Page:Prometheus Bound (Bevan 1902).djvu/28

 The three leading characteristics of Prometheus, as he appears in Aeschylus, were already indicated in a slight way by Hesiod: Aeschylus threw them into stronger relief and developed them more largely. The most fundamental idea, of course, connected with him was that of practical wisdom: he was the embodiment of intelligence, which grasps the means to all ends, which can plan and arrange and advise, fertile in what the Greeks called, "counsels," or , contriving wit. So in Hesiod his epithets are. And this was the ultimate cause of his coming into collision with Zeus. For this fertility of counsel, this capacity for far-reaching design was exactly one of the attributes, by which Zeus was distinguished. His epithets also are (Hesiod, Erg. 51; Theog. 457),  (Erg. 104; Theog. 56, &c.),  (Theog. 545). Metis personified is his first wife (Theog. 886). "It is impossible to cheat or overreach the mind of Zeus." (Theog. 613.) This corresponds closely