The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - November 07, 2026


FREEMIUM： Chronicles #70 ｜ Prometheus Bound with Stelios Panagiotou

Breakfast With Beau ｜ Friday 6th November 2026 PREVIEW： Epochs #288 ｜ Elizabeth I - Part 4

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Length

1 hour and 21 minutes

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141.46

Word count

11,513

Sentence count

669

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Misogyny

5

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20

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18

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome back to Chronicles, where today we're going to be talking all about
00:00:17.880 Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. And I'm delighted to be joined once again by Brother Stelios.
00:00:24.880 Hello Brother Luca. Hello. I always love our Chronicles segments, our episodes, and it has been a while.
00:00:33.580 Yeah, it has been quite a while, hasn't it? The last time that you sat down to join me was when we discussed Euripides Medea,
00:00:40.500 and obviously we did a wonderful three-parter on the Argonautica as well, which was complete fun.
00:00:46.280 But actually, the first time we ever sat down, of course, was to discuss the beginning of the Oresteia.
00:00:51.860 we covered all three parts of Aeschylus' trilogy back last year
00:00:57.560 and so it's really exciting to get into some work by Aeschylus again
00:01:02.600 and I'm totally going to leapfrog the question of whether or not
00:01:07.340 he is actually the author of this particular bit of work
00:01:10.780 there's all sorts of speculation on whether or not it's actually Esophocles' play
00:01:14.900 whether or not it was actually written by Aeschylus' son
00:01:19.520 Irrespective of that, no one in antiquity seems to quibble with the fact that this was one of
00:01:25.200 Aeschylus's works. So for the sake of the thumbnail and the conversation going forward,
00:01:30.640 we're just going to treat this as coming from the great man himself. And what an important play it
00:01:36.060 is. Truly, I don't think I'm being hyperbolic to say that the themes and the actual story
00:01:43.240 that Aeschylus explores within this play
00:01:45.720 are some of the most important in all of literature.
00:01:49.260 They really, really are.
00:01:50.680 And what's more as well, this is all grounded in the fact
00:01:54.360 that when you look at the entire Greek mythology,
00:01:58.920 chronologically, this play takes place
00:02:02.660 at the beginning of the timeline
00:02:04.260 with the surviving plays that we have at our disposal.
00:02:08.640 Obviously, I covered Euripides' Bacchae,
00:02:11.460 in which you have an aged version of the great King Cadmus as he travels to Thebes.
00:02:17.460 But that was many generations after the time and the events and the peoples
00:02:23.460 that we're talking about here.
00:02:25.460 So it's one set right back after the beginning, just after the Titanomachy.
00:02:30.460 And I'm really looking forward to discussing it.
00:02:33.460 I really love the myth of Prometheus.
00:02:36.460 It's very rich for interpretation.
00:02:39.420 It's fertile ground for debates and discourse
00:02:42.920 with respect to who the sort of villain is.
00:02:47.200 I'm sure we're going to get into that.
00:02:49.100 And I must say that From Aeschylus, I think Prometheus Bound,
00:02:52.280 is my favourite play.
00:02:54.240 Yeah, it's a fantastic work.
00:02:56.640 And I will just say as well, of course, for our listeners,
00:02:59.540 this is the first play of what is otherwise a lost trilogy.
00:03:04.440 and so we have to look at this play within the context of it merely being act one of a three-part story,
00:03:11.740 as it was with the Oresteia, which we're lucky enough to have the complete version of.
00:03:17.260 So Prometheus Bound would have been followed quite imaginatively by Prometheus Unbound,
00:03:23.920 and then lastly Prometheus the Firegiver.
00:03:27.840 And so we don't actually really know what the conclusion would have been.
00:03:32.600 and we can only really model it on the framework of Aeschylus' Oresteia
00:03:37.440 and the way that Aeschylus would write his dramas
00:03:40.080 to obviously have these two sides competing
00:03:44.340 and then some sort of midpoint resolution at the end,
00:03:48.800 as you obviously got in the Eumenides.
00:03:50.440 So this play in Prometheus Bound, we find that it is a very pro.
00:03:57.040 It really explores a pro-Promethean position.
00:03:59.620 And so speculatively, it seems that Prometheus unbound would have been the pro-Zeus position.
00:04:06.620 But we simply don't have that for the great god himself to speak on his behalf.
00:04:12.620 So that's really speculative.
00:04:14.620 No, we simply can't know.
00:04:16.620 And because we can't know, there is always the possibility
00:04:21.620 that interpretations that we may not ultimately like or agree with are the correct ones.
00:04:28.620 I mean to be fair that also applies to many other cases. It would apply even if we had the whole
00:04:36.140 trilogy. But we are in the dark and in a way we are profoundly in the dark and I don't know
00:04:43.820 what to make of it because you could say that towards the end there is a sort of synthesis
00:04:50.540 where both sides get to have a say and they form a sort of agreement, they come to an agreement,
00:04:58.300 Zeus said, hey, Prometheus, you had something going on for humanity.
00:05:05.820 And Prometheus said, well, Zeus, you did have a point. We simply don't know.
00:05:09.500 No, no, we don't. So let's focus on what we do now, shall we?
00:05:14.300 So our play opens at the far end of the Caucasus Mountains, far beyond any human life or
00:05:23.900 civilization or culture. So literally Prometheus has already stolen the fire, which he would of
00:05:31.860 course become famous for all time for doing his great act of philanthropy to humanity. And in
00:05:38.760 fact, if I understand it correctly, philanthropia is an ancient Greek word that means love of
00:05:44.560 humanity or love of humankind. And so we see that within his giving of fire. One of the interesting
00:05:51.180 things is that, according to Aeschylus' version, against that of Hesiod and his working days and
00:05:57.860 in his theogony, Aeschylus gives him much more, but we'll get to that when we come to it.
00:06:03.140 Yeah, he's very pro-Metheus.
00:06:05.360 Yes.
00:06:05.840 Pro-Prometheus.
00:06:07.260 I see what you did there.
00:06:08.260 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:09.480 But nonetheless, for all of Prometheus' charity for the human race, that is also a part of
00:06:19.500 punishment to put him beyond contact with them so that he never actually gets to see the way that
00:06:28.060 humankind use his gifts and the you know the um isn't there a chorus of of humans they're not
00:06:35.100 humans no they're uh they're the um oceanids the water nymphs the daughters of oceanus so no they
00:06:41.420 are also daughters of a titan so no the the only human character is is io towards the end of the
00:06:48.620 story which is obviously quite um unusual for a play usually you get one god turning up and the
00:06:55.660 rest are human characters and in this version it's um very much the other way around so we get um
00:07:02.140 prometheus being bound to this rock out in the caucuses mountain uh caucuses and one interesting
00:07:10.860 aspect of this is just speculating on how this would have looked if we actually cast our minds
00:07:18.220 back to the Dionysian festival in ancient Greece and Athens,
00:07:24.240 would someone have played the character of Prometheus
00:07:28.520 or would they have put a mask upon the dummy?
00:07:31.360 Because bear in mind, Prometheus, title's a bit of a giveaway.
00:07:35.200 Prometheus does not move for the entirety of this play.
00:07:39.420 He's just bound to this rock and having conversations with people
00:07:43.880 as they come and visit him and people disappear.
00:07:46.240 And so he's a very, very static character, figuratively and literally.
00:07:52.120 But we see that we get the great Olympian Hephaestus coming along with strength and violence.
00:08:01.080 And upon the order of Zeus for Prometheus' rebellion against the new divine order,
00:08:09.160 the new authority of Zeus, which has come about as a result of overthrowing Cronus and his order
00:08:17.120 and that of the Titans, well, he has sentenced Prometheus to be bound upon this rock,
00:08:24.860 cast in these adamantine chains created by Hephaestus himself and his forge from Mount
00:08:31.780 Tetna so that he might never escape until Zeus decrees it. And one of the interesting things 0.71
00:08:39.240 I find about the opening of the play as well, even though they're just a small part at the
00:08:43.460 beginning, is the inclusion of the characters of strength and violence, because obviously these
00:08:51.080 are two attributes that really represent the old order. These are the instruments of the Titans
00:09:00.200 themselves. It goes on later in the play to discuss the fact that Prometheus understood that
00:09:06.460 the future of divine governance was to be found in cunning and wisdom, but here we see the strength
00:09:15.100 and the violence. Right, so okay, I'm very much on the pro-Zoo side. Yes, okay. Right? Right. And I 1.00
00:09:23.180 think that in a way Prometheus has had some sort of propaganda for him but let
00:09:31.240 me just say one thing. Strength and violence are are always part of the
00:09:39.620 universe according to the to the Greek mythology. What Zeus represents isn't the
00:09:47.000 fight against power, what this represents is the sort of fusion of power with wisdom.
00:09:55.820 So he is trying to essentially govern for justice as opposed to govern for power's sake
00:10:02.920 as Kronos and Uranos before him did.
