alone in London, an outcast from his Oxford College, an exile from his fathers house,

Shelley was grateful to any one who might have courage to associate with him and take his handin kindness. The elder Miss Westbrook showed the friendliest solicitude on behalf of the

interesting misbeliever; wrote to him; called on him with Harriet; invited him to dinner and

studied under his direction the graceless articles of Voltaires Dictionnaire Philosophique . He

becomes infatuated with Miss Westbrook little sister. In August of 1811, Shelley eloped with

Harriet Westbrook. Even though the couple has troubles, they have two children together. Their

daughter, Elizabeth Ianthe, was born in June of 1813.

In 1812 he met William Godwin, author of Political Justice . He fells in love with his

daughter Mary Wollstonecraft, abandons his wife before his second child is born and flees to

Paris together with Mary Wollstonecraft and her sister, Jane.

When the three finally returned home, Mary was pregnant. So was Shelleys wife,

Harriet. The news of Marys pregnancy brought Harriet to her wits end. She requested a divorce

and sued Shelley for alimony and full custody of their children. Harriets second child with

Shelley, Charles, was born in November of 1814. Three months later, Mary gave birth to a girl.

The infant died just a few weeks later. In 1816, Mary gave birth to their son, William.

A dedicated vegetarian, Shelley authored several works on the diet and spiritual practice,

including A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813). In 1815, Shelley wrote Alastor , or The Spirit of

Solitude , a 720-line poem, now recognized as his first great work. That same year, Shelleys

grandfather passed away and left him an annual allowance of 1,000 British pounds.

34 Edward Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley , vol. 1, Kegan Paul, Trench, London, 1887, p. 13

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In 1816, Marys step-sister, Claire Clairmont, invited Shelley and Mary to join her on a

trip to Switzerland. Claire had begun dating the Romantic poet Lord Byron and wished to show

him off to her sister. By the time they commenced the trip, Lord Byron was less interested in

Claire. Nevertheless, the three stayed in Switzerland all summer. Shelley rented a house on Lake

Geneva very near to Lord Bryons and the two men became fast friends. Shelley wrote

incessantly during his visit. After a long day of boating with Byron, Shelley returned home and

wrote Hymn to Intellectual Beauty . After a trip through the French Alps with Byron, he was

inspired to write Mont Blanc , a pondering on the relationship between man and nature.

In the fall of 1816, Shelley and Mary returned to England to find that Marys half-sister,

Fanny Imlay, had committed suicide. In December of that year it was discovered that Harriet had

also committed suicide. She was found drowned in the Serpentine River in Hyde Park, London.

A few weeks later, Shelley and Mary finally married. Marys father, William Godwin, wasdelighted by the news and accepted his daughter back into the family fold. However, loss

pursued Shelley. Following Harriets death, the courts ruled not to give Shelley custody of their

children, asserting that they would be better off with foster parents.

Shelley befriended John Keats and Leigh Hunt, both talented poets and writers. Shelleys

conversations with them encouraged his own literary pursuits. Around 1817, he wrote Laon and

Cythna ; or, The Revolution of the Golden city . His publishers balked at the main storyline,

however, which centres on incestuous lovers. He was asked to edit it and to find a new title for

the work. In 1818, he reissued it as The Revolt of Islam . Though the title suggests the subject of

Islam, the poems focus is religion in general and features socialist, political themes.

Shortly after the publication of The Revolt of Islam, Shelley, Mary and Claire left for

Italy. Lord Bryon was living in Venice, and Claire was on a mission to bring their daughter,

Allegra, to visit with him. For the next several years, Shelley and Mary moved from city to city.

While in Rome, their first-born son William died of a fever. A year later, their baby daughter,

Clara Everina, died as well. Around this time, Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound . During their

residency in Livorno, in 1819, he wrote The Cenci and The Masque of Anarchy and Men of

England , a response to the Peterloo Massacre in England.

On July 8, 1822, just shy of turning 30, Shelley drowned while sailing his schooner back

from Livorno to Lerici, after having met with Leigh Hunt to discuss their newly printed journal,

The Liberal . Despite conflicting evidence, most papers reported Shelleys death as an accident.

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However, based on the scene that was discovered on the boats deck, others speculated that he

might have been murdered by an enemy who detested his political beliefs.

Shelleys bodied was cremated on the beach in Viareggio, where his bodied had washed

ashore. Mary Shelley, as was the custom for women during the time, did not attend her

husbands funeral. Percy Bysshe Shelleys ashes were interred in the Protestant Cemetery in

Rome. More than a century later, he was memorialized in Poets Corner in Westminster Abbey.

