Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

The Historical Necessity of Political Justice
in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
Lindsey Brett Meyers
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound is a masterful play that illuminates the dramatic
tension between the immorality of tyrannical power and the struggle for political
justice. Those who regard Greek tragedy from a purely literary perspective
might chafe at such a political reading. However, any doubt that Aeschylus’ play
is a political treatise as well as a great work of literature is readily resolved by an
exegesis of its text and an analysis of its historical background. At its most basic
level, the play concerns a political struggle that arises from a cosmic redistribution
of material wealth. Aeschylus’ Zeus is a tyrant who punishes the just Prometheus
for stealing fire from Olympus to improve the condition of a repressed
humanity that lacks even the rudiments of civilized life. It is not surprising that
Aeschylus explores dictatorial power in the play, for he personally experienced
the tyrannical rule of the Pisistratids and the birth of the 5th century Athenian
democracy. However, Aeschylus’ suggestion that Zeus is a political tyrant is
strikingly radical, especially if we consider Hesiod’s canonic interpretation that
Prometheus was a fraudulent trickster justly punished by Zeus. By challenging
the morality of Zeus, Aeschylus questions the possibility of political justice, for
if Zeus is an immoral tyrant, the political imprisonment of Prometheus cannot be
normatively justified. However, the play foreshadows the intriguing possibility
that reason will replace violence as the ordering principle of Zeus’ political justice.
By thus rejecting the tyranny of Zeus and suggesting the possibility of
reform, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound is a political treatise, one that uses the
power of great literature to vindicate the historical necessity of political justice.
Aeschylus challenges our political understanding by exploring the tension
between tyranny and justice. That the play is an extended meditation on political
themes is immediately evident in the opening scene when Prometheus is dramatically
dragged onto the stage as the political prisoner of Zeus. Having just
defeated his father Cronus, Zeus exhibits the “harsh” authority that is a product
of “power newly won” (Prom. 35). In his rage against anyone who challenges
his authority, Zeus sends Strength and Violence, the agents of his tyrannical
will, to seize and imprison Prometheus, who is a Titan and the son of Earth.
Prometheus’ crime is that he has stolen fire from the gods. However, he has
justly done so to save a suffering humanity from Zeus’ genocide. The inequity
of Zeus’ rage against this beneficent act is so apparent that even the loyal
Hephaestus is reluctant to punish Prometheus at Zeus’ behest. However,
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