Such are the contrivances I, poor wretch, have found for mortals, but I myself have no device by which I may escape my present pain. CHORUS: YOU suffer an ill-deserved torment, and confused in mind and heart are all astray; like some bad doctor who has fallen ill, you yourself cannot devise a remedy to effect a cure. PROMETHEUS: Listen to the rest, and you will be even more amazed at the kinds of skills and means that I devised; the greatest this: if anyone fell sick, there existed no defense, neither food nor drink nor salve, but through lack of medicines they wasted away until I showed them the mixing of soothing remedies by which they free themselves from all diseases. I set forth the many ways of the prophetic art. I was the first to determine which dreams would of necessity turn out to be true and I established for them the difficult interpretation of sounds and omens of the road and distinguished the precise meaning of the flight of birds with crooked talons, which ones are by nature lucky and propitious, and what mode of life each had, their mutual likes, dislikes, and association; the smoothness of the innards and the color of the bile that would meet the pleasure of the gods, and the dappled beauty of the liver's lobe. I burned the limbs enwrapped in fat and the long shank and set mortals on the path to this difficult art of sacrifice, and made clear the fiery signs, obscure before. Such were these gifts of mine. And the benefits hidden deep within the earth, copper, iron, silver, and gold-who could claim that he had found them before me? No one, I know full well, unless he wished to babble on in vain. In a brief utterance learn the whole story: all arts come to mortals from Prometheus. When Hermes, Zeus' messenger, appears in the last episode, Prometheus is arrogant and insulting in his refusal to bow to the threats of more terrible suffering and reveal his secret.

The play ends with the fulfillment of the promised torment; the earth shakes and cracks, thunder and lightning accompany wind and storm as Prometheus, still pinned to the rock is plunged by the cataclysm beneath the earth; there he will be plagued by the eagle daily tearing his flesh and gnawing his liver. Prometheus' final utterance echoes and affirms the fiery heat and mighty spirit of his first invocation: "0 majesty of earth, my mother, 0 air and sky whose circling brings light for all to share. You see me, how I suffer unjust torments ." Any dogmatic interpretation of Aeschylus' tragedy is impossible. We know that it was part of a trilogy, the other plays of which have survived only in name and fragments. We have the titles of three additional plays on the Prometheus legend attributed to Aeschylus: Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, Prometheus Unbound, and Prometheus the Fire-Kindler. This last may be merely another title for Prometheus the Fire-Bearer, or possibly it was a satyr play belonging either to the Prometheus trilogy itself or another on a different theme. We cannot even be sure of the position of the extant Prometheus Bound in the sequence. Thus details in the final outcome as conceived by Aeschylus are unknown. It seems certain that Heracles, probably through the agency of Zeus (as in Hesiod), was responsible for the release of Prometheus, who yielded his fatal secret to Zeus. Conflicting and obscure testimony has Chiron, the centaur, involved in some way, as Aeschylus seems to predict; Chiron wounded by Heracles gives up his life and immortality in the bargain for the release of Prometheus. As we have seen, the growing maturity of Zeus and eventual wisdom of Prometheus was very likely a dominant theme in the Prometheus trilogy. In this way the character of Zeus can most easily be reconciled with the power and justice of his deity that we knew from other plays of Aeschylus. In the series of exchanges between Prometheus and the various characters who come to witness his misery, the scene with 10 is particularly significant in terms of eventual reconciliation and knowledge. She herself tells of her suffering and wanderings for which Zeus is ultimately responsible. But Prometheus, with the oracular power of his mother, foretells the final peace that Io will find in Egypt with the birth of her son Epaphus. Secure in power, Zeus has now'become the supreme and benevolent father of both gods and men. Prometheus had a son, Deucalion, and Epimetheus had a daughter, Pyrrha.

