Too calm and fair; for Zeus, with all his enemies subdued and possessing
absolute power, soon grew tyrannical. With leisure now from Olympian
warfare, he looked down upon the earth and the feeble race of men. It
seemed to him a contemptible thing, struggling weakly against pitiless
forces and groping its way, by minute degrees that were imperceptible
from his lofty height, toward a larger and a better state. It was a mean
and futile and impotent race, he pondered. Surely it would be better to
wipe it out of existence altogether, than let it continue to blot the
face of the fair world.
So concluded the youthful ruler of Olympus, in his haughty strength. But
Prometheus knew mankind better than Zeus. The hills and valleys of earth
were his kin, dear and familiar to him; and he had come to love the
imperfect human soul that had just managed to get itself born in those
rude cave-men. He saw the violent act that the Lord of Olympus was
planning in his mind; and resolved to save humanity. So, as the old poet
Hesiod says in his _Works and Days_, “he stole fire for men from Zeus
the Counsellor in a hollow fennel stalk, what time the Hurler of the
Thunder knew not.” But the boon to man meant sheer disaster to himself,
as he knew when he filched it from Olympus. The purpose of Zeus could
not be thwarted with impunity. Prometheus was condemned to age-long
punishment, chained to a rock on an icy mountain top until such time as
a deliverer should come, and an immortal being could be found willing to
give up life for him. The punishment of Prometheus is the subject of the
present drama. It is believed to have been the middle play of a trilogy,
of which the last was the _Prometheus Unbound_, and the first probably
related the bringing of fire to earth. The _Prometheus Bound_ is not
dramatic in the sense that the _Agamemnon_ and the _Choephorœ_ are.
There is hardly any action in it, for the suffering Titan continues
chained to his rock throughout the poem. From the nature of the theme,
too, the characters are too colossal and remote to make an intimate
appeal to us. Yet the drama is charged with the deepest emotion,
transcending the pity or fear of common experience. If it does not start
into life before our eyes as an actual conflict, that is because it is
rooted in a deeper and more crucial struggle between cosmic forces. And
if the persons of the drama are unapproachable and unfamiliar, it is
from the very reason of their sublimity. We see the protagonist first as
he is being riveted to the rocky wall by the god Hephæstus. The Fire-god
reluctantly performs the task, bidden to it roughly by Force, who is
invested for the moment with the strength of Zeus, but without his
dignity. Hephæstus is indignant at the sentence on his kinsman, the
titan, and declares that he has no heart to chain him in this stormy
mountain region, merely because of his beneficent help to man. But Force
is inexorable: he urges on the work until every limb of the titan is
secured, and an adamantine wedge is driven through his breast. When all
is accomplished, Prometheus is left alone; and then for the first time
he breaks silence. He invokes the elements that are his kindred: the
sky, the winds, the rivers, the smiling sea, the sun, the great
earth-mother.
“_See me tormented by the gods, a god!
Behold me, what agony
Through the measureless course of the ages
Racked, I shall suffer;
I by the upstart Ruler in heaven
To captivity doomed and outrage.
Woe, woe is me!...
... Blessings, that on man
I lavished, have involved me in this fate,
And for that in a hollow fennel stalk
I sought and stored and stole the fount of flame,
Whence men all arts have learned, a potent help._“[1]
While Prometheus is speaking, there gather softly round him the gentle
sea-nymphs who are to be the chorus of the drama. They question him
tenderly, in words that fall like balm, and elicit all his story. It is
pitiable, they say, and they marvel at the penalty which Zeus imposes on
so kind a creature.
Presently Oceanus himself, god of the dreadful river that circles the
world, approaches in his chariot. He is old and grave and prudent. The
action of Prometheus seems to him rash and daring: his opposition to
Zeus mere pride. He advises the titan to yield, since it is expedient to
bow to the superior power. But Prometheus fiercely rejects such timid
counsel. Nothing shall shake his resistance to the tyrant, and Oceanus
may spare his breath. Let him go save himself: as for Prometheus, he
will endure until it shall please Zeus to relent.
Hot words pass. Oceanus tries in vain to teach prudence to the high
heart of the titan, and departs angrily. Then the sea-nymphs sing a
sweet song of pity; and Prometheus, touched to a softer mood, begs them
not to think him hard and proud. Only, the thought of his wrongs is
intolerable, received at the hand of one whom he himself had helped to
place upon the throne of Olympus. And what had been his crime? None. His
hands are clean: his integrity absolute. His sufferings are an amazing
injustice: the price of beneficent deeds to humanity that he tells over
to the wondering maids.