00:10:07.180 So when it comes to mythology and trying to decipher it, I think the best thing to start
00:10:15.280 thinking about is paintings.
00:10:17.000 Right? So for instance, let's say you want to find paintings of abstract notions, let's say.
00:10:24.620 You go on some AI, you said, are there famous paintings of wisdom or prudence or courage?
00:10:31.460 And it will tell you most probably, yes, there are.
00:10:35.900 And these qualities will always be personified.
00:10:39.760 So when we are trying to decipher myth, in a way, we need to do something counterintuitive.
00:10:46.100 We need to try to depersonify it as much as possible.
00:10:50.460 Now, that's counterintuitive because in myth, everything is personal.
00:10:54.700 There's no such thing as impersonal things.
00:10:57.720 Everything is reduced as a person.
00:11:00.180 But that's because myth is the first step.
00:11:03.740 You can think of myth as the first steps of human intelligence.
00:11:08.060 We're trying to understand the less familiar in terms of the more familiar.
00:11:12.260 There's nothing more familiar to us than personhood.
00:11:15.720 So it's a sort of weird thing, but we can triangulate it by sort of personifying and
00:11:21.360 depersonifying.
00:11:22.140 Absolutely.
00:11:22.740 And when it comes to Zeus and to Prometheus, we need to ask, what do they represent?
00:11:28.380 Now, I think we'll keep Prometheus and what he represents for later.
00:11:32.600 But when it comes to Zeus's order and the previous orders that he toppled, the previous
00:11:38.080 orders represent power for power's sake.
00:11:41.680 Whereas Yus isn't saying that power in itself is a bad thing. 0.98
00:11:46.060 He wasn't a sort of shit lib. 0.98
00:11:48.580 No. 0.99
00:11:50.000 He is combining force with wisdom.
00:11:56.700 So he's sort of taming force while accepting that force is an irreducible aspect of the universe.
00:12:04.540 Yes.
00:12:05.140 And it's very interesting as well, though, that even though I was saying we obviously don't have the complete trilogy, we are able to compare Aeschylus' portrayal of Prometheus with that of Hesiod's.
00:12:17.760 Yes. And that's actually a great point that you raise because Hesiod writes, is a contemporary of Homer. He wrote when Homer did. That's early archaic age, late 8th century is when it begins and it ends with a Persian defeat in 480.
00:12:37.060 And I think Prometheus Bound is during classical Athens.
00:12:42.220 Yes.
00:12:42.640 It's in the very early classical age.
00:12:45.560 So in these 250 years, there was definitely the collapse of old orders and of the old kinds of thinking.
00:12:53.160 So you can definitely see Aeschylus as coming 250 years after Hesiod and sort of trying to rebel
00:13:02.940 against that on a moral plane as well. Totally agree. We're immediately dragged in to feeling 0.92
00:13:12.580 a sense of Prometheus being a tragic figure because Hephaestus sees him as a tragic figure.
00:13:20.660 He has an enormous amount of sympathy for Prometheus and for what he did, oddly enough,
00:13:28.740 even though strength and violence are saying to him, well, the man stole your power.
00:13:36.620 He stole what you use, this gift of fire that you use to light your forges and so that you
00:13:42.360 create these wonders. 0.94
00:13:43.840 And he has taken the tool of the gods and given it to these lesser beings. 0.80
00:13:49.780 One of the particular turns of phrases that I really love in this play, in the way that it describes mortals, is it refers to them as those who live for a day, right?
00:14:00.240 And it's just pointing out the fact that because that we are constantly living and dying and rebirth and recycle and having to learn, we cannot be trusted with these instruments.
00:14:10.520 The tool of fire is eternal, and therefore it is the weapon of the gods.
00:14:15.600 in this. Again, different origins, so many variations on the tale. In Aeschylus' version
00:14:23.200 of it, Prometheus is the son of Themis, who is, I believe, the daughter of Gaia.
00:14:30.500 Themis was the Titaness of Justice. She was a Titaness. And she didn't side with the Titans
00:14:37.400 during the Titanomachy. That's why she isn't banished in Tartarus. Prometheus didn't side
00:14:43.360 with them either no no no we'll get to that but it's just to say that he is of the earth
00:14:48.820 right he comes from the earth all of that lineage yeah says um son of sagacious themis god of
00:14:55.860 mountainous thoughts with hearts as sore as yours i now shall fasten you in bands of bronze immovable
00:15:02.480 to this desolate peak where you will hear no voice nor see a human form but scorch with the
00:15:09.560 sun's flaming rays your skin will lose its bloom of freshness glad you will be to see the night
00:15:16.480 cloaking the day with her dark spangled robe and glad again when the sun's warm scatters a frost
00:15:23.680 at dawn each changing hour will bring successive pain to rack your body and no man yet born shall
00:15:31.460 set you free your kindness to the human race has earned you this a god who would not bow to the
00:15:39.240 God's anger. You, transgressing right, gave privileges to mortal men. For that you shall
00:15:45.920 keep watch upon this bitter rock, standing upright, unsleeping, never bowed in rest.
00:15:53.400 And many groans and cries of pain shall come from you, all useless. For the heart of Zeus
00:15:59.980 is hard to appease. Power newly won is always harsh. So again, it's brilliant. The dialogue
00:16:08.660 is so loaded, as Aeschylus's words always are. So we understand immediately that the very famous
00:16:17.300 aspect of Prometheus's punishment, of being tied to the rock so that the eagle would pluck out his
00:16:25.380 liver daily and cause immense suffering and come back, we're actually not at that point of the
00:16:31.060 story yet. That comes at the end of the play. We have more to do yet. For now, the punishment that
00:16:37.060 He's just chained in Caucasus.
00:16:39.460 Yes, he just has to chill for eons and eons, whilst Zeus governs.
00:16:45.380 But I find that line at the end very interesting, where it's from Hephaestus, it says,
00:16:49.860 power newly won is always harsh.
00:16:53.220 And so it's the point that we are still in the transitional phase, where Zeus is consolidating
00:17:01.420 his power and prometheus as someone who transgressed the new order obviously has to be made an example
00:17:09.020 of and one thing as well is that hephaistus is not mad about at him for what he actually did
00:17:16.700 but there is obviously that aspect of it as well that hephaistus even if he feels some
00:17:22.380 general sympathy with Prometheus, that sympathy doesn't go so far that Hephaestus is willing to
00:17:32.260 transgress the divine law that has now been set down, which is of course what Prometheus did.
00:17:39.380 So as we push forward with it, and I do find it really funny as well that the
00:17:43.480 strength and violence, I get these little snarky comments in. Like, Hephaestus is like...
00:17:49.620 pig cops. They're just following orders and they love it. Yeah, they're in it for the love of the 0.97
00:17:56.240 game. But this obviously has a deep emotional effect on Hephaestus, whereas for violence and
00:18:04.160 strength, they are reveling in the pain. They revel in the punishment. Hephaestus just understands
00:18:11.580 that the punishment has to be enacted. They even have this part in it where they say,
00:18:17.560 Strength goes on to say,
00:18:19.700 Stay there and swell with upstart arrogance
00:18:22.160 and steal the privileges of gods to give to mortal men. 0.92
00:18:26.380 How are your mortals going to cut this knot for you?
00:18:29.720 You're wrongly named Prometheus, wise before the event.
00:18:34.060 Wisdom is just a thing you want
00:18:35.920 if you've a mind to squirm your way out of this blacksmith's masterpiece.
00:18:40.440 So I love that, the idea of Prometheus' name
00:18:42.900 deriving from the word of foresight.
00:18:46.100 That's what one of Prometheus' great gifts is.
00:18:49.220 He has a gift of foresight.
00:18:51.140 And so for them to say, well, Mr. Foresight, that wasn't very bloody clever, was it?
00:18:56.640 Because look at the state you've got yourself into now.
00:18:59.060 So he's bound to eternal suffering.
00:19:01.660 And they're just going to have a jolly good gloat about all of it as it goes on.
00:19:07.340 And at this point as well, Prometheus has still not said a word of dialogue.
00:19:11.380 It's not until the other characters depart that we are finally allowed to hear about his plight
00:19:19.300 from his own mouth. And again, it's portrayed as an extremely tragic, like a nobly tragic figure
00:19:29.300 within the telling of this version of the play. But is there anything you just want to say about
00:19:34.980 Hephaestus or some of the characters that are about to depart before we move on?
00:19:39.860 No, no, let's go on. I have thousands of things to add.
00:19:43.100 I want to allow you to set the context first.
00:19:46.980 Okay, sure. All of this has been decided and Prometheus knew that he would be punished for what he did.
00:19:56.180 So everything that he did, he didn't feel that he was invulnerable or that there was going to be some impunity.
00:20:03.040 but he wasn't entirely sure about what the nature of his punishment was going to be.
