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Saturday, January 02, 2016

Prometheus was not wrong

I'm going to start an online course next week, studying Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.  Before I do I thought I better acquaint myself with the great Romantic poet's inspirational source.  So, today, I read a version of Prometheus Bound taken from The Harvard Classics series with a translation by someone called Edward Haynes Plumptre (1821 - 1891).

Heracles freeing Prometheus from his torment by the eagle
We know the Titan was not wrong in what he foresaw.  Io accepted his vision of her future because he could recount her past correctly.  He knew where she had come from and could tell where she was going.  Prometheus could foresee the line of births that would lead from Io to Heracles and back, the circle completed, to the release of Prometheus from his chains.

So we know Prometheus was not wrong to reject the deal offered by Hermes. Recant and Zeus would set him free ... more accurately, release him from the shackles.  Continue to resist and Zeus would heap a "triple wave of ills" upon his head: buried alive in a ravine for an immeasurable age; exposed thereafter to the light so that the eagle of Zeus could feed each day on Prometheus's liver; finally cast into the dungeon Tartarus, lower even than the depth of Hades.

And Prometheus replied:

To me who knew it all
He hath this message borne;
And that a foe from foes
Should suffer is not strange.
Therefore on me be hurled
The sharp-edged wreath of fire;
And let heaven’s vault be stirred
With thunder and the blasts
Of fiercest winds; and earth
From its foundations strong,
E’en to its deepest roots,
Let storm-wind make to rock;
And let the ocean wave,
With wild and foaming surge,
Be heaped up to the paths
Where move the stars of heaven;
And to dark Tartaros
Let Him my carcase hurl,
With mighty blasts of force:
Yet me He shall not slay.