“_I will recount you, how, mere babes before,
With reason I endowed them and with mind ...
Who, firstly, seeing, knew not what they saw,
And hearing did not hear; confusedly passed
Their life-days, lingeringly, like shapes in dreams,
Without an aim; and neither sunward homes,
Brick-woven, nor skill of carpentry, they knew;
But lived, like small ants shaken with a breath,
In sunless caves a burrowing buried life:
... The hidden lore
Of rising stars and setting I unveiled.
I taught them Number, first of sciences;
I framed the written symbols into speech,
Art all-recording, mother of the Muse:
I first put harness on dumb patient beasts ...
That they might lighten men of heavy toil,
I taught to draw the car and love the rein
Horses, crown of the luxury of wealth.
And who but I invented the white-winged
Sea-roving chariot of the mariner?_
“_For mortals such contrivances I found,
But for myself alas no wit have I,
Whereby to rid me of my present pain._”[20]
So he continues to narrate all that he had achieved for the welfare of
man: how he had taught him Medicine, Prophecy and Augury; and had
brought to light the treasure of precious metals that lay hidden within
the earth. Indeed, as the long recital falls from his lips, we know that
the poet has symbolized in him all the great civilizing influences on
mankind.
But the sea-nymphs, though they sympathize with his sorrow, cannot rise
to the height of his thought. To them mankind is a “fleeting, dream-like
race,” unworthy of the sacrifice that he has made. They chide him
gently. Why has he dared the wrath of Zeus, and why will he bear the
weary ages of torture for such a people? The beauty of the lyric casts a
spell upon us. The thought of the long-drawn agony, endured from century
to century, makes us waver. Might he not have been misguided? Was Zeus
right, perhaps? And would not the titan be wise to make peace with so
powerful a ruler?
Thus the softer mood of the sea-maidens wins upon us. Viewed through it,
the resistance of Prometheus begins to look like stubborn self-will; and
the decree of Zeus a righteous chastisement. But just as the feeling is
gathering strength an episode occurs which reverses the current of
emotion. For there rushes suddenly on the desolate scene a strange wild
creature, half woman and half beast. Under the curling heifer’s horns
there is a fair white brow; and below the brow sweet human eyes,
distraught with fear and pain. This is Io, the maid beloved by Zeus.
Cast out of her home by the god’s command, she has been chased from the
society of her kind, and her fair woman form has been partly changed to
bestial shape. For many a weary league she has been goaded onward by the
gadfly of Hera; and even now she is haunted by the wraith of Argus, the
huntsman of the hundred eyes whom the angry goddess had set to watch
her. Good and beautiful she had been, her serene life gladly given to
the service of Hera in an Argive temple. Yet now she is doomed to wander
restlessly over sea and land, through sun and storm, and by many an
unknown lonely path, without apparent aim and for no apparent cause. As
her feet stumble up the mountain side and she stands before Prometheus,
innocent and mercilessly persecuted, we feel that the moment is crowded
with all the elements of tragedy. If we had wavered before, standing on
that ridge of neutral ground where the cool airs of reason calm the
passions; if the poet meant that we should waver for a moment, giving us
in his unifying purpose some perception of the higher power as it would
ultimately justify itself; he plunges us now into the arena again, with
every emotion clamant to defend these victims of tyranny.
As they confront each other, Io speaks, forgetting her own griefs for
the moment in contemplation of the suffering titan.
“_What land, what people is here?
Whom shall I say that I see,
Rock-pinioned yonder,
Storm-buffeted?
To penance of a living death
What crime hath doomed thee?
Tell me, thou luckless one,
Where have I wandered?_
“_Ah me, alas, unhappy!
Frenzied again as by the gadfly’s sting,
The fatal herdsman with the myriad eyes,
The giant Argus, I behold ...
Me he pursues, the unhappy,
Over sandy leagues of the waste seashore....
Whither alas, ah woe is me
When shall my wandering end?_
“_What, O what was the sin in me,
O son of Cronos, that thou didst find?
Why hast thou doomed me thus to suffer
By the gadfly’s goad still onward driven,
Weary of fleeing, distraught with dread?...
Enough I have wandered—
Wandered afar till my strength is spent;
And still from my doom escape is none.
Dost thou mark my speech?
