Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/407

Rh descended into Hades; and, finally, whether the Gods appeared upon the scene, to celebrate, with Prometheus and the Titans, the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis—these are questions to which neither the fragments themselves, nor the testimony of other witnesses, enable us to return a satisfactory answer, and I consequently abstain from entering upon them.

The chief interest, however, centres in the mind of Prometheus, and upon the agency by which the arch-rebel was transformed into the willing subject and minister of Zeus. The spectacle of his brother and sister Titans and Titanesses redeemed from durance would tend to correct the false impression which had possessed his mind respecting the ruthless tyranny of Zeus, and consequently the gnawing desire to witness his humiliation would give place to the unreluctant recognition of his supremacy. He would accordingly no longer refuse to reveal the secret, upon the disclosure of which he, in his blindness, imagined the maintenance of that supremacy to depend. In Hesiod Zeus is represented as allowing himself to be apparently deceived by Prometheus, when he taught men to bring worthless offerings to the Gods; the Titan there appears as the trickster caught at last in his own wiles. That the reign of Zeus, whom the poet elsewhere extols as "The Lord of ceaseless ages," "Most blessed among the blest," should be conceived of by him as contingent upon the word of Prometheus, seems to me incredible. The voluntary revelation of his supposed