Their story is told by Ovid. Jupiter tells an assembly of the gods how he, a god, became a man to test the truth of the rumors of man's wickedness in the age of iron. There follows an account of Jupiter's anger at the evil of mortals, the flood, the salvation of Deucalion (the Greek Noah) and his wife Pyrrha, and the subsequent repopulation of the earth (Metamorphoses 1. 211- 42 1). "Reports of the wickedness of the age had reached my ears; wishing to find them false, I slipped down from high Olympus and I, a god, roamed the earth in the form of a man. Long would be the delay to list the number of evils and where they were found; the iniquitous stories themselves fell short of the truth. I had crossed the mountain Maenalus, bristling with the haunts of animals, and Cyllene, and the forests of cold Lycaeus; from these ridges in Arcadia I entered the realm and inhospitable house of the tyrant Lycaon, as the dusk of evening was leading night on. I gave signs that a god had come in their midst; the people began to pray but Lycaon first laughed at their piety and then cried: 'I shall test whether this man is a god or a mortal, clearly and decisively.' He planned to kill me unawares in the night while I was deep in sleep. This was the test of truth that suited him best. But he was not content even with this; with a knife he slit the throat of one of the hostages sent to him by the Molossians and as the limbs were still warm with life, some he boiled until tender and others he roasted over a fire. As soon as he placed them on the table, I with a flame of vengeance brought the home down upon its gods, worthy of such a household and such a master. He himself fled in terror, and when he reached the silence of the country he howled as in vain he tried to speak. His mouth acquired a mad ferocity arising from his basic nature, and he turned his accustomed lust for slaughter against the flocks and now took joy in their blood. His clothes were changed to hair; his arms to legs; he became a wolf retaining vestiges of his old form. The silver of the hair and the violent countenance were the same; the eyes glowed in the same way; the image of ferocity was the same. One house had fallen but not only one house was worthy to perish. Far and wide on the earth the Fury holds power; you would think that an oath had been sworn in the name of crime. Let all quickly suffer the penalties they deserve. Thus my verdict stands . Some cried approval of the words of Jove and added goads to his rage, others signified their assent by applause. But the loss of the human race was grievous to them all and they asked what the nature of the world would be like bereft of mortals, who would bring incense to the altars, and if Jupiter was prepared to give the world over to the ravagings of animals. As they asked these questions the king of the gods ordered them not to be alarmed, for all that would follow would be his deep concern; and he promised a race of wondrous origin unlike the one that had preceded.  

And now he was about to hurl his bolts against the whole world, but he was afraid that the holy aether and the long axis of the heavens would catch fire from so many flames. He also remembered that in the decrees of Fate, a time was destined to come when the sea, the earth, and the realm of the sky would be overwhelmed by flames and the complex mass of the universe labor in sore distress. He laid down the weapons forged by the hands of the Cyclopes; a different punishment pleased him more: to send down from every region of the sky torrents of rain and destroy the human race under the watery waves. Straightway he imprisoned the North Wind, and such other blasts as put storm clouds to flight in the caves of Aeolus, and let loose the South Wind who flew with drenched wings, his dread countenance cloaked in darkness black as pitch; his beard was heavy with rain, water flowed from his hoary hair, clouds nestled on his brow, and his wings and garments dripped with moisture. And as he pressed the hanging clouds with his broad hand, he made a crash, and thence thick rains poured down from the upper air. The messenger of Juno, Iris, adorned in varied hues, drew up the waters and brought nourishment to the clouds. The crops were leveled and the farmers' hopeful prayers lay ruined and bemoaned, the labor of the long year in vain destroyed. Nor was the wrath of Jove content with his realm, the sky. His brother Neptune of the sea gave aid with waves as reinforcements. He called together the rivers and, when they had entered the dwelling of their master, said: "Now I cannot resort to a long exhortation. Pour forth your strength, this is the need-open wide your domains, and all barriers removed, give full rein to your streams." This was his command. They went back home and opened wide their mouths for their waters to roll in their unbridled course over the plains. Neptune himself struck the earth with his trident; it trembled and with the quake laid open paths for the waters. The streams spread from their course and rushed over the open fields and swept away, together and at once, the trees and crops, cattle, men, houses, and their inner shrines with sacred statues. If any house remained and was able to withstand being thrown down by so great an evil, yet a wave still higher touched its highest gables, and towers overcome lay submerged in the torrent. Now earth and sea bore no distinction; all was sea and besides a sea without shores.

