38 pages • 1 hour read
AeschylusPrometheus Bound
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 456A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Fire
Prometheus’s theft of fire is a central idea in the play, representing the reason for Prometheus’s punishment. The fire Prometheus gave humanity embodies the ideals of knowledge and enlightenment: The gift of fire allowed humanity to survive but also to develop further technologies and arts. Without fire, there could be no civilization—hence Prometheus’s boast: “[A]ll human arts come from Prometheus” (506). Indeed, Prometheus paints a bleak picture of humanity before his arrival: “[H]umans in the beginning had eyes but saw / to no purpose; they had ears but did not hear” (447-48). But fire provided humanity with the light they needed to see. Fire, moreover, is only the beginning of Prometheus’s contributions to humanity, as Prometheus also claims to have introduced writing, sailing, medicine, and divination. Everything, however, began with fire, so fire becomes both the symbol of humanity’s salvation and the reason for Prometheus’s suffering.
Prophecy and Oracles
Prophecy and oracles recur throughout the play, illustrating larger themes such as The Conflict Between Power and Justice and The Consequences of Defying Tyranny. The play mentions several different prophecies: the prophecy that the Olympians would beat the Titans using guile; the prophecy that Zeus would punish Prometheus for the theft of fire; the prophecy that Prometheus’s suffering will eventually end; and, perhaps most importantly, the prophecy that Zeus will be overthrown.
Prophecy plays an ambivalent role in the play: Knowing the future often causes more harm than good. Prometheus, knowing the dark side of prophecy, prevents humans from knowing when they will die and later tries to dissuade Io from asking to learn about her own fate. Prometheus, who cannot escape his “foresight” (this is the literal meaning of his name), knows that he is destined to suffer but also that his suffering is destined to end, and this knowledge, in turn, causes him to constantly vacillate between hope and despair. The representation of prophecy in the play demonstrates that even the gods are not immune to fate. Zeus himself, now the ruler of the cosmos, is fated to fall eventually. Thus, prophecies and oracles drive the action of the play but also inform the characterization of characters such as Prometheus and Zeus.
Freedom
Freedom—especially freedom of speech—emerges as one of the most important ideals explored in the play. Prometheus consistently praises and celebrates the freedom of the mind, which no tyrant can take away. Indeed, none of Zeus’s punishments in the play manage to deprive Prometheus of his defiance, and this failure on Zeus’s part illustrates a very important limitation of political power: However severe The Consequences of Defying Tyranny may be, the consequences of submitting to tyranny may be even worse. For while Prometheus must endure physical suffering, his mastery of his mind makes him free in a way that the other characters are not: Throughout the play, Prometheus insists that Hermes, Ocean, the Chorus, and all those who worship the tyrannical Zeus are the real slaves, while only he is truly free.
Prometheus’s ideas about freedom, moreover, contribute to the play’s underlying political message, a message that seems to relate to contemporary democratic ideology: In fifth century Athens, a democracy that preserved individual freedoms was often contrasted with tyranny, in which a single autocratic ruler made slaves of everybody else. In the world of Prometheus Bound, Zeus is cast as a tyrant who has effectively enslaved the entire cosmos—and, as Prometheus alone realizes, the only way to escape this slavery is to defy it (even if doing so means punishment and suffering).
Related Titles
By Aeschylus
