Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/350

328 the limits which, according to the view of the ancients, the gods, who are alone immortal, have prescribed to the human race; he seeks to acquire for mortals perfections which the gods had reserved for themselves alone; for a mind which is always striving after advancement, and using all means to obtain it, cannot easily, from its very constitution, confine itself within the narrow limits prescribed to it by custom and law. These efforts of Prometheus, which we also learn occasionally from the play that has come down to us, were in all probability depicted with much greater perfection, and in connexion with his stealing the fire, in the first portion of the trilogy, which was called Prometheus the Fire-bringer.

The extant play, the Prometheus Bound, begins at once with the fastening of the gigantic Titan to the rocks of Scythia, and the fettered prisoner is the centre of all the action of the piece. The daughters of Oceanus, who constitute the chorus of the tragedy, come to comfort and calm him; he is then visited by the aged Oceanus himself, and afterwards by Hermes, who endeavour, the one by mild arguments, the other by insults and threats, to move him to compliance and submission. Meanwhile Prometheus continues to defy the superior power of Zeus, and stoutly declares that, unless his base fetters are removed, he will not give out an oracle that he has learned from his mother Themis, respecting the marriage, by means of which Zeus was destined to lose his sovereign power. He would rather that Zeus should bury his body in the rocks amid thunder and lightning. With this the drama concludes, in order to allow him to come forth again and suffer new torments. This grand and sublime defiance of Prometheus, by which the free will of man is perfectly maintained under overwhelming difficulties from without, is generally considered the great design of the poem; and in reading the remaining play of the trilogy, there is no doubt on which side our sympathies should be enlisted: for Prometheus appears as the just and suffering martyr; Zeus as the mighty tyrant, jealous of his power. Nevertheless, if we view the subject from the higher ground of the old poetic associations, we cannot rest content with such a solution as this. Tragedy could not, in conformity with those associations, consist entirely of the opposition and conflict between the free will of an individual and omnipotent fate; it must appease contending powers and assign to each of them its proper place. Contentions may rise higher and higher, the opposition may be stretched to the utmost, yet the divine guidance which presides over the whole finds means to restore order and harmony, and allots to each conflicting power its own peculiar right.