The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 31, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #70 ｜ Prometheus Bound With Stelios Panagiotou

Breakfast With Beau ｜ Friday 30th October 2026 PREVIEW： Epochs #287 ｜ The Topography of Rome

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

143.82

Word count

3,253

Sentence count

212

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

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Toxicity

6

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Hate speech

10

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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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.
00:00:57.800 And so it's really exciting to get into some work by Aeschylus again.
00:01:02.860 And I'm totally going to leapfrog the question of whether or not he is actually the author of this particular bit of work.
00:01:10.860 There's all sorts of speculation on whether or not it's actually Esophocles' play,
00:01:15.360 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, but that was
00:02:18.760 many generations after the time and the events and the peoples that we're talking about here.
00:02:24.980 So it's one set right back after the beginning, just after the Titanomachy,
00:02:30.560 and I'm really looking forward to discussing it. I really love the myth of Prometheus. It's
00:02:36.720 very rich for interpretation. It's fertile ground for debates and discourse with respect to who the
00:02:44.480 sort of villain is. I'm sure we're going to get into that. And I must say that From Aeschylus,
00:02:50.760 I think Prometheus Bound, is my favorite play. Yeah, it's a fantastic work. And I will just say
00:02:57.540 as well, of course, for our listeners, this is the first play of what is otherwise a lost trilogy.
00:03:04.420 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.
00:03:17.240 So Prometheus Bound would have been followed quite imaginatively by Prometheus Unbound,
00:03:23.900 and then lastly Prometheus the Firegiver.
00:03:27.820 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
00:03:37.460 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.
00:04:00.420 And so speculatively, it seems that Prometheus unbound
00:04:04.300 would have been the pro-Zeus position,
00:04:07.620 but we simply don't have that for the great god himself
00:04:11.040 to speak on his behalf.
00:04:12.880 So that's really speculative.
00:04:15.140 No, we simply can't know.
00:04:17.280 And because we can't know, there is always the possibility
00:04:22.200 that interpretations that we may not ultimately like
00:04:26.280 or agree with are the correct ones.
00:04:28.740 Yes.
00:04:29.900 I mean, to be fair, that also applies to many other cases.
00:04:34.100 It would apply even if we had the whole trilogy.
00:04:36.960 But we are in the dark.
00:04:38.860 In a way, we are profoundly in the dark.
00:04:41.860 And I don't know what to make of it because you could say that towards the end,
00:04:48.180 there is a sort of synthesis where both sides get to have a say
00:04:54.020 and they form a sort of agreement.
00:04:56.880 They come to an agreement.
00:04:58.000 And Zeus said, hey, Prometheus, you had something going on for humanity.
00:05:05.640 And Prometheus said, well, Zeus, you did have a point.
00:05:08.580 We simply don't know.
00:05:09.620 No.
00:05:10.620 No, we don't.
00:05:11.400 So let's focus on what we do now, shall we?
00:05:14.240 So our play opens at the far end of the Caucasus Mountains, right? 0.88
00:05:21.280 Far beyond any human life or civilization or culture.
00:05:25.420 So literally, Prometheus has already stolen the fire, which he would, of course, become famous for all time for doing his great act of philanthropy to humanity.
00:05:38.360 And in fact, if I understand it correctly, philanthropia is an ancient Greek word that means love of humanity or love of humankind.
00:05:46.740 And so we see that within his giving of fire.
00:05:50.380 One of the interesting things is that, according to Aeschylus' version,
00:05:55.460 against that of Hesiod in his working days and in his theogony,
00:05:59.320 Aeschylus gives him much more, but we'll get to that when we come to it.
00:06:03.160 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.
00:06:08.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:08.980 But nonetheless, for all of Prometheus's charity for the human race, that is also a part of the punishment,
00:06:20.060 to put him beyond contact with them so that he never actually gets to see the way that humankind use his gifts.
00:06:32.080 Isn't there a chorus of humans?
00:06:34.500 They're not humans, no, they're the oceanids, the water nymphs, the daughters of Oceanus,
00:06:40.980 so no, they are also daughters of a titan.
00:06:44.580 So no, the only human character is Io towards the end of the story,
00:06:49.120 which is obviously quite unusual for a play.
00:06:52.920 Usually you get one god turning up and the rest are human characters,
00:06:57.440 and in this version it's very much the other way around.
00:07:00.280 So we get Prometheus being bound to this rock out in the Caucasus Mountain, Caucasus.
00:07:09.420 And one interesting aspect of this is just speculating on how this would have looked
00:07:15.520 if we actually cast our minds back to the Dionysian festival in ancient Greece and Athens.
00:07:23.780 would someone have played the character of Prometheus
00:07:28.520 or would they have put a mask upon the dummy?
00:07:31.400 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.
00:07:39.080 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.
