Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/110

 78 HISTORY OF GREECE. length Zeus, eager to enhance the glory of his favorite son Hera cles, permitted the latter to kill the eagle and rescue the cap- tive. 1 Such is the Promethean mythe as it stands in the Hesiodic poems ; its earliest form, as far as we can trace. Upon it was founded the sublime tragedy of -tEschylus, "The Enchained Prometheus," together with at least one more tragedy, now lost, by the same author. 2 -ZEsihylus has made several important alterations; de- scribing the human race, not as having once enjoyed and subse- quently lost a state of tranquillity and enjoyment, but as originally feeble and wretched. He suppresses both the first trick played off by Prometheus upon Zeus respecting the partition of the vic- tim and the final formation and sending of Pandora which are the two most marked portions of the Hesiodic story ; while on the other hand he brings out prominently and enlarges upon the theft of fire, 3 which in Hesiod is but slightly touched. If he has thus relinquished the antique simplicity of the story, he has rendered more than ample compensation by imparting to it a gran- deur of ideal, a large reach of thought combined with appeals to our earnest and admiring sympathy, and a pregnancy of sugges- tion in regard to the relations between the gods and man, which soar far above the Hesiodic level and which render his tragedy the most impressive, though not the most artistically composed, of all Grecian dramatic productions. Prometheus there appears not only as the heroic champion and sufferer in the cause and for the protection of the human race, but also as the gifted teacher of all the arts, helps, and ornaments of life, amongst which fire is only one:' all this against the will and in defiance of the purpose of Zeus, who, on acquiring his empire, wished to destroy the human race and to 1 Theog. 521-532. mam : IIpofuj&eiiG Tlvpopoe was a satyric drama, according to Dindorf Welcker recognizes a third tragedy, Upojtrj&sijf Hvptyopoc, and a satyric dra- ma, n/>o/7i9et)f Hvpicaeve (Die Grie^hisch. Tragodien, vol. i. p. 30). Th< Btory of Prometheus had also been handled by Sappho in one of her lost songs (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 42). 3 Apollodorus too mentions only the theft of fire (i. 7. 1). 4 JSuch. Prom. 442-506. Huaai rexvai /3poToIaiv IK
 * Of the tragedy called ILpofiTj^eiif Avopsvof some few fragments yet re