00:20:10.220 Now, I understand that it doesn't pay to pick ancient Greek tales apart like some Reddit nitpicker
00:20:18.380 but I do wonder if, speculatively, this is not a case of simply the fact that Prometheus,
00:20:24.760 for all of his foresight, cannot know the mind of Zeus and what Zeus has in store.
00:20:30.900 Definitely. Because Prometheus is supposed to mean foresight, as you mentioned a few minutes ago. And that doesn't mean that he has perfect foresight. Now, he stands for foresight, but also Zeus stands for foresight.
00:20:49.320 And then you have, you know, where if you picked it, as you said before, very meticulously, you'd say, well, if Zeus has this foresight and he knows everything, as for instance, he is portrayed in the Homeric epics.
00:21:03.780 Why didn't he stop Prometheus?
00:21:04.980 Why didn't he stop Prometheus?
00:21:06.300 Well, there is an answer that he allowed Prometheus to think that he got away with it to punish him afterwards.
00:21:11.960 Yeah.
00:21:12.660 It's human, all to human, as Nietzsche said.
00:21:15.220 Oh, yes, absolutely.
00:21:15.940 But what I do think is that they tried to say that they did represent that quality.
00:21:26.420 But there is a sort of contradiction in myth in that you have gods that are supposed to be perfect.
00:21:36.200 They're supposed to embody their qualities perfectly.
00:21:39.520 But then you have constantly humans, for instance, being described as like Hector and Nestor and Odysseus as equal in wisdom with Zeus.
00:21:54.080 Or you have all gods are wise or most of them are wise, but Thetis is supposed to be wiser.
00:22:02.340 So it's a contradiction there because they wanted to highlight different things.
00:22:09.520 On the one hand, they wanted to highlight the difference between, let's say, humans and gods. 1.00
00:22:14.680 Say the gods are wise and eternal, the humans are stupid and transients. 0.99
00:22:22.680 And on the other hand, they are also trying to say, well, there are differences between gods. 0.99
00:22:28.880 So, yeah, there are contradictions there.
00:22:31.440 And Prometheus begins to speak and he says,
00:22:33.820 O divinity of sky and swift-winged winds and leaping streams
00:22:38.940 O countless laughter of the sea's waves
00:22:41.800 O earth, mother of all life
00:22:44.240 On you, and on the all-seeing circle of the sun I call
00:22:48.600 See what is done by gods to me, a god
00:22:51.960 See with what outrage wracked and tortured I am to agonise
00:22:56.560 For a thousand years
00:22:58.380 See this shameful prison invented for me by the new master of the gods
00:23:04.820 I groan in anguish for pain present and pain to come
00:23:08.940 What am I saying? I know exactly everything that is to be
00:23:13.380 No torment will come unforeseen
00:23:15.700 My appointed fate I must endure as best I can
00:23:19.460 Knowing the power of necessity is irresistible
00:23:23.940 under such suffering speech and silence are alike beyond me for bestowing gifts upon mankind I am
00:23:31.420 harnessed to this torturing clamp for I am he who hunted out the source of fire and stole it
00:23:38.540 packed in pith of a dry fennel stalk and fire has proved to men a teacher in every art their
00:23:45.460 grand resource that was a sin for which I now pay the full price bared to the winds of heaven
00:23:52.640 bound and crucified. And then he goes on to say, ah, who's there? And we get the introduction of
00:23:58.380 the chorus. You see how though he conveniently, Aeschylus conveniently moves out the previous bit.
00:24:05.220 Yes. The bit at the field of Meconi when Zeus defeated Typhon and he gathered gods and mankind
00:24:12.000 in a field. That's the poppy field. Right. There. He set Prometheus in charge of the distribution
00:24:21.100 of the sacrifices like you're gonna give food to everyone yes and he made two
00:24:27.200 portions one was for the gods the other was for humans and there he tried to
00:24:32.480 fool Zeus I mean that he tried to fool the gods in favor of humanity mm-hmm so
00:24:38.560 if you if you think like Hesiod and according to the old version of the
00:24:44.380 myth that Zeus represents the just order, a combination of force with wisdom, then Prometheus
00:24:57.060 there represents the human tendency to benefit ourselves unjustly. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And so
00:25:05.960 we see did you see you must have done just a few weeks ago um there were those um uh chaps who 0.51
00:25:14.160 created that enormous 50 foot bronze statue of prometheus that got put outside i can't remember
00:25:21.260 if it was nasa or spacex or something but like outside the launch point you know because
00:25:25.640 that and holding up the torch of fire and so it is interesting to see how this character
00:25:31.680 has taken on the life of his own
00:25:34.520 to become the champion of humanity.
00:25:37.940 Absolutely, because the thing is that
00:25:40.220 we have several versions of the myth
00:25:44.040 and the myth gets reinvented.
00:25:46.080 So especially with Aeschylus,
00:25:49.640 we start having a political interpretation of the myth.
00:25:53.140 It's an unjust order against a just order of humans.
00:25:58.360 whereas in the previous myth
00:26:00.000 Prometheus is supposed to mediate
00:26:02.940 between the gods and mankind
00:26:04.820 it has nothing to do between
00:26:07.020 just and unjust humans
00:26:08.640 then we have the technological
00:26:10.720 interpretation but 0.67
00:26:12.640 I will side with Hesiod
00:26:15.020 on the initial
00:26:16.980 interpretation, the existential
00:26:19.020 one because I think it's the richest one
00:26:21.280 but I'll leave that for later
00:26:23.220 but you do see especially when
00:26:25.180 Aeschylus started writing
00:26:26.780 That was the sort of democratic supremacy era because, you know, the Athenian Democrats managed to defeat the Persians.
00:26:35.980 And that's when they started building the Athenian League.
00:26:39.600 Right.
00:26:40.000 And that was the sort of the most, you know, Athenian exceptionalism phase.
00:26:44.180 It's like we're made of different stuff.
00:26:46.340 Yeah.
00:26:46.900 So that was the main paradigm they had at the time.
00:26:51.320 So in looking backwards in myth, they tend to impose their own experience in the myth of old age.
00:27:05.040 Absolutely. And you see this very much in terms of just one example,
00:27:09.540 and definitely something I'll cover on the Chronicle another time,
00:27:12.480 is that Percy Shelley of the Romantic fame, he ended up writing.
00:27:17.980 I don't think he ever actually intended it to be published for actual performance, but he wrote something of a sequel.
00:27:25.860 He wrote his own version of Prometheus Unbound, and obviously that is imbued with all of the romanticist themes of rebelling against arbitrary tyranny, rebelling against all these, and also his atheism comes through.
00:27:41.860 You definitely have this during the Enlightenment and in the Romantic period.
00:27:46.540 I think Romanticism was supposed to be one of the reactions to Enlightenment.
00:27:51.580 They're not the same thing. But you have this, definitely, because they tried to portray,
00:27:56.380 for instance, the French Revolution as a Promethean act, which is a category error,
00:28:03.180 as we'll say later. Also, it has to do with technology. The Promethean spirit
00:28:10.460 is supposed to be the spirit of innovation and ingenuity.
00:28:13.420 Right. But also as well, it's this aspect of the fact that fire in particular is obviously so core to human flourishing, whether or not it merely represents heat and warmth on those cold, dark nights, whether it represents light, whether it represents, as you say, technological progress from the lighting of a forge to the plummeting of a rocket into space.
00:28:42.580 You have all of these things, and what you're really looking at here, symbolized in the fire,
00:28:49.900 is not necessarily the blurring, but the narrowing of the gap between gods and men.
00:28:58.140 In Prometheus giving mankind fire, he is sort of narrowing the power level,
00:29:05.020 the power dynamic between the gods and between the men.
00:29:07.820 And we see in Prometheus handing fire to men and many of the other gifts that we'll get into in just a while.
00:29:16.520 This basically allows humans to flourish in a way that they would have never been able to before,
00:29:24.780 which is what gives them.
00:29:26.120 But it's this flourishing, it's this constant progress, it's this constant advancement
00:29:30.720 that gives us, because we're not gods and we don't have divine wisdom,
00:29:34.800 this sense of self-belief and also hubris in each other
00:29:40.880 to do things that we weren't actually supposed to do.
00:29:44.420 And you see this very early coming on in some of the pre-Heraclean heroes,
00:29:52.340 people like Bellerophon trying to mount on Pegasus,
00:29:57.840 going up to Mount Olympus,
00:30:00.180 people immediately gaining above their station
00:30:03.400 and having to be reminded that there is a hard border
00:30:06.800 between who you are and who you are by nature and who we are.
00:30:11.920 And Prometheus blurred that.
00:30:14.160 And one thing that I have to mention to offset the Promethean pravda.
00:30:21.020 I'm joking.
00:30:22.260 I'm being a bit more dramatic for dramatic effect.
00:30:25.540 Oh, well, I like it when you do that.
00:30:26.940 I don't hate Prometheus something.
00:30:29.640 But, you know, we forget that suffering for mankind doesn't start before Prometheus gives us fire.