4.2. Genesis

Prometheus Unbound , a lyrical drama in four acts ,35 is the greatest of Shelleys poems,

difficult to grasp in all its detail, yet clear enough in its broad aims. We are given a preview of

humankinds escape from the restraints now stifling him, and a forecast of the principles whichhe will have accepted before he attains the maximum of happiness and freedom open to him.

Prometheus represents the mind of Humankind, and his final unbinding is symbolic of the

liberation of Humankind.

When Shelley called Prometheus Unbound a lyrical drama he may well have been doing

no more than drawing attention to its mankinds outbursts of song, its solos, duets, and

choruses 36. From Shelleys point of view, what was lyrical about Prometheus Unbound was

perhaps the fact that much of it could be sung or imagined as sung, and what was dramatic the

fact that the story was presented as if for the stage, without direct narration, description, or

comment, except in the form of brief stage directions. At any rate, if he did restrict his subjects,

he would have found no obvious paradox in such a subtitle. After all, the Greeks had mixed their

drama and song without finding themselves on the horns of a dilemma, and Shelley himself had

frequently seen a more thorough mixture in the Italian opera .37

The writing of Prometheus Unbound was done in three periods of time. Act I was written

in September and October 1818 at Este, near Venice; Acts II and III in March and April 1819 at

35 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound , Collins Clear Type Press, 1892, The Preface, p.4,http://archive.org/details/prometheusunbou00shelgoog

36 Desmond King-Hele, Shelley: The Man and the Poet , Thomas Yoseloff , New York, 1960, p.169.

37 Karsten Klejs Engelberg, The Making of the Shelley Myth: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism of Percy Bysshe Shelley , Mansell Publishing London, 1988, p.40.

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Rome among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, under a bright blue sky 38; and Act IV in

November and December 1819 at Florence. The subject had been in Shelleys mind for over a

year before he began to write, an unusually long incubation period for him, and he had

considered Tasso and Job, as well as Prometheus, for his hero .39

The disagreement between the classical versions of the Promethean legends was one of

the authors main reasons to choose Prometheus, as his hero. At first, in 1813, he was agreeing

with the Hesiod version of the legend of Prometheus, which is that Prometheus brought calamity

upon humankind when he chose to steal the fire from Heaven, thus angering the gods and

bringing humankind to perdition. But, by 1918, he had changed his mind and started to prefer

Aeschyluss version of the legend, as it appears in Prometheus Bound . In Prometheus Bound , the

hero appears as the saviour and benefactor of humankind, who brought them the fire, the

medicine and the arts as a gift. 40 As a consequence, Zeus becomes infuriated with Prometheusand decides to punish him by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus Mountain. At the end of the

play, Prometheus is still chained, but we are revealed the fact that he knows a prophecy. The

prophecy is about Zeus and Thetis, that if they should marry and have a child, when the child

comes to age he will overthrow Zeus. To Zeus the prophecy would have been real as he once did

the same thing with his father, Cronos. The Prometheus Bound was the second part of a trilogy,

and Aeschylus completed the story in the third part, Prometheus Unbound , a part which is now

lost and which describes the reconciliation with Zeus.

P. B. Shelley creates a new myth from the old one. In his version Prometheus remains in

torment until the time has come for Demogorgon, the destined son of Zeus and Thetis, to

overthrow his father. After the downfall of Jupiter and here is an interesting fact, P. B. Shelley

uses the Roman names for Zeus and the other gods; Prometheus is formally unbound by

Hercules. Shelley chooses a story with familiar names in it so that his readers might feel at home

among the dramatis personae and pass with less effort in identification to the powers they

represent - probably a better plan than bringing on personifications like Faith and Evil, as

William Blake often did. 41 The drama thus unfolds on two levels: ostensibly it records a

reshuffling of power among the Olympians; at the deeper level each character represents some

38 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit ., p. 2.39 Desmond King-Hele, op. cit. , p.169.40 Idem, ibidem, p.170.41 Idem, ibidem, p.170

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trait in humankind, preferably a trait associated with that character in legend. Thus the fact that

Prometheus suffers avoidable pain implies that humankind is cruelly restricted by unnecessary

chains; while Jupiters fall is more impressive because, to minds conditioned by Greek myth, his

name spells irresistible power.

