1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

end when she finally reaches Egypt. There she will be welcomed; she will resume her original
shape and bear Zeus’s son Epaphus (great-grandfather of Danaus and his daughters). Besides
this, another descendant of hers (Heracles) will eventually free Prometheus from his torment.
The hope that Prometheus gives Io is what he earlier gave men out of sympathy for them.
Hermes, Zeus' messenger, comes on the scene to threaten Prometheus with more torture
if he will not reveal to Zeus what he wants to know. This wins the chorus over to Prometheus'
side, and they choose to share his fate at the end. They also opt to be heroic in their loyalty to
their friend. Prometheus will not compromise, but as he is hurled to the depths, he calls on his
mother, and the sky, to see what undeserved suffering he has to bear.
The parallels with Christ are obvious, from the suffering of the innocent to the pains of
having hands and feet nailed. Even Prometheus' final words have a curious resemblance to
Christ's complaint to his father when he is nailed to the cross. Both gave their lives for mankind.
Prometheus advocates love, whereas Zeus prefers power. Prometheus is filled with love for man,
and willing to suffer for it. He ends up being crucified for his defiance of those in authority.
Prometheus and Io are also symbols for victims who suffer from slow progressive painful
diseases like AIDS, or various cancers. There are many remarks which show psychological
acuity: there is reference to a "talking cure," which characterizes talking as relief of pain. Freud’s
famous therapy was anticipated by Aeschylus.
The location is somewhere in the Caucasus mountains, or Scythia. Prometheus is a huge
figure who is nailed to a cliff and remains there. The fact that the actor is silent for so long is also
dramatic, and typical of Aeschylus. In Aristophanes' Frogs, Aeschylus is lampooned for his use
of an actor who is silent for long periods. Prometheus’ silence at the beginning while he is
obviously in excruciating pain builds up sympathy for him and antipathy towards the tyrant who
ordered this. Significantly, Zeus never appears in the play, but just sends lackeys to carry his
messages. It is a pity we do not have the whole trilogy. It is possible that Zeus learned through
his own suffering, and that some compromise was effected, so that the final play may have
resembled the Eumenides in the Oresteia.
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