00:30:39.520 And fire is a gift to mankind in order to, you know, to fare better against heart's conditions.
00:30:49.140 Suffering for mankind starts after, with a box of Pandora.
00:30:55.400 Yes, and Pandora is absent from Escius' version.
00:30:58.880 the point. What kind of gift was fire? Why was it such a precious gift if we weren't suffering before?
00:31:06.640 Well, also as well, as I, again, it's interesting to compare to Hesiod's version,
00:31:12.640 because in that, Zeus only withholds the fire from mankind because of how Prometheus behaved
00:31:21.520 at, is it Mycone? Yeah, Mycone. Yeah, Mycone. So it isn't actually suggested that Zeus wasn't
00:31:31.200 going to give mankind fire. The reason he withholds it is because of Prometheus's original
00:31:39.220 act of defiance and intransigence. And then after being warned once, Prometheus then takes a piss
00:31:47.860 and then steals the fire as well.
00:31:50.760 Whereas, like I say,
00:31:51.720 so a lot of that is shorn away
00:31:53.820 and Pandora as well
00:31:55.140 is taken away from this version.
00:31:57.460 And so we just kind of get
00:31:59.160 like this very sympathetic view
00:32:02.480 from Prometheus himself
00:32:04.820 and his own words
00:32:05.700 accounting for his own deeds,
00:32:07.640 which could be interesting, actually,
00:32:09.420 because you are hearing
00:32:10.780 Prometheus's side of the story
00:32:12.980 from his own lips
00:32:14.660 as against Hesiod's telling.
00:32:17.320 Anyway, so it goes through all of this, and eventually the Oceanids, these wonderful water nymphs of the ocean, the daughters of Oceanus, who I believe was, interestingly, he is a titan, is he not as well?
00:32:33.900 But he was neutral in the Titanomachy and just sat it out.
00:32:39.880 And as a result of that, I mean, he is the ocean after all.
00:32:44.520 You know, there's a lot of stuff to do.
00:32:45.740 But also he's beneath.
00:32:46.940 They live in caves far beneath.
00:32:49.160 But he's given an anthropomorphic figure.
00:32:53.580 Yeah, physique here.
00:32:55.080 But the oceanids come to him and they say, oh, fear for nothing.
00:32:59.220 We are all your friends.
00:33:00.380 We have flown to this mountain on racing wings, winning reluctant leave from our father.
00:33:06.100 And the winds carried all swiftly along for the echo of ringing steel shivered through the depths of our cave.
00:33:12.060 And so they heard what had happened.
00:33:13.900 They could hear Prometheus being hammered into his chains from the depths of the ocean.
00:33:23.660 And they came to obviously check on him and see what was going on.
00:33:28.680 And they begin to have this back and forth about the fact,
00:33:31.920 it's like, well, tell me what you did, tell me what you did.
00:33:34.660 Obviously, we've just talked about this.
00:33:36.280 We don't need to relitigate what Prometheus did all over a game.
00:33:40.480 But then Prometheus reveals something quite interesting, which he says,
00:33:46.100 and I mentioned it when I read an extract earlier,
00:33:49.580 but it's that capital N necessity, right?
00:33:54.180 This word necessity comes up quite often in the play, as does Nemesis later on, which we'll get
00:34:01.720 to as well. But this idea of necessity is Prometheus saying, well, I obviously stand in total rebellion
00:34:10.200 against Zeus. I do not respect him. I do not respect his laws, nor his wisdom, nor the sentence
00:34:17.380 that he's given me, even though I knew that all of these things would be done. And he later even
00:34:22.720 says, I knew that I did wrong within the power of things. But defiance and hubris is so core to what
00:34:31.940 he's doing that he speaks of this necessity of staying put, enduring the pain, enduring the
00:34:40.540 suffering, because Prometheus, with his remarkable foresight, knows something about the future.
00:34:46.440 and he actually realizes that, look, Zeus can be all-powerful, he can now be king of Olympus and
00:34:54.740 he can rule over the divine order, but I know something he doesn't. And without this knowledge,
00:35:01.720 if Zeus doesn't possess this knowledge, then like Cronus, like Uranus, he too will fall.
00:35:09.720 his reign will also end.
00:35:11.960 And so he has this leverage,
00:35:14.540 the secret knowledge at his disposal,
00:35:17.220 and he's trusting to that.
00:35:19.440 Well, again, that's another version of the myth
00:35:21.560 because you could say that's a third version
00:35:24.080 because according to one version,
00:35:26.160 the punishment was eternal.
00:35:28.020 According to a second one,
00:35:29.320 Zeus allowed Hercules to free Prometheus
00:35:33.020 to win glory for himself.
00:35:36.060 And the third one then is that
00:35:38.660 Prometheus knew about Zeus being toppled by a future threat, and he exchanged his freedom
00:35:51.880 with warning Zeus about it. The thing with that is that this third interpretation, which comes
00:35:58.900 later, ignores something that was already present in older myth, more ancient versions of the myth,
00:36:07.540 is that Zeus has already solved that issue
00:36:10.600 by swallowing Metis.
00:36:14.800 Now, swallowing isn't exactly killing or something.
00:36:18.040 It's a sort of-
00:36:18.880 Absorbing.
00:36:19.380 Absorbing.
00:36:20.160 Yeah.
00:36:20.580 And out of that,
00:36:23.460 Metis was the goddess of cunning and wisdom,
00:36:27.260 the sort of traits that also Odysseus is supposed to embody.
00:36:31.120 Right. 0.91
00:36:31.380 And she was pregnant,
00:36:33.160 and Athena was born out of Zeus's head.
00:36:40.300 So this has already been part of it.
00:36:43.320 It's like, you know, that's where we have the sort of watering down of the myth
00:36:48.440 in order to sort of portray Prometheus as a figure
00:36:54.580 that is going to be presented in much more positive light than in previous times.
00:36:59.560 because Prometheus stood for something much different
00:37:03.580 when Aeschylus was writing
00:37:05.280 than what he stood for when Hesiod was writing.
00:37:08.760 So they begin to have this back and forth
00:37:10.980 with the nymphs and with Prometheus.
00:37:15.240 And they say to him,
00:37:17.020 oh, tell us your story, Prometheus.
00:37:19.660 And he's giving it,
00:37:21.140 oh, it would be too painful to talk about,
00:37:24.320 but to not talk about it would also be so painful.
00:37:27.720 And so I simply must.
00:37:29.560 um he's very dramatic yeah um for a man bound to a rock yeah um but he goes on to talk about
00:37:37.640 he says well look during the titanomachy he says when first among the immortal gods anger broke out
00:37:44.520 dividing them into two factions of which one resolved to unseat the power of cronos and make
00:37:50.500 zeus absolute king mark that while the opposing side resolved no less that zeus should never rule
00:37:57.280 the gods. At that time I, offering the best of all advice, tried to convince the titan sons of heaven
00:38:04.400 and earth, and failed. They despised cunning. In their pride of strength they foresaw easy victory
00:38:11.660 in the rule of might. I knew the appointed course of things to come. My mother, Themis, or Earth,
00:38:19.140 one person, though of various names, had many times foretold to me that not brute strength,
00:38:25.360 not violence but cunning must give victory to the rulers of the future this i explained to them
00:38:32.560 with reasons which they found not worth one moment's heed then of the courses opened me it
00:38:39.360 seemed best to take my stand my mother with me at the side of zeus willing and welcome it was i who
00:38:46.800 gave that counsel through which ancient kronos and his crew lie buried now in the black abyss of
00:38:53.440 Tartarus. That was the help I gave the king of the gods, and this is my reward. This is his black
00:39:02.120 ingratitude. To look on all friends with suspicion, this disease would seem to be inherent in a tyrant's 0.97
00:39:09.900 soul. So we see he originally obviously went to the Titans, I assume because he himself is a Titan,
00:39:18.880 and therefore he wanted to protect the order of his own people.
00:39:22.760 But he sees that necessity and the advice of his mother about wisdom,
00:39:29.660 that those who are wise, those who are cunning, are those who will inherit.
00:39:33.860 And I'm sure you would agree with me that you see this in the evolution
00:39:37.460 of the character of Odysseus, improving on certain aspects
00:39:41.940 of what makes a good soldier, what makes a heroic man
00:39:45.860 in a Bronze Age society as they understood things then.
00:39:51.520 And so you see this, there is going to be a natural progression
00:39:54.480 and ultimately power alone is not enough
00:39:59.760 because it will not engender an actual,
00:40:05.960 a reasoned acceptance of why that power must endure.
00:40:12.080 But also it's blind, without intelligence, it's blind.
00:40:15.360 Yes.
00:40:15.860 And you can't, in the sort of mythical mind where they were trying to view the world in terms of a sort of a theodicy, that things are governed by a benevolent force, that despite the image or the experience of injustice winning some battles, somehow justice will win the war.