In the Preface , Shelley makes a sort of parallel between Satan, the character in Miltons

play Paradise Lost , and his Prometheus. The parallel is made entirely on his own opinion. He

considers Satan as rebel, envious and vengeful, and in his opinion Prometheus is o more poetical

character than Satan.

3.2. Act 1 of Prometheus Unbound

Act I of Prometheus Unbound is modelled on the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus.Prometheus is chained in a remote part of the Caucasus. In this land where no human being has

ever set foot, between Heaven and Earth he is permanently at home to any gods or demons who

care to call on him, and their visits provide the framework for the action. The purpose of Act I is

to expose Prometheus to temptation and his reactions show whether he is ripe for liberation. It

turns out that he is though, this is not stated until Act II, so that Act I serves to define, obliquely

not explicitly, the qualities of mind which, in Shelleys view, go with true freedom. Act I takes

part from line 1 until line 833.

A picture of Prometheus not so much as a man chained to a mountain rock, but as a

mountainous form of aspiring life, gives Prometheus Unbound a pervading atmosphere of huge

mountains, valleys, continents. 42 This persists even when the language is least dramatic:

The mountain mists, condensing at our voice

Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,

From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.

Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.

But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs

Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night

Grew radiant with the glory of that form

42 Stephen Spender, Longmans, Green, London, 1952, p.30.

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Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell

Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,

Faint with intoxication of keen joy. 43

3.2.1. First part of Act 1

First part of the act I start from verse 1 to verse 310. Prometheus is discovered bound to

the wall of a ravine of icy rocks, still enduring the torments he has suffered for three thousand

years of sleep-unsheltered hours 44 because he will not reveal his secret. Though he can see no

end to his affliction, Prometheus welcomes the passing of the hours because some day, one of

those wingless, crawling hours 45 will preside over Jupiters fall. The Hours figure prominently

in Prometheus Unbound . Each Hour has the time it labels, and even has some control over the pattern of the events; thus the Hour of Jupiters fall is almost his executioner.

In the long opening speech Prometheus defines his attitude to his oppressor Jupiter. At

first, he resents his punishment; he loathes the name of Jupiter and rails against him furiously.

But now Prometheus pities him because he rules as an absolute tyrant, unloved by his subjects

and doomed to fall. Prometheus ends his soliloquy by asking to be reminded of the frenzied

curse he once pronounced against Jupiter. He is answered evasively, first by Voices from the

elements and then by The Earth herself, his mother, who explains that she can repeat the curse

only in the language of the dead, which he fails to understand because she doesnt dare speak the

language of the living.

Shelley sees the Earth as a living organism subject to pain and disease which she passes

on to Mankind, the unresented parasite on her surface. This idea may derive from Adam Walker,

who used to tell his audiences that dead and inanimate as our mother earth appears 46, she is

fraught with veins and arteries like the animal body .47 Pursuing this theme, Shelley hits on an

43 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene 1, lines 58-67, p.50

44 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit , Act I, line 13, p. 10.


46 A. Walker A System of Familiar Philosophy In Twelve Lectures, Kessinger Publishing, New York, 2010, lectureVI, p. 339

47 Idem, ibidem , p

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arresting and precise image, the thin air, my breath, which is again curiously like Walkers

definition: The atmosphere is a thin fluid. . . principally made up of heterogeneous matter

exhaled from the earth .48

Prometheus summons a ghost from this shadowy world to repeat the curse on Jupiter. But

on hearing the curse again, he wants to unsay it, regretting he was once so vindictive: I wish no

living thing to suffer pain .49 His willingness to forgive is a necessary prelude to liberation, though

The Earth misinterprets it as a sign of weakness.

That ends what might be called the first section of Act I, though Shelley gives no

divisions. Prometheuss soliloquy, The Earths autobiography, and the recitation of the curse

sum up events to date, and set the stage for what follows.

3.2.2. Second part of Act I

In the second section which is between lines 311-657 Prometheus faces and survives

temptation. He is watched by Ione and Panthea, two daughters of Ocean, who comment on the

action, like a Greek chorus. Ione asks the questions, and Panthea knows the answers. Thus on the

symbolic plane, where Prometheus represents the mind of Mankind, Ione is Hope and Panthea

informed Faith. As Ione and Panthea wait, Joves world-wandering herald, Mercury approaches

over the mountains, bringing an ultimatum from Jupiter. Prometheus must either surrender his

secret at once and if he does he will live among the gods or be handed over to the Furies, who

have already arrived and lurk near by showing their teeth. Prometheus rejects the bribe, he will

not abandon mankind and he intends to answer evil with good, because kindness is keen

reproach 50 to such as Jupiter; and he is content to await the destined Hour, comforted by the

thought that it is always getting nearer. The well-meaning Mercury warns him that he may have

a very long time to wait; but Prometheus wont change his mind and Mercury goes away.