The hornèd maiden hearest thou?_“[20]
Prometheus does indeed hear and know her, he says, the poor frenzied
daughter of Inachus, whom Zeus loves. As he speaks her father’s name, Io
catches at it eagerly. Perhaps this may be a friend.
IO. _Who told thee of my sire?
Tell me, the sufferer—who art thou,
That thou hast named aright
One wretched as thyself?..._
PROM. _This is Prometheus, who gave fire to men._
IO. _Of all our human kind, proved helper thou,
Ill-starred Prometheus—what hath earned thee this?_[20]
In rapid interchange of question and answer, the cause of the quarrel,
and its consequence, are related to Io; and then, because she knows that
Prometheus can foresee the future, she begs him to tell her what is in
store for herself. The titan warns her that the knowledge can only bring
fresh pain; and for awhile the prophecy is delayed, as Io, at the
petition of the nymphs, tells her own strange story.
IO. _Your will is law to me; I must obey.
... Albeit I blush to tell.
Haunting my virgin chamber, night by night,
Came visions to beguile me while I slept
With fair smooth words: “O maiden highly blest,
Be maiden now no more; to whom ‘tis given
To mate thee with the Highest; thy beauty’s shaft
Glows in the heart of Zeus, and for his bride
He claims thee.”_[20]
Her father Inachus sent anxious messages to the oracles at Delphi and
Dodona to inquire what this persistent vision might mean. At first
ambiguous answers came.
_But at the last to Inachus there came
A peremptory word, with mandate clear,
To cast me from my country and my home,
At the world’s end a wanderer far from men;
And, if he would not, swift from Zeus should come
A fiery bolt that should consume his race._[20]
With sorrowful heart, Inachus obeyed the oracular command, constrained
thereto by Zeus. Io was driven out to the pastures of her father’s
herds.
_Then was my feature changed, my reason fled:
Wearing these horns ye see, with frenzied hounds,
Pricked and tormented by the gadfly’s sting,
To fair Kerchneia’s stream and Lerna’s shore
I hasted. And upon my traces still,
Of rage unslaked, with myriad eyes agaze,
The earth-born huntsman Argus followed hard.
Him unawares a sudden death o’ertook,
And reft him of his life. From land to land,
Heaven’s scourge, the unsleeping gadfly, drives me still.
My tale is told. What time has yet in store
For me to suffer, tell me if thou canst:
Not pitying think with lies to comfort me:
False words I count of maladies the worst._[20]
Io is asking more than she knows, and the prophecy that Prometheus will
make to her is more wonderful than she could ever dream. In careful
detail, and so impressively that she must remember every word, he
indicates the first part of her wanderings. She must turn her face
eastward, and faring through Scythia, pass along the sea-coast, avoiding
the fierce Chalybes. Then on wearily to the range of the Caucasus, which
she must ascend to the very summit; and following afterward a southward
road, she will come to the land of the Amazons and down to the sea which
separates the continents. Here she must boldly ford the strait, which in
later times will be called Bosphorus because she, the cow-maiden,
crossed it; and leaving Europe behind, she will tread on Asian soil.
PROM. _... Deem ye not
That this proud lord of heaven on great and small
Tramples alike? For this poor mortal maid,
Enamoured of her love, his godhead dooms
To wander thus. Thy most imperious wooer,
Maiden, thou well mayst rue. What I have told,
Deem that the prelude hardly hast thou heard._
IO. _Woe’s me, alas, alas!...
What boots it then to live? Were it not better
From this hard rock to fling myself outright,
That dashed to earth I might of all my toil
Have riddance? Better surely once to die.
Than all my days to be afflicted thus._[20]
But Prometheus, looking further still into the future, sees some hope
for her, as he contrasts her fate with his. However great her
affliction, it must end some day; he can even foretell just what the
issue will be, and when. But for him, suffering must continue until Zeus
is hurled from his throne.
IO. _Shall Zeus indeed be downcast from his throne?_
PROM. _To see that day methinks thou wouldst rejoice._
IO. _How could I but rejoice, whom he has wronged?_[20]
She begs for a revelation of the fate of Zeus; and the titan tells
briefly of a certain marriage that the god is contemplating, which must
bring him ruin if Prometheus will not interpose.