00:40:42.840 In that frame of mind, Zeus was representing justice and force.
00:40:51.100 Yes.
00:40:51.460 And the previous orders represented force alone.
00:40:55.300 And you can see this in the lore from what the rulers did.
00:41:02.520 So the first ruler that was Uranus, he completely banished his own children.
00:41:10.020 He was afraid of his own children, and he banished them in Tartarus.
00:41:19.060 And that's when Gaia rallied the Titans to avenge the Hecatonchires and Cyclops' brothers.
00:41:29.300 Right.
00:41:29.880 And then you have Kronos, who also double-crosses them, because he gains their support.
00:41:36.260 He castrates Uranus, but then he doesn't set them free.
00:41:42.960 And he also swallows his kids.
00:41:45.880 And Zeus was saved because he was hidden by Rhea and Gaia.
00:41:52.680 And that is also when in the Titanomachy, Prometheus was, as this passage indicates,
00:42:01.300 siding with Zeus because he was trying to warn the Titans that they need some foresight and they 0.96
00:42:11.760 thought he was basically fake and gay. So they say no. So he and some other Titans like Themis 0.97
00:42:20.960 sided with Zeus.
00:42:23.320 Yeah, but it's interesting as well to see Prometheus' rationale as he's speaking here saying,
00:42:32.220 and because I helped Zeus win this remarkable victory, that, you know, he talks about Zeus's
00:42:40.660 ingratitude, but I'm sorry, that's totally the wrong way around. If I say I'm going to help a
00:42:46.900 political party come to power in britain and it ends up being a more just order than the one that
00:42:54.440 happens now and the ingratitude of it they wouldn't even let me break the law afterwards
00:43:00.240 yeah is what he's really saying here that yeah we put something better in place and then i defied
00:43:06.840 that thing yeah he it's like him saying he was supposed to be our guy yeah you know and don't
00:43:12.580 wrong i am grateful to him in many ways i i am something of a prometheus stan when uh when you
00:43:19.140 look at this particular text and while he it suggests that he he gave us all but as it goes on
00:43:24.980 to say he has this back and forth with the chorus and they he talks about the fact of saying that
00:43:31.300 look it would be better for me because of his pride he says i would rather be in the abyss of
00:43:38.420 Tartarus right now because at least if I'm in the abyss of Tartarus where I'm never going to emerge
00:43:45.220 ever again and my existence is just the void, it doesn't mean that I'm here bound to this rock
00:43:52.900 with people still gloating and laughing at my despair and my sorrow. He just lives in the
00:44:02.020 opinion of all of these other people, and he can't deal with the ingratitude against
00:44:09.140 himself and his own reputation.
00:44:11.880 As they have this back and forth, they say to him, well, we feel sorry for you.
00:44:17.260 And also as well, our father Oceanus is on his way as well to speak to you.
00:44:23.260 And so Oceanus comes out of the waves and speaks, in fact, no, it says, Oceanus arrived
00:44:29.780 seated on a winged, four-footed creature.
00:44:34.000 A bit vague, but mythological enough, I suppose.
00:44:38.060 Good for him.
00:44:39.640 So he has this great bit, and Oceanus comes out,
00:44:43.000 and he says to him,
00:44:44.360 Prometheus, I'm very sorry that this has happened to you.
00:44:48.520 This is horrible.
00:44:50.220 I will petition Zeus for your release.
00:44:55.140 Okay?
00:44:55.840 He has to respect the process.
00:44:57.820 Yeah, yeah.
00:44:59.780 okay, great. Good for you, Prometheus. Right. No, don't do that. Don't do that. Let me stay here.
00:45:07.640 Let me continue to rage against the order. He says, you can do that, Oceanus, but Zeus is not
00:45:16.200 a reasonable God. He is not someone who would ever grant that, he says to him. And with Prometheus's
00:45:26.180 Falsight.
00:45:26.840 He is kind of right.
00:45:28.380 To be fair to Prometheus, if you have a beef with someone and they banish you for a thousand
00:45:36.000 plus years, you are going to be a bit salty about it.
00:45:42.180 Yeah, of course you are.
00:45:43.140 Yes.
00:45:43.940 But on the other hand, that doesn't fit the character in a sense.
00:45:53.060 Well, sorry, what I was clumsily trying to say was just that he is constantly his own obstacle.
00:45:59.360 He's constantly in his own way.
00:46:02.320 And that's also why, you know, foresight in combination with bad character isn't the way to go.
00:46:10.480 Right. And so Oceanus goes on to say,
00:46:14.040 I want at least to give you the best advice I can.
00:46:16.540 A new king rules among the gods. Then know yourself, and take upon yourself new ways to
00:46:23.320 suit the time. If, in this way, you fling out edged and angry speeches, it may be Zeus.
00:46:30.780 Throne, though he is so far above, will hear you, and, for result, your present load of troubles
00:46:36.920 will seem a childish trifle. O my unhappy friend, throw off your angry mood and seek deliverance
00:46:44.600 from all your suffering. What I say may seem perhaps well-worn, but your plight is the inescapable
00:46:50.760 reward, Prometheus, of a too-proud-speaking tongue. You still will not be humble, will not yield to
00:46:58.480 pain. You mean to add new sufferings to those you have. Come now, accept my guidance. We are ruled
00:47:06.440 by one whose harsh and solemn dominion none may call to account. Acknowledge this, and cease to
00:47:13.520 kick against the goad. Now I will go and try and see if there is any way within my power to set you 0.57
00:47:20.500 free. And he doesn't immediately. They continue to discuss, but let's just unpack what he says
00:47:26.180 there then. So he's saying to him, look, we're living in a new age. And just as you, Prometheus,
00:47:34.920 understood that you were entering a new age, and now that this is an age where wisdom and cunning
00:47:41.660 would be sovereign over just mere force you need to adapt yourself to the time you need to
00:47:49.580 understand the new paradigm that you exist in but he doesn't prometheus um his identity
00:47:58.420 has become so core to the rebellion itself but if he was willing to compromise it would create
00:48:07.320 and obviously it would ease his suffering.
00:48:11.060 He would all of a sudden, he would be free from this pain
00:48:13.720 and the worst of the pain is not yet to begin.
00:48:16.900 But he would be free from the pain, he would be respected again
00:48:20.180 and he would be able to reconcile himself with the rule of Zeus
00:48:24.740 and perhaps see that away from his particular circumstances
00:48:30.300 and what he is personally suffering right now in the Caucasus,
00:48:35.360 that actually the rule and justice of Zeus
00:48:39.600 is actually beneficial to many other people
00:48:42.300 that he cannot currently see
00:48:44.700 because he is away from that paradigm.
00:48:47.620 But if he were to give himself the chance
00:48:49.700 to see the wisdom in it,
00:48:51.860 then he would not only ease his own suffering,
00:48:55.280 but come under the harmony of the new order.
00:48:58.060 There are several interpretations of the myth.
00:49:00.080 The oldest one is the existential one.
00:49:02.600 Then we have the political, the technological.
00:49:04.500 We have several ones.
00:49:05.360 but the major one is the existential.
00:49:08.400 And existential has an existential alone interpretation
00:49:13.260 and a moral existential one.
00:49:16.040 So in the existential interpretation,
00:49:19.360 you have Prometheus representing the human condition.
00:49:25.160 Prometheus gives us reason, intelligence, cunning, foresight.
00:49:29.120 Defiance.
00:49:29.700 Defiance.
00:49:30.300 But still, that is what raises humanity from, let's say, the non-conscious animal kingdom to the conscious one.
00:49:42.660 So it raises us, and it gives us so many good things, but it also unleashes all the bad things.
00:49:51.500 Because the bad things, it's not that they don't exist, but that we weren't aware of them before.
00:49:57.560 So the gift of Prometheus, that is fire, comes always with the box of Pandora, which stands for the realization of suffering.
00:50:09.340 Of course, suffering existed before.
00:50:11.580 Suffering characterizes all non-godly existence in myth.
00:50:16.860 Well, and even Uranus suffers.
00:50:18.540 Exactly.
00:50:20.240 And Prometheus.
00:50:21.580 Prometheus is supposed to be a god.
00:50:23.220 He suffers as well.
00:50:24.600 Yeah.
00:50:24.760 So when we have that interpretation, we need to also bear in mind that Prometheus represents our transition from non-conscious life to conscious living and also to the moral standpoint, right?
00:50:43.720 And there comes the moral dilemma between civilization on the one hand and barbarism.