As Mercury fades away, he leaves the impression that he is only a conscientious courier

of Jupiter to humankind for his messages. Mercurys dictator, Jupiter, is the guiding power


49 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit , Act I, line 305, p. 22.


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behind evil institutions, the essence of orthodoxy and reaction, the enemy of Mankinds

aspirations. 51

As soon as Mercury has gone the Furies begin their work. Prometheus fears for a moment

when he sees them, but he endured pain for so many years that he can endure their physical

tortures nonchalantly.

The Furies are three by number. The first Fury starts by telling what they represent on

Earth:

We are the ministers of pain, and fear,

And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,

And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue

Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,

We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,When the great King betrays them to our will .52

Prometheus doesnt seems impressed by the first Fury, thus the Furies are taken by

surprise by his response.

Then the Furies cut Prometheus to the heart, first by showing him the evils men have yet

to suffer, and then by presenting a picture of Christ 53, as a reminder that those who do endure

Deep wrongs for mankind, and scorn, and chains, but heap/ Thousandfold torment on

themselves and him. 54

Prometheus survives the Furies onslaught, but his confidence is sapped; it is time to

relieve the tension, and the rest of Act I is devoted to prophetic lyrics sung in turn by a troop of

spirits like those in Act I of Byron Manfred. 55 Each spirit seems to represent some admirable

humankind quality, and together they prophesy Prometheuss liberation by implying that he has

developed, or is about to develop, these virtues. The first spirit, of heroism, speaks of those who

are fighting for freedom. The second spirit, of altruism, refers to the survivor of a shipwreck who51 Desmond King-Hele, op. cit., p.174.

52 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit. , Act I, lines 452-457, p. 29.

53 Desmond King-Hele, op. cit. , p.174.

54 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit. , Act I, lines 594-596, p. 39

55 Desmond King-Hele, op. cit. , p.175

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gave an enemy/ His plank, then plunged aside to die. 56 The third spirit, of wisdom, describes a

sage who had once made a stir in the world. The fourth lyric is devoted to the Poet, who

Will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom ,

Nor heed nor see, what things they be;

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living mankindkind,

Nurshings of immortality! 57

The last two spirits have as their theme Love, with its shadows Pain and Ruin. The sixthspirits song is modelled on a Homeric image elaborated by Agathon in the Symposium 58, and

much improved by Shelley:

Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:

It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,

But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing

The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;

Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above

And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,

Dream visions of aerial joy, and call the monster, Love,

And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet 59

These songs comfort Prometheus, but the mention of Love only saddens him by

awakening memories of his own beloved, Asia, who lives among the fertile valleys of the Indian



58 Iliad, XIX. 91-3, quoted in Plato, Symposium, 195


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Under the waters of the earth again. 62

To us there seems no connection whatsoever between meteors from outer space and

bubbles from decaying vegetation. In Shelleys day it was not accepted that shooting-stars came

from outside the earth: lightning, the aurora, shooting stars and other aerial phenomena were all

called meteors, hence the name meteorology. 63

This interlude ends as Asia and Panthea come out of the forest and climb to a pinnacle of

rock in the territory of Demogorgon. The scenery is worthy of the deity who owns it. Around her

Asia sees an expanse of mist rolling on under the curdling winds 64, making an island of their

place and masking the country beneath. She hears the sun-awakened avalanche

Whose mass,Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there

Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds

As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth

Is loosened, and the nations echo round,

Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now. 65

Asia and Panthea find themselves enveloped in the mist and summoned in one of the

most perfect Platonic lyrics in English poetry 66, to descend to the deep:

Through the shade of sleep,

Through the cloudy strife

Of Death and of Life;

Through the veil and the bar

Of things which seem and are62 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene I1, lines 71-82, p. 58.


64 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene III, lines 22-23, p. 60.