IO. _Who then shall loose thee in despite of Zeus?_
PROM. _One of thine own descendants he shall be._
IO. _How? shall a child of mine deliver thee?_
PROM. _Ten generations hence, and three beside._
IO. _Now hard to read the prophecy becomes._[20]
Io’s mind cannot take so great a leap forward; and Prometheus, resuming
the course of her wanderings in Asia, gradually leads up to the climax
of her story. Having crossed the strait, she is again to bend her steps
eastward. Through the land of the Gorgons she must go, and of the
Griffins, and of Phorcy’s daughters, the three hags with one eye and one
tooth between them. On the golden shores of Pluto she will see an army
of one-eyed horsemen, whom she must carefully avoid; and toiling onward
still, she must follow the course of the river Ethiopia far up to its
very source. Then, at Canopus, a town upon the shores of distant Nile,
she will find rest.
So is completed the tale of Io’s wanderings. And now, before Prometheus
reveals the strangest thing of all, he would convince her that he is
speaking truth indeed. So he recalls to her mind a marvel that had
happened on her way thither, but which she had not spoken when she
related her story.
PROM. _To the Molossian plains when thou hadst come,...
And to Dodona’s rock-ridge, to the seat
And sacred oracle of Thesprotian Zeus,
Famed for its marvel of the talking oaks,
That with clear voice and nowise doubtfully
Hailed thee (sounds this familiar to thine ears?)
The glorious bride of Zeus in days to come._[20]
The weird music of the oaks came back to her as the titan spoke, phrased
intelligibly now. It had haunted all her journey, but confusedly,
hinting at something she could not clearly understand, and dared not
name. But in the words of Prometheus its meaning pealed. Becoming in
that far Eastern country the bride of the ruler of Olympus, she would
found a splendid race. From her the Danaans would spring, one root of
that Hellenic people which should civilize the Western world. She would
give a line of kings to the Argive throne. But greater and more blessed
than all, from her should come the supreme Greek hero Heracles, destined
to release this suffering titan from his misery.
As she muses on the wonder of it, Prometheus takes up again the thread
of his prophecy. In that rich land which borders on the Nile she may at
last stay her weary feet.
“_There shall the hand of Zeus, with soft caress
Upon thee laid, restore thee to thy mind:
And thou shalt bear, named of his fruitful touch,
A son, swart Epaphus, whom all that land,
By the broad Nile-stream watered, shall enrich...._“[20]
From Io’s son Epaphus should descend, generations afterward, a princess.
“_’The royal line of Argos springs from her.
Time fails to tell the story to its close:
But of her strain one valiant shall be born,
And famous with the bow; he from these ills
Shall loose me.’ Thus the titaness, my mother,
Primeval Themis, prophesied to me,
But of the ways and means too long it were
To tell thee, and it profits not to know._“[20]
To immortal eyes, seeing the end in the beginning, it was a glorious
destiny; one to compensate perhaps, if not to justify, all that she had
endured. But Io is only a mortal maid. The vision of the future opens
before her in one radiant moment, and then all is dark again, and
nothing remains but her inexplicable pain. Even before Prometheus has
finished speaking the cloud had fallen upon her mind again.
“_Alas! Woe worth the day!
Again a thrill, a spasm of frenzy
Shoots through me, soul-distracting:
The unforged goad of the gadfly
Stings me afresh; and my seated heart
Knocks at my ribs for fear,
My sight swims, and my senses reel;
And a frantic gust of madness sweeps me
Wide of the course...._”[20]
Tormented and distracted, she rushes from the scene as wildly as she had
come; but as the titan and the sea-nymphs sadly watch her go, they see
that her face is set now toward the East.
-----
Footnote 20:
From Mr Robert Whitelaw’s translation of the _Prometheus_ (Clarendon
Press, 1s. net).
_Sophocles: Jocasta_
Jocasta, in _Œdipus the King_ of Sophocles, is a very real woman.
Moreover, though she is a splendidly dramatic figure, she is not heroic
in anything save her death. True, she is a queen, deriving royalty
through several generations from Cadmus himself; and possessing the
throne of Thebes so surely that when the king her husband died she had
perforce to marry with his successor in order to establish him in the
kingship. But despite her special royalty, which makes her, as Professor
Murray has pointed out, like one of the consecrated queens of early
times: despite the extreme deference which is paid to her, the weight
that attaches to her counsel, and the sense of brooding fate that clings
about her, she is before all an appealing and convincing human creature.
This vivid reality is a new fact in our study of Greek heroines, and the
reason for it is that we have come now to the Drama of Sophocles. We
have seen, so far, the women of Homer and those of Æschylus; and we have
observed one or two characteristics which distinguish them.