00:50:49.620 The Zeus, when we look at the Theogony
00:50:54.220 and the philosophy behind the Theogony
00:50:56.580 it's really important to look at who Zeus marries
00:51:00.160 when he wins Typhon
00:51:01.960 First marriage is Themis 0.97
00:51:04.060 to combine force with wisdom
00:51:05.800 Then it's, I don't remember the name exactly
00:51:10.560 It's seven marriages 1.00
00:51:11.720 First is Themis 0.99
00:51:12.920 But then he married, all of his marriages 0.99
00:51:15.840 He was the eighth
00:51:16.680 all of his marriages yield offspring produce offspring that stand for something and if you
00:51:24.600 see the offspring next is themis um and together it's with with justice they i think they give
00:51:33.540 birth to the hours and then you see all of all of the offspring of zeus are the goods of stand for
00:51:41.120 goods of civilization so in order to exit barbarism and go to civilize and reach civilization
00:51:48.960 you first have to win power force alone with cunning yes and when you do this you are establishing
00:51:58.320 a just order and this just order produces agriculture civilization um you know the the
00:52:06.320 the hours, the arts, high culture, music, banquets.
00:52:14.420 So in a way, all of these are the goods of civilization
00:52:19.120 that require the punishment of Prometheus
00:52:22.420 to the extent that Prometheus acts as someone
00:52:26.860 who, irrespective of the fact that he sided with Zeus
00:52:31.400 during the Titanomachy,
00:52:33.260 sure, acts like someone who is anti-civilization afterwards. And one of the messages of the lore,
00:52:41.660 as far as Prometheus goes in the ancient interpretations of the myth, before the
00:52:46.540 political one arose, is that if you act in an anti-civilizational manner, you have to find out.
00:52:57.340 As you were saying earlier, when you referenced the French Revolution.
00:53:00.540 Exactly. So the liver of Prometheus that is constantly eaten by the eagle, who in the play we'll see in a bit, and grows again and again and again every day, stands for the desire to benefit ourselves unjustly. So in a way, in that respect, yeah, he must find out.
00:53:21.080 Yeah, and he will. Well, he insists on finding out because this is what Oceanus is saying.
00:53:28.080 He's saying about the fact that, you know, your tongue is just so full of defiance in your own...
00:53:34.080 Understand that we are in a new order. You may have sided with the so-called, the correct side of history,
00:53:40.080 but that led to a new predicament and you have to be different now.
00:53:45.080 Yes. It's not who gets the power. It's not that you weren't the ruler of the universe.
00:53:53.720 We do things differently now. Yeah, absolutely. And so Oceanus has this bitter back and forth
00:53:59.800 with him, but eventually Prometheus persuades him out of his own hubris. Because Prometheus
00:54:06.840 has this plan as well, because of this particular knowledge that he possesses about how he will
00:54:13.320 eventually be freed and what knowledge he has that might overthrow Zeus. He doesn't want Oceanus's
00:54:20.200 help. No, I get myself out of this. I'm not accepting your help. I'm too proud to accept
00:54:27.240 your help, Oceanus. I'll tell you what, why don't you go back to doing what you do best, Oceanus,
00:54:33.560 being a filthy fence sitter, a buddy centrist in your ocean and F off, right, is really what 0.51
00:54:41.480 what Prometheus says to him towards the end. 0.95
00:54:44.660 And Oceanus.
00:54:45.260 Oceanus is in favor of the firewall or the cordon sun.
00:54:48.380 Yeah.
00:54:51.320 But they have all of this.
00:54:52.940 And as they do, Prometheus goes, right, now that that's over,
00:54:57.460 let me tell you my story.
00:54:59.260 And he goes on to talk about the fact that he says,
00:55:02.420 You must not think it is through pride or stubbornness that I am silent,
00:55:07.260 thought in anger nor my heart to see myself so outraged why who else but i assigned to these
00:55:14.640 new gods their honors first and last all that you know and i'll not speak of what i did for mortals
00:55:21.800 in their misery here now at first mindless i gave them mind and reason what i say is not in
00:55:29.940 sanctuary of mankind, but showing you how all my gifts to them were guided by goodwill.
00:55:36.440 In those days they had eyes, but sight was meaningless, heard sounds but could not listen.
00:55:42.160 All their length of life they passed like shapes in dreams, confused and purposeless.
00:55:48.080 Of brick-built, sun-warmed houses, or of carpentry, they had no notion, lived in holes like swarms
00:55:54.940 of ants, or deep in sungless caverns. Knew no certain way to mark off winter, or flowery spring,
00:56:02.720 or fruitful summer. Their every action was without knowledge, till I came. I taught them to determine
00:56:09.940 when stars rise or set, a difficult art. Number, the primary science, I invented for them. And how
00:56:18.340 to set down words in writing, the all remembering skill, mother of many arts. I was the first to
00:56:25.620 harness beasts under a yoke, with trace or saddle as men's slaves, to take man's place under the
00:56:32.380 heaviest burdens, put the horse to the chariot, made him obey the reign, and made an ornament
00:56:38.860 to wealth and greatness. No one before me discovered the sailor's wagon, flax-winged craft
00:56:45.780 that roam the seas. Such tools and skills I found for men. Myself, poor wretch, lack even one trick
00:56:53.740 to free me from this agony. And so we see it wasn't just fire. Prometheus gave man everything,
00:57:01.920 and I've lost it in here somewhere in the text because I didn't bring my bookmarks.
00:57:08.280 But he also points out as well that after the Titanomachy, when Zeus is creating his new order
00:57:15.220 and he's looking at the Olympians and, you know, he's creating his cabinet for government
00:57:20.980 and he's saying, well, you'll be minister for war and you'll be...
00:57:24.860 Morgan McSweeney.
00:57:25.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah, strategy and all this stuff, right?
00:57:28.600 He's going through them.
00:57:30.120 He looks, Zeus looks at mankind in this telling of the tale and he says, 0.98
00:57:36.220 yeah, these are terrible, pitiable creatures and I'm going to genocide them. 0.97
00:57:43.000 We're going to wipe out all of humankind, and I'm going to start again. 0.99
00:57:48.660 I'm going to make something more perfected.
00:57:51.640 I'm going to make a more perfected form of life.
00:57:55.000 Prometheus stops this from happening and says,
00:57:58.760 no, I'm going to give them fire so that they will still be pitiable
00:58:04.380 in all ages of the earth, but they will also be able to achieve excellence.
00:58:10.740 and this whole part of Prometheus's character of having the gift of foresight
00:58:16.680 is really of course what drives mankind to do what we do. It's like well why did you build that
00:58:23.860 house because I have the foresight to realize that when winter comes around it's going to get cold
00:58:28.860 I'm going to need some extra shelter. The foresight of having some dinner guests around and so you
00:58:34.340 want to be able to create perhaps a more special recipe for them, right? We use foresight in
00:58:41.060 everything that we do, in war, in civilization, in art, in all of these things, because we're able
00:58:47.740 to imagine circumstances or dangers in the future that we are going to have to face up against.
00:58:55.260 And it's in this foresight of these things that we seek to better ourselves so that we can deal
00:59:01.340 with them. And so we see us being, to go back to what you were saying earlier about whether or not
00:59:07.540 we are the Prometheans. Well, with that aspect of our foresight, we very much are. And for him to
00:59:16.420 say, well, I gave you all of these things. I gave them this and I gave them this. I taught them how
00:59:22.280 to plow the fields, how to tie the harness to the cow and how to build their houses, how to
00:59:28.360 how to rationalise and interpret their own dreams,
00:59:32.980 not just as these frightful apparitions that come when they close their eyes,
00:59:37.380 but something that can guide them, that can offer them instruction, right?
00:59:41.540 He gives us all of these things,
00:59:43.800 but it still doesn't address the underlying issue
00:59:47.760 that the reason that Zeus didn't...
00:59:50.800 the point that Zeus was going to wipe us out in the first place
00:59:54.480 and replace us with something more perfect generally.
00:59:59.080 And we will, I assume, never be, for all we can achieve,
01:00:04.260 we might never be that thing that Zeus had once intended to inhabit the Earth.
01:00:10.840 There's so much within it.
01:00:12.400 It's such a philosophically rich play.
01:00:15.020 It's entirely like yin and yang.
01:00:16.720 It's like from every angle you see, it's almost different.
01:00:21.640 It is.
01:00:23.300 And so he does all of this.
01:00:25.340 But one thing that is brought up later is that, okay, well, Prometheus,
01:00:29.800 if you love humanity so much, where is their reverence for you?
01:00:35.080 Where is their praise for you?
01:00:36.340 What are they doing, Prometheus, to help you get out of this situation?
01:00:41.320 We don't know. We weren't told.
01:00:43.620 No, but that's what Hermes goads him with later on in the play.
01:00:48.220 I think it's Hermes.
01:00:49.340 Obviously, obviously, goes without saying, I'm still grateful to Prometheus because I am a human being and I'm glad to be here, even if we are pitiable, imperfect wretches.
01:01:04.360 I am very grateful to him in this telling of the play for seeing the worth in humanity,
01:01:12.240 for seeing more in us than we, at the time in the story, were able to see in ourselves.
01:01:20.080 There is a potential and a nobility to what we can be.
01:01:24.640 You see this vindicated very often, even though so many of the great ancient Greek heroes,
01:01:31.300 a lot of their stories do end in tragedy.