One occupied a hill, another would sit in his curved boat and ply the oars in the place where he had recently ploughed, another sailed over the crops and the roof of his submerged villa, another caught a fish in the upper branches of an elm. Anchor was dropped in a green meadow, if chance so ordained, or the curved keels scraped the vineyards that stretched below. And now the places where graceful goats had plucked grass were occupied by ugly seals. The Nereids wondered at the groves and cities and homes under water and dolphins possessed the woods and ran into the high branches and shook the oak trees as they swam-against them. A wolf swam among sheep, the waves carried along tawny lions and swept away tigers. The power of his lightning thrust was of no advantage to the boar nor his fleet limbs to the deer, as they were carried off. Wandering birds searched long for a spot of land where they could light and with wearied wings fell into the sea. The vast and unrestrained surge of the sea overwhelmed the hills, and billows unknown before beat against the mountain peaks. The greatest part of life was swept away by water; those whom the water spared were overcome by slow starvation because of lack of food. The territory of Phocis separates the terrain of Thessaly from that of Boeotia, a fertile area when it was land, but in this crisis it had suddenly become part of the sea and a wide field of water. Here a lofty mountain, Pamassus by name, reaches with its two peaks up to the stars, the heights extending beyond the clouds. When Deucalion with his wife was carried in his little boat to this mountain and ran aground (for the deep waters had covered the rest of the land) they offered worship to the Corycian nymphs, the deities of the mountain, and prophetic Themis, who at that time held oracular power there. No man was better than Deucalion nor more devoted to justice, and no woman more reverent towards the gods than his wife Pyrrha. When Jupiter saw the earth covered with a sea of water and only one man and one woman surviving out of so many thousands of men and women, both innocent and both devout worshipers of deity, he dispelled the clouds and, after the North Wind had cleared the storm, revealed the earth to the sky and the upper air to the world below. The wrath of the sea did not endure and the ruler of the deep laid aside his trident and calmed the waves. He summoned the sea god Triton, who rose above the waters, his shoulders encrusted with shellfish; he ordered him to blow into his resounding conch shell and by this signal to recall the waves and the rivers. Triton took up the hollow horn which grows from the lowest point of the spiral coiling in ever widening circles. Whenever he blows into his horn in the middle of the deep its sounds fill every shore to east and west.

Now too as the god put the horn to his lips moist with his dripping beard and gave it breath, it sounded the orders of retreat and was heard by all the waves on land and on the sea, and as they listened all were checked. Once more the sea had shores and streams were held within their channels, rivers subsided, and hills were seen to rise up. Earth emerged and the land grew in extent as the waves receded. And after a length of time the tops of the woods were uncovered and showed forth, a residue of mud left clinging to the leaves. The world had been restored. When Deucalion saw the earth devoid of life and the profound silence of its desolation, tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke to Pyrrha thus: "0 my cousin, and my wife, the only woman left, related to me by family ties of blood, then joined to me in marriage, now danger itself unites us. We two alone are the host of the whole world from east to west; the sea holds all the rest. Besides assurance of our life is not yet completely certain. Even now the clouds above strike terror in my heart. What feelings would you have now, poor dear, if you had been snatched to safety by the Fates without me? In what way could you have been able to bear your fear alone? Who would have consoled you as you grieved? For I, believe me, would have followed, if the sea had taken you, dear wife, and the sea would have taken me with you. How I wish I might be able to repopulate the earth by the arts of my father and infuse the molded clods of earth with life. As it is, the race of mortals rests in just us two-thus have the gods ordained-and we remain as patterns of mankind." Thus he spoke and they wept. They decided to pray to the goddess Themis and seek help through her holy oracles with no delay. Together they approached the waves of the river Cephisus, which, although not yet clear, was cutting its accustomed course.