66 J. A. Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley, Octagon Books, 1969, p. 247.

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Even to the steps of the remotest throne,

Down! Down! 67

At the end of their long descent they confront Demogorgon himself, who is characterized

as a mighty darkness filling the seat of power 68 and rays of gloom .69 Demogorgon is the most

powerful figure in the drama. He is never properly visible to the other characters, even Jupiter,

because he exists in another plane. He is the supreme power, yet he can act only when the states

of mind of the participants ask for him. He stands ready to act as a catalyst in precipitating the

great change when mankind has accepted the ideals of universal love and forgiveness. In Act I

Prometheus, mankinds representative, endured temptation and purged his mind of hate, envy

and revenge. Before he is fit to be freed he must show love, too, and this he does in Act II,

through Asia, who can be stirred to action only by the power of his love. Her journey to the

underworld is the prelude to his release and the cue for Demogorgon to begin work.The name of Demogorgon, despite its Hellenic ring, is not to be found in the classical

dictionaries. Demogorgon is mentioned by some late classical writers, by Boccaccio in

Genealogia Deorum , by Spenser in The Faerie Queene and by Milton in Paradise Lost . Asia and

Panthea, undaunted by Demogorgons amorphous appearance, proceed to question him, and his

enigmatic answers make this scene the most difficult in the whole poem. When Asia asks him

who made the living world and all that it contains, good and evil, he answers God, but refuses to

define his terms. This provokes Asia to give her own account of the evolution of the world,

which is in effect the version of the Prometheus legend used by Aeschylus. Demogorgon does

not contradict Asia, but he cannot or will not reveal more. In a reply he confesses that

A voice

Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;

For what would it avail to bid thee gaze

On the revolving world? What to bid speak

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these

67 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene III, lines 56-62, p. 61.



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All things are subject but eternal Love. 70

Finally Asia asks when the time of setting free Prometheus will come, and at once she

sees a carriage driven by wild horses. These are the immortal Hours hurrying to do their stint of

duty on earth. One of them, the grim-faced one, stops to tell Asia that he is the Hour destined to

preside over Jupiters downfall, fall which is now imminent. The next Hour, is a young spirit

with the dove-like eyes of hope 71, who rides in an ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire .72 Asia is

invited to go up in this vehicle, which has an interesting form of traction, as the Hour explains:

My coursers are fed with the lightning,

They drink of the whirlwinds stream,

And when the red morning is brightning They bathe in the fresh sunbeam;

They have strength for their swiftness I deem. . . . the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle

We encircle the earth and the moon:

We shall rest from long labours at noon. 73

The spirits car takes Asia and Panthea to a peak, and there Asia is transfigured. Her

Platonic 74 essence appears to Panthea, shining through the veil of her mortality. A voice in the

air, Prometheus himself, praises her radiance in what is perhaps the most highly-charged of all

Shelleys lyrics. The scenery depends on identifying love with light and fire:

Life of Life! thy lips enkindle

With their love the breath between them;

And thy smiles before they dwindle

Make the cold air fire; then screen them70 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene IV , lines 115-120, p. 68.

71 Idem, ibidem, p. 70.



74 C. Grabo, Prometheus Unbound , The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC., 1936, p. 89.

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In those looks, where whoso gazes

Faints, entangled in their mazes. . . . 75

Asia replies quietly to this fiery praise, beginning with a complex of sense images:

My soul is an enchanted boat,

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;

And thine doth like an angel sit

Beside a helm conducting it,

Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 76

The symbolism here is Neoplatonic, meaning that an individual life is looked on as a

river down which the soul moves as in a boat to rejoin the sea of the infinite 77.

As in Alastor and The Revolt of Islam , waves on the sea represent crises in the soul

brought on by the storms of emotion. Asias song, which ends the second Act, is the emotional

counterpart of her earlier philosophical quest, when with Panthea she approached Demogorgon

in his cave beyond the veil and the bar of things which seem and are .78

3.4. Act III of Prometheus Unbound

Act III opens in Heaven, where Jupiter sits confidently on his throne. He introduces

himself with a soliloquy, like Prometheus in Act I and Asia in Act II. Jupiter knows the destined

Hour is near, but he doesnt realize its significance. For he believes Demogorgon will act on his

behalf and destroy humankind, act that he believes will consolidate his reign. The tension mounts

75 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene IV , lines 48-53, p. 73.


77 C. Grabo, op. cit , p. 89.

78 Percy Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act II, scene I , lines 60, p. 61.

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as Demogorgon is arriving on Mount Olympus and Jupiter is confronted by Demogorgons

incarnation:

Jupiter Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!

Demogorgon Eternity. Demand no direr name.

Descend, and follow me down the abyss.

