Chapter 981

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In Mrs. Anna Swanwick’s volume, The Dramas of Æschylus, it is said of “Prometheus Bound” (“Bohn’s Classical Library,” p. 334), that Prometheus truly appears in it “as the champion and benefactor of mankind, whose condition: ... is depicted as weak and miserable in the extreme.... Zeus, it is said, proposed to annihilate these puny ephemerals, and to plant upon the earth a new race in their stead.” We see the Lords of Being doing likewise, and exterminating the first product of Nature and the Sea, in the Stanzas. “Prometheus represents himself as having frustrated this design, and as being consequently subjected, for the sake of mortals, to the most agonizing pain, inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of Zeus. We have, thus, the Titan, the symbol of finite reason and free will [of intellectual humanity, or the higher aspect of Manas], depicted as the sublime philanthropist, while Zeus, the Supreme Deity of Hellas, is portrayed as the cruel and obdurate despot, a character peculiarly revolting to Athenian sentiment.” The reason for it is explained further on. The “Supreme Deity” bears, in every ancient Pantheon—including that of the Jews—a dual character, composed of light and shadow.