01:01:34.360 As we covered very famously in the example of Jason, who has these extraordinary heights and successes, but ultimately dies perishing with his own ship that gained him fame, the Argo, its rotten husk collapsing upon him with all of his children dead, murdered by his own wife.
01:01:55.940 It is both.
01:01:57.260 It is, as you say, the yin and the yang.
01:01:59.140 We are both.
01:01:59.780 We are the tragedy and we are the triumph simultaneously.
01:02:04.360 and Prometheus helped us get a little bit closer to what we're trying.
01:02:09.360 So I guess we can be grateful if we consider our lives to be, generally speaking, good
01:02:13.360 and very ungrateful if we consider them to be a bit bad.
01:02:16.360 Right.
01:02:17.360 Or very bad.
01:02:18.360 Yeah.
01:02:19.360 So he talks about all of these things and he has these absolutely masterful monologues
01:02:25.360 where he just keeps going and going.
01:02:27.360 And I obviously, as always, I encourage you to read this.
01:02:30.360 It only takes about an hour in its entirety.
01:02:33.360 It's a small play.
01:02:34.400 Yeah, you'll really enjoy it.
01:02:36.440 But he goes on to talk about all of these things,
01:02:39.280 and we then get to the character of Ayo.
01:02:42.880 Now, Ayo's a very interesting character,
01:02:44.900 and you have mentioned her once before
01:02:47.900 in a quite excellent short that got plucked out
01:02:50.480 from one of our episodes.
01:02:52.740 But Ayo was a priestess, a human.
01:02:56.440 She was a human priestess for Hera.
01:02:58.760 and Hera saw that Zeus was making a few flirtatious winks
01:03:06.840 and a few, you know, like, hey, you maybe want to.
01:03:10.040 And Hera didn't like that. 1.00
01:03:11.960 And so she turned poor Io into a cow.
01:03:16.280 No, Zeus turned her into a cow.
01:03:17.900 Sorry, Zeus turned her into a cow. 0.99
01:03:19.740 So Hera wouldn't find it.
01:03:22.300 Right.
01:03:23.280 So here is Io's that witness.
01:03:25.440 just when you think
01:03:27.880 the trial is over
01:03:30.140 you're bringing that witness
01:03:31.980 and they change the entire thing
01:03:33.520 there's no way to
01:03:36.000 justify Zeus there
01:03:37.180 actually he did it
01:03:39.620 to save her from Hera's
01:03:42.280 wrath. He did
01:03:43.780 he didn't save her from
01:03:46.120 becoming a cow by just
01:03:47.940 I don't know. Didn't he turn her back
01:03:50.040 into a woman afterwards? Keeping his dick in his pants 1.00
01:03:51.680 he couldn't do that but he could 1.00
01:03:54.220 at least saved from death. Good old Zeus. Io is a very interesting character to include in this
01:04:00.180 when we look at her place in the grander mythology of ancient Greek history. But she comes into this
01:04:11.460 and she approaches by saying, what land is this? What race lives here? Who is this that I see held
01:04:17.520 in fetters of rock at the mercy of wind and storm? For what sin do you suffer such a death?
01:04:23.480 Tell me, where has my miserable wandering brought me? The gadfly stings me again. Oh, oh, I see the
01:04:31.440 ghost of Argus, the earth-born herdsman with a thousand eyes. Gods, keep him away. He was killed,
01:04:39.180 but no earth can hide him. He follows me with his crafty gaze. He escapes from his grave to hound me
01:04:45.460 without mercy, and drives me starving along the sandy shores, while the clear music of wax-bound
01:04:51.820 pipes fills my ear with a tune that longs for sleep. She's being tortured, right? Io is, bless her,
01:04:59.220 is being tortured because of choices that would be on her control. Prometheus tells Io, oh, I know
01:05:08.260 exactly who you are and where you've come from. And I also know everything in your future because
01:05:13.140 I have the gift of foresight. And Io's like, wow. And they end up having this long conversation
01:05:19.620 about what is in Io's future.
01:05:21.780 But just like you can feel the hand of the playwright on here
01:05:25.260 where she says, oh, and you Prometheus,
01:05:28.160 why are you bound to this rock?
01:05:30.740 What sins did you commit?
01:05:33.060 And Prometheus just says, don't ask me about that.
01:05:36.280 As if to say, no, no, we've just done that bit of the play.
01:05:39.740 We've just been through all of that.
01:05:41.720 Don't make me retread the same plot points again.
01:05:45.080 So I just, I find that quite a funny little meta line
01:05:47.740 just thrown into the play.
01:05:50.480 But this entire part of Io being in the story
01:05:53.260 really serves Prometheus.
01:05:55.640 For Prometheus personally,
01:05:57.980 Io's suffering vindicates him
01:06:00.440 because he says this is the sort of woman,
01:06:04.440 this is the sort of suffering
01:06:05.760 that must happen under the rule of Zeus.
01:06:09.740 Not seeing, of course, all of the things
01:06:12.460 that you brought up about the fact that
01:06:14.280 if you want the good,
01:06:15.720 you also have to go with the bad.
01:06:17.740 But Io, through no fault of her own, she received these visions from the Oracle that told her
01:06:26.180 that Zeus wishes to sleep with her and make a child with her.
01:06:30.900 And Io, wanting to keep her chastity and honor intact, did not wish to do this.
01:06:39.300 As a result of this, she is punished and she is forced into this wandering forevermore,
01:06:47.340 first turned into a cow, then to be, as she says, followed by Argus, this thousand-eyed monster,
01:06:54.920 so she can never escape his sight. It's not mentioned in this, but I think Zeus has Hermes
01:07:00.300 intervene so that she can at least be free from the monster's gaze. But then Hera responds by 0.70
01:07:07.800 sending gadflies after her to sting her for all of time as well. And Prometheus, ever the tactful
01:07:14.920 titan turns around and says to her well what is going to happen next is you are going to wander
01:07:23.080 across the land of the scythians you're going to go past the amazons who are going to help you
01:07:28.040 you're going to cross the bosphorus you're going to straddle the line between asia and europe 0.53
01:07:33.160 you can tell aeschylus is just like understands names and tribes of people but his his geography
01:07:40.440 is a little messy in terms of direction of travel. You look at it, you pick it in your head,
01:07:45.800 and she squiggles about all over Asia Minor and the Mediterranean. But eventually she says,
01:07:55.000 well, she's in tears hearing all of this because Prometheus is telling her,
01:07:59.800 yeah, you're just going to suffer and you're going to keep suffering.
01:08:03.980 And Io eventually asks, then what's the point? 0.90
01:08:07.900 Why don't I just kill myself now if all of my life is just going to be more suffering?
01:08:16.200 And it's a really interesting aspect because Prometheus, quite selfishly, says, first of all, 0.99
01:08:22.920 well, if you die, you don't get to pity me, and I obviously want some sympathy, so please don't kill yourself.
01:08:30.400 Second of all, if you're crying now, wait until I tell you what's going to happen later to you, 0.94
01:08:38.140 which, as I say, is not great from him.
01:08:41.980 He wouldn't make a very good mental health nurse, that's for sure.
01:08:45.220 But he goes on to say, this is all for a reason.
01:08:49.580 This is all going somewhere.
01:08:51.440 And even if you can't understand it right now,
01:08:54.000 You will be the mother of a lineage that will change the world, that will move the events of history.
01:09:03.600 And eventually you will settle down.
01:09:05.340 And eventually, towards the end of your life, your suffering will end.
01:09:09.180 It will be lifted from you.
01:09:10.600 Zeus, Hera will forget. 0.94
01:09:13.300 She'll turn her eyes to some other little obsession that she's got right now. 0.98
01:09:18.200 And Io can settle down.
01:09:19.640 Yeah, you can settle down.
01:09:20.920 and Zeus will come to you again with a gentle manner and with grace
01:09:27.300 and according to one of the tellings, simply breathes upon her
01:09:32.620 and there's this gentleness which leads to the birth of Epaphros.
01:09:37.420 I can't quite remember the son's name, but eventually this lineage
01:09:41.700 is going to lead to Heracles because she is the ancestor of Heracles
01:09:47.920 And it is Heracles who, in Prometheus's foresight, sees will eventually release him from his chains.
01:09:57.720 And so even though all of this suffering, you can't make sense of it right now,
01:10:03.360 in times beyond your own, of those human beings who live for but a day, it will matter in the end.
01:10:13.120 And it's really, really interesting.
01:10:15.700 It's kind of pointing out the fact that, look, we are not gods.
01:10:19.580 We are not immortal.
01:10:20.900 We don't get to rule forever as our conscious selves.
01:10:24.180 It actually requires us to put trust in the future beyond our own power, beyond our own influence.
01:10:33.160 But also think about foresight for a moment.
01:10:37.180 You have people, let's say, populating the earth and bearing offspring.