I am thy child, as thou wert Saturns child;

Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together

Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.

The tyranny of heaven none may retain,

Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee. 79

At the beginning Jupiter tries to fight back, but by finding out that his power are

ineffectual, he begs for mercy, hoping that Demogorgon can be controlled by Prometheus. But

Jupiter finds the awful truth; that there is no escape for him. Even though Demorgogon shows

authority, he is not the successor of Jupiter, he is merely trying to observe mankind and when the

time has come to collect his reward.

After the change in the balance of power, Hercules unbinds Prometheus. Hercules

appears only because the legend demands it; after speaking a few words he departs, never to be

mentioned again. Prometheus himself has so far only been able to display passive virtues. He

greets his long-lost lover, Asia. By their mystic union wisdom, gentleness, tolerance and

forgiveness are married to love and creative power, and mankind is married to Nature.

Prometheus and Asia are to live in a cave, reminiscent of the Neoplatonic cave of mind ,80 from

which they will contemplate the human world by watching shadows and listening its echoes.

Before retiring to his cave, Prometheus turns to his mother, Earth, asking her what changes she

feels, and Shelley returns to Act I:

through my withered, old, and icy frame

The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down

79 Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act III, scene I , lines 60, p. 82.

80 . C. Grabo, op. cit , p. 92

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Circling. 81

Now she will always welcome humans when they return to their mother at death. The

child-like Spirit of the Earth complements this picture by describing the obvious changes on the

planet: hard features, angry looks and hollow smiles, the foul masks hiding the inmost spirit of

good, have been torn aside, and all things have put their evil nature off. 82

3.5. Act IV of Prometheus Unbound

When Shelley finished Act III in April 1819 he thought at first that the poem was

complete, but soon he changed his mind, for the thought that he needed a happy finale in order to

balance the grim Act I. Also he didnt try to publish the first three acts in the seven months thathad passed before he began Act IV.

Act IV has 578 lines that comprise two series of choric songs or duets, separated by a

quiet interval of Nature analysis. Ione and Panthea, who contribute this analysis, are the only

characters of human form, and many of the choruses are sung by undefined troops of spirits.

Many readers are led on to the end too quickly, and remain with the impression that this is verse

which sounds fine but means nothing at all. Closer inspection shows, however, that at times

Shelley is describing the mechanisms of Nature with a precision and wealth of detail

unparalleled in English poetry. 83

In Act IV time has become unimportant, because no awful tomorrows or sighed-for

yesterdays mark its progress. Shelley was sure about this feature of his new world, for he had the

timeless cosmos of Platonic ideas at the back of his mind, and he implies that time will only

reassert itself if evil creeps in 84. Timelessness either appeals or appals, according to

temperament.

The moons chariot has for its wheels massive thunderclouds flecked with azure and gold

as they shine in the setting sun, like the sea beneath them. Driving the chariot is a white winged

81 Bysshe Shelley, op. cit., Act III, scene I , lines 88-90, p. 84.



84 Idem, ibidem, p.192.

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infant, the essence of mooniness. All the main features of the moons face are here translated into

human features. The obvious first impression of the moon as normally seen, its silver whiteness

unrelieved by warmer colours, is driven home by the repetition of white and bright, relieved only

by dark. The wind-flowing folds of its robe are immobile, like sculpture: they are the straggling,

corrugated lunar mountain ranges. Its eyes of darkness are craters of the moon and the darkness

is called liquid because Shelley is referring to craters in the dark patches of the surface, which

were given the name seas by Galileo. 85 Bright lines radiate from some of the craters, forming

ray-systems which have not yet been satisfactorily explained: these rays are, near the craters,

their arrowy lashes, and further away they form white hair scattered in strings. Shelley goes on to

imagine the darkness of the eyes pouring itself out in radiation which tempers the cold air around

Ione with fire that is not brightness. He is referring to infra-red rays, the dark heat rays

discovered by Herschel in 1800. It is fanciful to suggest that the whole of the moons infra-redradiation is emitted from a small part of the surface, but when the rest of the imagery is so

precise an imaginative touch does not come amiss.

Iones report on the moon and Pantheas on the history of the earth are followed by a

gravitational love-song between the Earth and the Moon themselves.

