Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/403

Rh with these higher attributes; by conferring upon them benefits contrary to the will of Zeus, he, in fact, alienated them from the gods, in fellowship with whom, according to the Greek ideal, men found their highest well-being.

He may thus be regarded as personifying that insurgent condition of the will which, blind to the perception of higher truth, is full of arrogant self-confidence and all-defying pride. In many respects he offers a parallel to Milton's Satan, "a creation requiring in its author almost the spiritual energy with which he invests the fallen Seraph." The Titan chained to his solitary rock, and the archangel prone upon the lake of fire, stand alone, the one in ancient, the other in modern literature, as stupendous examples of indomitable will; of both it may be said with truth that, "what chains us, as with a resistless spell, in such a character, is spiritual might made visible by the racking pains which it overpowers."

For the Titan, however, there is deliverance, and the extant fragments of the concluding member of the trilogy enable us to form some idea as to the agency by which it was accomplished. At the opening of the "Prometheus Unbound" the Titan was seen brought once more to light, after the lapse of ages, from the abyss into which he had been hurled at the conclusion of the "Prometheus Bound." He was still chained to the rock, with the additional torment of the eagle. which daily preyed upon his liver. The punishments