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It is mortal because it is not godlike: it is incapable of solving the problem. Thisactual weakness of apparent strength is a significant theme in the drama. Manfredrecalls having visited the placewhere the Caesars dwelt,And dwell the tuneless birds of night; amidstA grove which springs through levell’d battlements,And twines its roots with the Imperial hearths (3.4.22-25).The apparently world-conquering power of the Caesars could not preserve their ownhearths against time or even against their own human enemies. The battle is not to thestrong. Even the power of the spirits who have dominion over the world is sometimesunavailing: they cannot bring peace to one mortal (1.1.147), nor force him to kneel(2.4.35-6), and the greatest of them cannot make Astarte utter a word (2.4.114). It is,of course, the tension caused by unachieved desire which drives most narrative, andthat is the case even here, in a drama of magic and supernatural beings: it is theweakness, the mortality, which creates the interest.Nonetheless, those who are apparently godlike, the various spirits, emphasize theirdifference from humanity by questioning Manfred’s claim that he is like them(1.1.161-1), and by calling him “Child of Clay” (1.1.131,133), “son of mortals”(1.1.135), “Child of Earth” (2.4.35), and “Son of Earth” (2.2.32). Manfred uses thislast title for himself, when talking to the Witch of the Alps (2.2.28-9). These titles arereminiscent of two Biblical references: the first is the creation of Adam from the soil(or “the dust of the ground” in the KJV) in Genesis 2:7; the second, and perhaps moreimportant, is the repeated usage in the Bible of ‘son of man’ as an identifier of amortal, a descendant of Adam and Eve, as it is used for Jesus of Nazareth. Thisreiteration reinforces the humanity of the hero.Often, however, Manfred attempts to deny that humanity. In his conversation withthe Witch of the Alps, Manfred refers to other mortals as “creatures of clay” (2.2.58),and says that, when he met them, “I felt myself degraded back to them, /And was all260