As the Earth and Moon finish their duet Demogorgon reappears to sum up the poems

prophecy. He addresses himself to the widest possible audience, to the Earth, the Moon, Kings of

suns and stars, Demons and Gods. Jupiter has chained Prometheus because he helped men to

better themselves and would not give up his secret, that the child of Jupiter and Thetis would

overthrow his father. Prometheus defies the Furies sent to torture him, and shows he is wise,

kindly and free from pain. He thinks of Asia, his long-lost bride. She responds by visiting

Demogorgon, the destined child of Jupiter, in his lair outside the physical world. Very soon after,

Demogorgon ascends to Heaven, deposes Jupiter and retires to obscurity. Prometheus is unbound

by Hercules and united to Asia.

The fourth act depicts the liberated universe wherein man now actuated by love becomes

wholly master of circumstance and does whatever he wishes with it. The physical forces which

had been devoted by Jupiter to evil ends become the servants of Love. Nature ceases then to be

hostile to man and moves at his command. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions cease. The moon,

warmed by the liberated energy emanating from the earth, becomes fruitful and populous. All


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nature sings a hymn of joy now that it has been released from the control of hate and moves only

at the command of Love. Put in its baldest terms Shelley means that man, once he has learned to

control himself, can learn to control the universe through his knowledge of science. But an

ethical transformation, a moral revolution, is necessary before man, through his directing brain,

can command the forces of nature to his advantage. This I believe to be the most significant point

of Shelleys matured philosophy, his belief that the will is freed only through Love.

Though Act IV adds nothing to the plot, no one would wish to see it omitted, because it is

unique in English poetry for its intimate blend of exact science and dazzling verse, its sustained

animation and exultation, and its pervading philosophy of unity in Nature. It is creative myth of a

high order, a reminder that Shelley was the most spontaneous of myth-makers and the most

scientifically-minded poet of the age .86

86 Desmond King-Hele, op. cit. , p.209

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CONCLUSIONS

In Greek mythology, in Hesiods Theogony and Work and Days , in Aeschylus

Prometheus Bound and P.B. Shelley Prometheus Unbound , the main character is described as

creator of mankind and a fire stealer.

Each and every one of the authors mentioned before had their own interpretation of a

Greek myth, Greek myth that emerged from the desire of mankind to explain everything that

surrounded him, the sun, the moon, the seasons, the animals and even the creation of human.

But still there some differences between every writers writings. For example in the

Works and Days Hesiod tells the story of Prometheus to Perses to convince him of the necessity

of work, because the gods have hidden from men their livelihood. There is no mention of

Prometheus trick involving the division of the sacrifice or of Zeuss choice between the two

portions offered by the Titan. The narrative in the Works and Days begins from Zeuss hiding of

fire and remains centred on Zeuss actions and their painful consequences for human life.

If the first act of the drama of Prometheus, the sacrifice trick is omitted in the Works and

Days , that omission means that the poem in some sense presupposes the separation of gods and

men, symbolized by the sacrifice. At the beginning of the Works and Days , that separation has

already taken place. Hesiod has thus truncated the beginning of the story, but, conversely, he

extends the final section by elaborating on the story of Pandora: the account of the pathos, theescape of the evils that beset human beings in accordance with Zeuss plan, and Hopes place on

the lips of the jar. The story told in the Works and Days is explicitly predicated on an earlier state

when men lived without evils or suffering and diseases a kind of golden age that Hesiod

describes later on in the poem.

But there is no place for a golden age enjoyed by mankind in the Theogony ; human

history begins from the Giants, who spring fully armed from the blood of Uranus. As a result, in

the Theogony the change in the status of mankind and its separation from the gods precipitated

by the duel of trickery between Prometheus and Zeus cannot be understood simply as the

consequence of mankinds fall from a previous paradisiacal state. 87

In the Works and Days , Hesiod concludes his narration by remarking: Hence there is no

way to escape the mind of Zeus , here the poet clearly refers to human beings, the victims of

87 Herbert Weir Smyth , Aeschylean Tragedy , Biblo and Tannen, New York, 1969, p. 93.

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countless evils, diseases that prey on them day and night, and every kind of misery that comes

upon them silently and without warning, since Zeus deprived them of their voices.

The Theogony s version concludes with almost the same phrase: Thus it is not possible to

escape the mind of Zeus nor to by-pass it, the similarity of the words should not obscure the

important difference in their referents. In the Theogony , they are aimed at Prometheus, who

could not escape the punishment decided by Zeus. That punishment, recounted at both the

beginning and the end of the narrative, sets the framework within the coordinates of the enmity

between Prometheus and Zeus. The Works and Days omits the mention of Prometheus fate, and

focuses on the human lot. These contrasts draw attention to the very different perspectives of the

two versions.