00:07:46.560 And so he's a very, very static character, figuratively and literally.
00:07:51.560 But we see that we get the great Olympian Hephaestus coming along with strength and violence, and upon the order of Zeus for Prometheus' rebellion against the new divine order, the new authority of Zeus, which has come about as a result of overthrowing Cronus and his order and that of the Titans.
00:08:19.160 well, he has sentenced Prometheus to be bound upon this rock,
00:08:24.840 cast in these adamantine chains created by Hephaestus himself 0.60
00:08:30.040 and his forge from Mount Etna, 0.69
00:08:32.520 so that he might never escape until Zeus decrees it.
00:08:37.720 And one of the interesting things I find about the opening of the play as well,
00:08:41.500 even though they're just a small part at the beginning,
00:08:43.760 is the inclusion of the characters of strength and violence,
00:08:49.040 because obviously these are two attributes that really represent the old order.
00:08:57.880 These are the instruments of the titans themselves.
00:09:01.100 It goes on later in the play to discuss the fact that Prometheus understood
00:09:05.980 that the future of divine governance was to be found in cunning and wisdom.
00:09:13.760 But here we see the strength and the violence.
00:09:16.600 Right. 1.00
00:09:17.060 So, okay, I'm very much on the pro-Zoos side.
00:09:20.840 Yes, okay. 0.93
00:09:21.720 Right?
00:09:22.200 Right.
00:09:22.440 And I think that, in a way, Prometheus has had some sort of propaganda for him.
00:09:30.580 But let me just say one thing here.
00:09:33.220 Sure.
00:09:34.400 Strength and violence are always part of the universe,
00:09:40.100 according to the Greek mythology.
00:09:44.940 What Zeus represents isn't the fight against power.
00:09:51.200 What Zeus represents is the sort of fusion of power with wisdom.
00:09:56.020 So he is trying to essentially govern for justice
00:10:00.200 as opposed to govern for power's sake
00:10:02.920 as Kronos and Uranos before him did.
00:10:06.500 So when it comes to mythology and trying to decipher it, I think the best thing to start thinking about is paintings, right?
00:10:17.780 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.
00:10:35.980 And these qualities will always be personified.
00:10:39.760 So when we are trying to decipher myth,
00:10:42.820 in a way, we need to do something counterintuitive.
00:10:46.620 We need to try to depersonify it as much as possible.
00:10:50.400 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.
00:10:59.780 But that's because myth is the first step.
00:11:02.900 is you can think of myth as the first steps of human intelligence.
00:11:08.040 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.
00:11:15.820 So it's a sort of weird thing, but we can triangulate it
00:11:19.320 by sort of personifying and depersonifying.
00:11:22.140 Absolutely.
00:11:22.740 And when it comes to Zeus and to Prometheus,
00:11:25.940 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.
00:11:32.900 But when it comes to Zeus's order and the previous orders that he toppled,
00:11:37.520 the previous orders represent power for power's sake.
00:11:41.680 Whereas Zeus isn't saying that power in itself is a bad thing. 0.97
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.
00:12:04.560 Yes, and it's very interesting as well, though, that even though I was saying we obviously don't have the complete trilogy,
00:12:11.660 we are able to compare Aeschylus' portrayal of Prometheus with that of Hesiod's.
00:12:18.120 Yes, and that's actually a great point that you raise, because Hesiod is a contemporary of Homer.
00:12:24.480 He wrote when Homer did.
00:12:27.020 That's early archaic age, late 8th century is when it begins
00:12:33.080 and it ends with a Persian defeat in 480.
00:12:37.200 And I think Prometheus bound is during classical Athens.
00:12:42.220 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
00:12:51.280 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
00:14:37.420 during the Titanomachy. That's why she isn't banished in Tartarus. Prometheus didn't side 0.64
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,
00:14:49.200 right? He comes from the earth. All of them. That lineage, yeah. It says,
00:14:53.040 Son of Sagacious Themis, God of mountainous thoughts, with hearts as sore as yours,
00:14:58.940 I now shall fasten you in bands of bronze immovable to this desolate peak,
00:15:04.220 where you will hear no voice nor see a human form. But scorched with the sun's flaming rays,
00:15:10.900 Your skin will lose its bloom of freshness
00:15:13.800 Glad you will be to see the night
00:15:16.480 Cloaking the day with her dark spangled robe
00:15:20.000 And glad again when the sun's warmth
00:15:22.480 Scatters a frost at dawn
00:15:24.400 Each changing hour will bring successive pain
00:15:28.120 To wrack your body
00:15:29.280 And no man yet born shall set you free
00:15:32.460 Your kindness to the human race has earned you this
00:15:36.480 A god who would not bow to the god's anger
00:15:39.940 You, transgressing right, gave privileges to mortal men.
00:15:45.100 For that you shall keep watch upon this bitter rock,
00:15:48.780 standing upright, unsleeping, never bowed in rest.
00:15:53.420 And many groans and cries of pain shall come from you, all useless.
00:15:58.960 For the heart of Zeus is hard to appease.
00:16:01.680 Power newly won is always harsh.
00:16:05.740 So again, it's brilliant.
00:16:07.140 The dialogue is so loaded, as Aeschylus's words always are, so we understand immediately that