When they had drawn water and sprinkled their heads and clothes, they turned their steps from there to the temple of the goddess; its pediments were discolored with vile moss and its altars stood without fire. As they reached the steps of the temple both fell forward on the ground, and in dread awe implanted kisses on the cold stone. They spoke as follows: "If the divine majesty is won over and made soft by just prayers, if the anger of the gods is turned aside, tell, 0 Themis, by what art the loss of the human race may be repaired and give help, O most gentle deity, in our drowned world." The goddess was moved and gave her oracle: "Go away from my temple, cover your heads and unloose the fastenings of your garments and toss the bones of the great mother behind your back." For a long time they were stupefied at this; Pyrrha first broke the silence by uttering her refusal to obey the orders of the goddess; with fearful prayer she begged indulgence, for she feared to hurt the shade of her mother by tossing her bones. But all the while they sought another explanation and mulled over, alone and together, the dark and hidden meaning of the obscure words given by the oracle. Then the son of Prometheus soothed the daughter of Epimetheus with pleasing words: "Unless my ingenuity is wrong, oracles are holy and never urge any evil; the great parent is the earth; I believe that the stones in the body of earth are called her bones. We are ordered to throw these behind our backs." Although the Titan's daughter was moved by the interpretation of her husband, her hope was still in doubt; to this extent they both distrusted heaven's admonitions. But what harm would there be in trying? They left the temple, covered their heads, unloosed their garments, and tossed the stones behind their steps as they were ordered. The stones (who would believe this if the antiquity of tradition did not bear testimony?) began to lose their hardness and rigidity and gradually grew soft and in their softness assumed a shape. Soon as they grew, and took on a more pliant nature, the form of a human being could be seen, in outline not distinct, most like crude statues carved in marble, just begun and not sufficiently completed.

The part of the stones that was of earth dampened by some moisture was converted into flesh; what was solid and unable to be so transformed was changed into bone; what once had been a vein in the stone remained with the same name; in a short time, through the will of the gods, the stones hurled by the hands of the man assumed the appearance of men, and those cast by the woman were 'converted into women. Hence we are a hard race and used to toils and offer proof of the origin from which we were sprung. The earth of her own accord produced other animals of different sorts, after the moisture that remained was heated by the fire of the sun; and the mud and soggy marshes began to swell because of the heat, and fertile seeds of things began to grow nourished by the life-giving earth, as in a mother's womb, and gradually took on a certain form. Deucalion and Pyrrha had a son Hellen, the eponymous ancestor of the Greek people; for the Greeks called themselves Hellenes and their country Hellas. Hellen had three sons: Dorus, Aeolus, and Xuthus. Xuthus in turn had two sons: Ion and Achaeus, Thus eponyms were provided for the four major divisions of the Greeks on the basis of dialect and geography: Dorians, Aeolians, Ionians, and Achaeans.

There are many parallels to be found in the Babylonian, Hurrian, Hittite, and Phoenician literature that have their counterparts in Hesiod's account of genesis. One of the most striking is the archetypal motif known as the Succession Myth. In the Babylonian epic of creation that begins with the words by which it is entitled (Enuma Elish, "When Above"), three of the ruling gods, Anu, Ea, and Marduk, play roles similar to those of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus in the conflict for power; and Marduk, like Zeus, attains ultimate control by defeating a monster, Tiamat, who thus resembles Typhoeus. Likewise among Hurrian-Hittite stories, two known as Kingship in Heaven and Songs of Ullikummi reveal common thematic patterns; especially startling is the episode which tells how Kumarbi defeats Anu by biting off his genitals, a brutal act not unlike the castration of Uranus by Zeus. Finally, among the many themes inherent in the character and career of Zeus himself, the following deserve special emphasis. Like that of many another god or hero, his life as an infant is both precarious and charmed and progresses in accordance with the motif of the Divine Child. He grows up close to nature and the world of animals, and with special care and training, he emerges to overthrow his father and face all his challenges. Very special on the list of his triumphs is the slaying of a dragon. By the killing of Typhoeus, the supreme god, Zeus, may be proclaimed as the archetypal dragonslayer-one of the most real and symbolic of all divine and heroic achievements.