Page:Prometheus Bound (Bevan 1902).djvu/37

 (Iliad xiv. 246.) In Hesiod he does not hold quite so primal a position, being himself the son of Uranos and Gaia (Theog. 133); but the idea of great age, no doubt, clung to him in popular thought. The other element was his remoteness, not only local, but involving the moral quality of holding aloof. The great war, in which Zeus vanquished the Titans, did not reach to his dwelling-place. (Iliad xiv. 202.) It left him unscathed, when his brethren fell. This conception of Okeanos gives to much in the play of Aeschylus a point which the contemporary Athenians would readily seize. His first words are to complain of the length of his journey, although we know that the scene is laid close to his River. The journey was long in regard to the effort it cost him to move. He was full of senile apprehension even at his daughters' going to visit Prometheus, and was only with difficulty persuaded to consent (l. 129). Had commentators appreciated these things, they would not have been mystified by the obvious sarcasm of Prometheus, when he congratulates Okeanos upon being clear of the doom,