00:16:15.100 the very famous aspect of Prometheus's punishment, of being tied to the rock so that the eagle would
00:16:24.320 pluck out his liver daily and cause immense suffering and come back, we're actually not
00:16:30.220 at that point of the story yet. That comes at the end of the play. We have more to do yet.
00:16:34.980 for now, the punishment that Zeus is... He's just chained in Caucasus. Yes, he just has to chill
00:16:41.460 for eons and eons, whilst Zeus governs. But I find that line at the end very interesting,
00:16:47.460 where it's from Hephaestus, it says, power newly won is always harsh. And so it's the point that
00:16:54.100 we are still in the transitional phase, where Zeus is consolidating his power, and Prometheus,
00:17:03.700 as someone who transgressed the new order obviously has to be made an example of and
00:17:09.940 one thing as well is that hephaistus is not mad about at him for what he actually did
00:17:16.660 but there is obviously that aspect of it as well that hephaistus even if he feels some
00:17:23.540 general sympathy with prometheus that sympathy doesn't go so far that hephaistus is willing to
00:17:32.260 transgress the divine law that has now been set down, which is, of course, what Prometheus did.
00:17:39.700 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 It's like pig cups. Yeah.
00:17:51.540 Whatever, they're just following orders and they love it.
00:17:54.360 Yeah, they're in it for the love of the game.
00:17:58.100 But this obviously has a deep emotional effect on Hephaestus.
00:18:02.260 Whereas for violence and strength, they are reveling in the pain.
00:18:08.260 They revel in the punishment.
00:18:10.340 Hephaestus just understands that the punishment has to be enacted.
00:18:14.220 They even have this part in it where they say, strength goes on to say,
00:18:19.660 Stay there and swear with upstart arrogance and steal the privileges of gods to give to mortal men.
00:18:26.360 How are your mortals going to cut this knot for you?
00:18:29.360 you're wrongly named prometheus wise before the event wisdom is just a thing you want if you've
00:18:36.640 a mind to squirm your way out of this blacksmith's masterpiece so i love that the idea of prometheus's
00:18:42.580 name uh deriving from uh the word of foresight that's what promet one of prometheus's great
00:18:48.600 gifts is he has a gift of foresight and so for them to say well mr foresight that wasn't very
00:18:55.380 bloody clever, was it? Because look at the state you've got yourself into now. So he's bound to
00:19:00.360 eternal suffering. And they're just going to have a jolly good gloat about all of it as it goes on.
00:19:06.880 And at this point as well, Prometheus has still not said a word of dialogue.
00:19:11.540 He is, it's not until the other characters depart that we are finally allowed to hear
00:19:17.800 about his plight from his own mouth.
00:19:20.920 And again, it's portrayed as an extremely tragic,
00:19:26.820 like a nobly tragic figure
00:19:28.680 within the telling of this version of the play.
00:19:32.560 But is there anything you just want to say about Hephaestus
00:19:35.920 or some of the characters that are about to depart
00:19:38.840 before we move on?
00:19:40.000 No, no, let's go on.
00:19:41.080 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.
00:19:47.800 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.
00:20:03.960 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.
00:20:18.980 But I do wonder if, speculatively, this is not a case of simply the fact that Prometheus, for all of his foresight, cannot know the mind of Zeus and what Zeus has in store.
00:20:31.380 Definitely.
00:20:32.060 Yeah.
00:20:32.640 Because Prometheus is supposed to mean foresight, as you mentioned a few minutes ago.
00:20:38.760 and that doesn't mean that he has perfect foresight.
00:20:43.320 Now, he stands for foresight, but also Zeus stands for foresight.
00:20:49.900 And then you have, you know, where if you picked it,
00:20:53.860 as you said before, very meticulously, you'd say,
00:20:56.840 well, if Zeus has this foresight and he knows everything,
00:21:00.800 as for instance, he is portrayed in the Homeric Apex.
00:21:03.760 Why didn't he stop Prometheus?
00:21:04.960 Why didn't he stop Prometheus?
00:21:06.200 Well, there is an answer that he allowed Prometheus to think that he got away with it to punish him afterwards.
00:21:12.500 It's human all to human, as Nietzsche said.
00:21:15.240 Oh, yes, absolutely.
00:21:16.520 But what I do think is that they tried to say that they did represent that quality.
00:21:26.280 But there is a sort of contradiction in myth in that you have gods that are supposed to be perfect.
00:21:35.680 They're supposed to embody their qualities perfectly.
00:21:40.140 But then you have constantly humans, for instance, being described as like Hector and Nestor and Odysseus as equal in wisdom with Zeus.
00:21:54.100 Or you have all gods are wise or most of them are wise, but Thetis is supposed to be wiser.
00:22:02.380 So it's a contradiction there.
00:22:05.680 because they wanted to highlight different things.
00:22:09.560 Yes.
00:22:09.920 On the one hand, they wanted to highlight the difference
00:22:12.100 between, let's say, humans and gods.
00:22:14.660 Say the gods are wise and eternal, 1.00
00:22:16.900 the humans are stupid and, you know, transients. 1.00
00:22:22.660 And on the other hand, they are also trying to say, 1.00
00:22:25.960 well, there are differences between gods.
00:22:28.220 Yes.
00:22:29.120 So, yeah, there are contradictions there.
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