The Homeric women are gracious and beautiful, glowing as it were with
romantic charm. With one notable exception, Penelope, they appear rarely
in the movement of the epic; and then only to form the central figure in
a picturesque group. Reality has never touched them. Generous as their
emotions are, the extremes of passion have not for an instant distorted
their loveliness. When they are called upon to act, they seem always to
move with grace and gentleness; and even in their sorrow they are
serene. If they share in the great stern things of life, its aspiration
and its struggle, they give no sign of the penalty exacted. They are
always young, fresh and fair; except again Penelope, and she has only
gained from age, not lost. A wise maturity has been added to her early
charms. And thus these Homeric women, with their delicate infrangible
bloom, seem to belong to a region just over the boundary-line of our
common humanity.
The women of Æschylus are much greater figures. Clytemnestra is
colossal: Cassandra, Electra and Io are all conceived majestically.
Unlike the Epic women, they are capable of strenuous action: strong
passions sway them, and they are much concerned with the great issues of
life. We know little or nothing about their appearance, and it does not
seem to matter. They do not live in our mental vision pictorially, in
soft, warm tints; but remotely grand, they appeal to a more austere
sense of wonder, awe and reverence. Surrounded by an atmosphere of myth,
and sharing in the elevation of the poet’s spirit, they seem to be
creatures of an older and a bigger world.
There is indeed one woman in the Æschylean Drama, Orestes’ nurse, who is
of ordinary stature and might belong to any age. But she is of minor
importance in the story, and does not move on the heroic plane. She is
therefore beyond the range of that sublimating power of the poetic
spirit which magnified the heroes and heroines to immense proportions.
And as she stands in the clear daylight outside the enchanted circle she
is just an old grey woman taken straight out of common life. But for
that very reason there is a hearty, homely breath about her which is
very refreshing. She is but a nurse: she is quaint and querulous in her
talk, inept, wordy and reminiscent; and peevishly loyal. Yet in her very
weakness and foolishness she is precious, for is she not a flash from
the eyes of the Comic Spirit, naïvely unconscious of its august
surroundings? We feel that we can actually see and hear her, as she
gabbles about Orestes’ babyhood and how she tended him; being nurse,
cook, foster-mother and washerwoman all combined. But she is unique
among Æschylean women, and when we turn to look again on the figures of
his heroines, a thought is suggested by the extreme contrast. Here is
creative genius so strong that it has evoked on the one hand the
grandeur of a Clytemnestra; and on the other, the biting reality of this
old slave. But there does not seem to have been an equivalent artistic
power which, controlling the fervid idealism and combining it with his
keen insight, would have produced types more fully and completely human.
Such types we find first when we come to the Drama of Sophocles. With
Æschylus the ruling passion had been spiritual fervour. In Sophocles the
artist reigned paramount. All the advance which his drama made, in plot,
incident and character-building, was in the direction of a more perfect
art. And although there was some inevitable loss—as for instance the
curtailment of the lyrics by modifying the part of the Chorus; and their
lower poetic flight—on the whole the gain is very great. In the matter
of characterization, with which we are chiefly concerned, the change is
one which brings us out of the region of demi-gods into the world of men
and women.
When we say that the persons of Sophocles’s drama are real people, that
is not to say that they are ‘realistic’ in the narrow sense of the word
which conveys only what is average and actual. But it does mean that
with all their splendour and dignity and fine achievement they are
subject to our common humanity. They are not immune from the defects of
their virtues. The passions which have led them to great deeds are
potent agents of their downfall. It is the flaw within which helps to
betray them.
For this reason, and also because the poet shows his characters moving
in intimate human relationships, the women of Sophocles are intensely
living creatures. Electra in her conflict with Chrysothomis, and
Antigone with Ismene, are of the stuff of life; and the situations thus
created are pure drama. Here two great natures clash. Closely bound by
the ties of blood and affection, but at the opposite poles of
temperament, the struggle between them is all the more bitter from the
intimacy of their relationship. Both claim our esteem and both are
sincerely confident in the purity of their intentions. But each
mistrusts the other, believing her to be fatally misguided or wilfully
blind. It is by this faculty of seeing all sides of an issue, or, as
Matthew Arnold expressed it, “to see life steadily and see it whole,”
that Sophocles has heightened and deepened the dramatic values of a
story. Out of that, too, he has made Jocasta, with all her state and
despite the unnatural horror with which she is touched, a pitiable
figure.