At the centre of the narrative as it is recounted in the Theogony , mankind, always

marginal in the poem, is almost completely absent; the rivalry between Prometheus and Zeusoccupies centre stage. An understanding of its significance requires us to take account of the

wider context as well as the placement and framing of the myth and its function within the

architecture of the poem. First of all, the genealogical line of the sons of Iapetus is not in its

expected position. When Hesiod lists the Titan children of Uranus and Gaia, Iapetus is born

before Cronos; accordingly, the offspring of Iapetus should be enumerated before the offspring

of Cronos, the last son of Uranus. But Hesiod defers the catalogue of the sons of Iapetus and

inserts it after the birth of Zeus, the youngest of the Cronides, but before Zeuss final defeat of

the Titans and his accession to supremacy. In delaying the line of Iapetus, Hesiod manages to

reverse the expected genealogical order and, in a way, makes the Iapetids appear to be the

younger sons of the family of Cronus. The significance of this genealogical sleight-of-hand

derives from the repeated pattern of the succession myth, where it is always the youngest son

who deposes his father.

Prometheus philanthropy can be understood as the partiality of the creator for his

creatures. But in the Theogony , the only creature created by the gods is Woman.

In the Theogony , by drawing attention to the inequality of the two portions and

commenting on the unfairness of the distribution Zeus intends to provoke Prometheus: more

precisely, to provoke the Titan to invite Zeus to choose between the two portions. Had Zeus

simply accepted the portion before him, he would indeed appear to have been tricked by

Prometheus. Zeus precipitates the choice because he is fully aware of the contents of both

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portions, and he chooses consciously and with full knowledge. The white bones henceforth

belong to the gods portion, while the corruptible meat of the sacrifice that is constantly renewed

to feed mankind is an emblem of their mortality. The Olympian is not fooled; it is in that choice

that mans doom is eternally sealed. The conclusion seems inescapable: he planned for things to

turn out exactly the way they actually did. The Olympian himself, then, fully intended to bring

about the separation of gods and men that was the final consequence of the contest between

Prometheus and Zeus. In this context, one must remember that the Theogony depicts human

beings as closely related to gigantic warriors, creatures perhaps even capable of challenging Zeus

himself. In that light, Zeuss imperishable counsels can be understood as protecting the status of

the gods by weakening his potential adversaries so that they can never again pose a serious threat

to his regime.

Prometheus Bound is one of the three drama of Aeschylus that survived fully, Prometheus Unbound has partly survived and scholars and laity still dispute whether

Prometheus Pyrphorus opened the three-part drama as the Fire-Giver, or, as the Fire-Bearer,

concluded the whole with the inauguration of the torch race by which the Athenians did honour

to the god of their potter guild. 88

Innocent man is made to suffer because the crafty son of Iapetus stole fire in his behalf.

Aeschylus, discerning in the myth a tragic significance, raised the question of the Divine justice

and the Divine government of the world. 89 But, for all its depth, his play is one of the simplest of

all dramas; indeed in certain aspects of its simplicity it is absolutely unique. 90 The action is

confined to a single spot. The hero is immobile; chained to his rock, he is more awe-inspiring

than an unfettered sufferer. There is so little play of circumstance from beginning to end that the

movement is of the slowest. There is no subtle complication of plot, no reversal of fortune. There

is only one character and that is subject to no development. Prometheus has robbed the gods of

fire, their proper prerogative, and he has given it to mortals. This offense is the main motive of

the play. At the command of Power and Force, Hephaestus, though unwilling to bind a kindred

god, is compelled to chain the Titan to a desert rock. One weapon only is in the control of the

88 E. A. Havelock, The Crucifixion of Intellectual Man: Incorporating a Fresh Translation into English Verse of the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus . Beacon Press, Boston, 1950, p. 11.


90 Herbert Weir Smyth , op. cit. , p. 105.

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prisoner, he knows a menacing secret the reign of Zeus. This secret he will not disclose until

Zeus free him from his bonds. Unmoved by the threat that his enemy will visit upon him torture

more appalling than his chains; he refuses to unveil the mystery, and is hurled to Tartarus.

The daughters of Ocean, who, frightened by the reverberations of Hephaestus hammer

and impelled by sympathy, visit the hero on his rocky height; Ocean, who counsels submission

to the will of Zeus; Io, distorted in mind and body, an enforced wanderer through the world,

victim of Zeu

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