01:10:43.860 would foresight help in the following sense if someone were to tell you all of the bad things
01:10:53.840 are going to happen to you to the people who would be born if let's say you bear offspring
01:11:00.760 wouldn't it occasionally put a moment of doubt in you is it is that the right thing
01:11:08.620 Should I condemn them to that suffering or not?
01:11:11.840 If I had to choose all of it or not,
01:11:15.740 is there just a moment of doubt that you have?
01:11:19.280 Am I doing the right thing?
01:11:20.720 Or am I condemning them to way more suffering than happiness?
01:11:25.540 So, you know, when it comes from the human perspective,
01:11:28.840 it's just we don't have perfect foresight.
01:11:32.200 So, yeah, I mean, we can try for the best
01:11:37.400 and try to use our intellect for good.
01:11:40.500 But in some cases, you never know how it's going to affect us.
01:11:44.700 So we can't have a God's eye perspective on the universe.
01:11:50.480 No, and they say this in a line somewhere in the play.
01:11:53.980 It might have even been Hephaestus.
01:11:56.100 I can't remember, or Oceanus, but one of them says,
01:11:58.880 only Zeus is truly free.
01:12:03.120 Yes.
01:12:03.920 Everybody else is bound.
01:12:06.580 in some way, right?
01:12:08.880 That's Hephaestus.
01:12:09.620 Yes.
01:12:09.980 He says that in the beginning.
01:12:11.180 Yeah.
01:12:12.600 Well, in that respect,
01:12:14.880 you can see how that was particularly
01:12:17.060 the reason for a pro-Promethean tendency
01:12:22.120 in Aeschylus.
01:12:23.360 If Aeschylus is representing
01:12:25.100 and speaking to the Athenian Democrats
01:12:29.200 who are obsessed with freedom,
01:12:33.000 a.k.a. obsessed with being citizens
01:12:35.700 as opposed to being serfs. 0.54
01:12:39.860 Them making their own laws, them deciding.
01:12:42.180 Yes. You can see that in this framework,
01:12:46.180 if Zeus is supposed to represent the one and only sovereign
01:12:51.140 and everyone else is supposed to be a serf to Zeus,
01:12:55.540 well, then they are going to be anti-Zeus
01:12:57.940 if they approach the myth from this reason, from this perspective.
01:13:03.700 But it's really remarkable.
01:13:06.780 And the way that it's like, well, yeah, fine, Prometheus is bound,
01:13:10.960 but we are all bound to that order.
01:13:14.220 We are all bound to the circumstances of our time,
01:13:17.740 to our material conditions, to our conscience, to our neighbours,
01:13:21.960 to our personal relationships with people.
01:13:23.880 All of these things bind us to a certain morality that we should live by.
01:13:31.020 and Prometheus's defiance of all of these things, kind of wanting to be this self-made man,
01:13:41.080 literally this autonomous human being, this hyper individual who gets to decide every aspect of his
01:13:47.780 own life against the decree of Zeus, you can understand the hypocrisy in all of this. And so
01:13:55.720 Io's part, though brief towards the end, is very, very important in spelling out the fact
01:14:01.480 that, look, just because you might not be able to understand your own suffering right
01:14:05.220 now, it might end up being profitable.
01:14:08.440 Even in your own lifetime, suffering teaches you wisdom.
01:14:13.300 Teaching can, you know, suffering can help you to become wise to how to avoid suffering
01:14:19.200 in the future.
01:14:20.180 Well, it depends what kind of suffering we're talking about.
01:14:22.540 Sure.
01:14:23.220 Yeah.
01:14:23.420 Yeah, not in all times, but certainly in some.
01:14:27.940 And so Io and Prometheus have this constant back and forth with one another,
01:14:32.540 and they get to the point where Io once again departs
01:14:36.600 because the gadflies are starting to sting her.
01:14:39.980 And Prometheus then goes on this tirade about the fact that
01:14:44.780 he is banking on this leverage that he has.
01:14:48.380 He's banking on the fact that he understands a certain thing
01:14:51.340 that could overthrow the rule of Zeus, just as Zeus had done to Kronos, and Zeus, being the
01:14:58.560 all-powerful, can hear what Prometheus is saying. And so he sends Hermes as a messenger to say,
01:15:09.300 right, all of that, what you've just been saying, Zeus wants to know what that secret is. And if
01:15:16.720 you have any concern for your own suffering, you will tell me now. You will tell me what the secret
01:15:23.800 is. And ultimately, what we have here, just to explain, what Prometheus is alluding to
01:15:32.860 is the birth of Achilles. That's what he's actually arguing about here, that if Zeus will
01:15:40.580 eventually marry Thetis, then they two together will produce Achilles, who will be so powerful
01:15:49.820 that he will rival Zeus and overthrow him to become king of the gods or whatever new order
01:15:57.520 Achilles wishes to construct. This is part of the reason why, later on in the story, when we get to
01:16:04.580 the Argonautica, we see that Thetis, the goddess, is married to Peleus, a mortal man, because
01:16:13.960 eventually, I assume in that timeline, Prometheus was unbound, confided in Zeus what would happen,
01:16:20.400 and therefore didn't marry Thetis, instead had her paired with Peleus, so that Achilles would
01:16:29.080 only ever be a demigod and therefore never powerful enough to rival him. I think when it
01:16:35.500 comes to the Argonautica, remember there is a passage where Heracles leaves them. Yeah,
01:16:46.160 they forget him. No, no, I think he leaves because he tells them he has to do some stuff.
01:16:53.100 He has to go. I think he goes to free Prometheus.
01:16:57.480 Well, we hear Prometheus' cries in the mountains as the Argo gets nearer to Colchis,
01:17:06.060 because obviously that is near the Colchis' mountains.
01:17:08.940 And so you can hear Prometheus' cries all those generations later,
01:17:13.700 long after the first heroes of Cadmus and Bellerophon,
01:17:17.580 for numerous generations, he has been there bound.
01:17:20.420 and eventually, yes, Heracles will come along and free him.
01:17:23.620 But Heracles cannot just free him.
01:17:26.780 He can only free Prometheus with the blessing of Zeus to do so.
01:17:32.640 And so it's speculative in terms of philosophically
01:17:37.680 how Aeschylus was going to treat the rest of the trilogy,
01:17:41.180 but it's not beyond reason to believe that eventually
01:17:44.900 part of Prometheus' character arc is accepting that humility.
01:17:50.420 is not being constantly characterized by his own defiance and his own personal grievance,
01:17:58.160 but seeing some higher good in the divine rule of Zeus himself.
01:18:03.840 And so that's speculative, but eventually it is something that can be led to.
01:18:08.420 But for the time being, at the end of this play, he is intransigent.
01:18:13.780 He refuses to compromise whatsoever with Hermes.
01:18:18.440 And it ends, ultimately, if I can find the right page,
01:18:24.260 with him saying, fine, then you will be buried beneath the earth.
01:18:32.580 You will not see light again for many, many years.
01:18:37.960 and then when you finally do see light again, it will only be to have that image of the eagle
01:18:45.480 looking at the liver, and that will now be your fate. You have just made your punishment
01:18:51.500 infinitely worse. And the play ends with him saying, now it is happening, threat gives place
01:18:59.360 to performance, the earth rocks, thunder echoing from the deep, roars in answer, fiery lightning
01:19:07.280 twist and flash. Dust dances in a whirling fountain. Blasts of the four winds skirmish
01:19:13.860 together. Set themselves in array for battle. Sky and sea rage indistinguishably. The cataclysm
01:19:21.900 advances visibly upon me. Sent by Zeus to make me afraid. O Earth, my holy mother. O sky where sun
01:19:31.000 and moon give light to all in turn you see how i am wronged and the rock collapses and disappears
01:19:38.360 and the chorus scatter and we have our ending and it's awesome it is it is such an incredible play
01:19:48.840 and i so wish that we have the other two of the trilogy but i am always unlike prometheus i will
01:19:59.720 not having gratitude. I will be grateful for what I have and be happy about the fact that we have
01:20:05.720 this one spectacular play from Aeschylus. Thank you for joining me so much. Obviously we've wanted to
01:20:11.640 cover this play for quite a long time just because of how brilliant it is and I think that we've
01:20:17.800 helped to show just how philosophically rich it is that actually Prometheus's plight is not
01:20:24.600 unjustified in many ways. It is understandable why Zeus chooses to his judgment as what it is,
01:20:32.600 but also as well the fact that Prometheus will endlessly be one of the great champions of
01:20:39.220 humanity in every age, and he means something different to us in every age that we live in.
01:20:46.120 And in this way, he is a very, very special character, not just in Greek mythology,
01:20:51.240 but I feel in all of mythology.
01:20:54.560 So really hope you've enjoyed this, ladies and gentlemen.
01:20:57.880 This has been Chronicles number 70, getting closer to 100.
01:21:02.840 And hope you've enjoyed it.
01:21:04.760 Look forward to seeing you in the next one.
01:21:06.940 Take care.
01:21:21.240 Amen.