Prometheus

HERMES Well, Hephaestus, here is the Caucasus, where this poor Titan will have to be nailed up. Now then let us look about for a suitable rock, if there is a place anywhere that has no snow on it, so that the irons may be riveted in more firmly and he may be in full sight of everybody as he hangs there.

HEPHAESTUS Yes, let’s look about, Hermes : we mustn't crucify him low and close to the ground for fear that men, his own handiwork, may come to his aid, nor yet on the summit, either, for he would be out of sight from below. Suppose we crucify him half way up, somewhere hereabouts over the ravine, with his hands outstretched from this rock to that one ?

HERMES Right you are; the cliffs are sheer and inaccessible on every side, and overhang slightly, and the rock has only this narrow foothold, so that one can barely stand on tip toe ; in short, it will make a very handy cross. Well, Prometheus, don’t hang back: climb up and let yourself be riveted to the mountain.

PROMETHEUS Come, Hephaestus and Hermes, at any rate you might pity me in my undeserved misfortune.

HERMES You mean, be crucified in your stead the instant we disobey the order! Don’t you suppose the Caucasus has room enough to hold two more pegged up? Come, hold out your right hand. Secure it, Hephaestus, and nail it up, and bring your hammer down with a will. Give me the other hand too. Let that be well secured also. That’s good. The eagle will soon fly down to eat away your liver, so that you may have full return for your beautiful and clever handiwork in clay.

PROMETHEUS O Cronus and Iapetus and you, O mother (Earth)! What a fate I suffer, luckless that I am, when I have done no harm.

HERMES No harm, Prometheus? In the first place you undertook to serve out our meat and did it so unfairly and trickily that you abstracted all the best of it for yourself and cheated Zeus by wrapping “bones in glistening fat”: for I remember that Hesiod says so.[*](Theogony 541. The story was invented to account for the burning of bones wrapped in fat at sacrifice.) Then you made human beings, thoroughly unprincipled creatures, particularly the women; and to top all, you stole fire, the most valued possession of the gods, and actually gave that to men. When you have done so much harm, do you say that you have been put in irons without having done any wrong?

PROMETHEUS Hermes, you seem to be “blaming a man who is blameless,” to speak with the poet,[*]([liad 13, 775.) for you reproach me with things for which I should have sentenced myself to maintenance in the Prytaneum if justice were being done.[*](After Socrates has been found guilty, his accusers proposed that he be condemned to death. He made a counterproposition that he be allowed to dine at the Prytaneum for the rest of his life, on the ground that he deserved this privilege better and needed it more than did the Olympic chainpions to whom it was accorded.) At any rate, if you have time, I should be glad to stand trial on the charges, so that I might prove that Zeus has passed an unjust sentence on me. As you are ready-tongued and litigious, suppose you plead in his behalf that he was just in his decision that I be crucified near the Caspian gates here in the Caucasus, a most piteous spectacle for all the Scythians.

HERMES Your appeal, Prometheus, will be tardy and of no avail, but say your say just the same; for in any case we must remain here until the eagle flies down to attend to your liver. This interval of leisure may as well be employed in listening to a sophistic speech, as you are a very clever scoundrel at speech-making.

PROMETHEUS Speak first, then, Hermes, and see that you accuse me as eloquently as you can and that you don’t neglect any of your father’s claims. Hephaestus, I make you judge.

HEPHAESTUS No, by Heaven; you will find me an accuser

PROMETHEUS Well, then, divide the accusation ; you can accuse me of the theft now, and then Hermes will criticize the serving of the meat and the making of men. You both belong to trades-unions and are likely to be good at speaking.

HEPHAESTUS Hermes shall speak for me too, for I am no hand at court specches but stick by my forge for the most part, while he is an orator and has taken uncommon interest in such matters.

PROMETHEUS I should never have thought that Hermes would care to speak about the theft or to reproach me with anything like that, when I follow his own trade ! However, if you agree to this, son of Maea, it is high time you were getting on with your accusation.

HERMES Just as if long speeches and adequate preparation were necessary, Prometheus, and it were not enough simply to summarize your wrong-doings and say that when you were commissioned to divide the meat you tried to keep the best for yourself “and cheat the king, and that you made men when you should not, and that you stole fire from us and took it to them! You do not seem to realize, my excellent friend, that you have found Zeus very humane in view of such actions. Now if you deny that you have committed them, I shall have to have it out with you and make a long speech and try my best to bring out the truth; but if you admit that you served the meat in that

PROMETHEUS Perhaps what you have said is also a waste of words ; we shall see a little later! But as you say your accusation is sufficient, I shall try as best I can to dissipate the charges. And first let me tell you about the meat. By Heaven, even now as I speak of it I blush for Zeus, if he is so mean and fault-finding as to send a prehistoric god like me to be crucified just because he found a small bone in his portion, without remembering how we fought side by side or thinking how slight the ground for his anger is and how. childish it is to “be angry and enraged unless he gets the lion’s share himself.

Deceptions of that sort, Hermes, occurring at table, should not be remembered, but if a mistake is made among people who are having a good time, it should be considered a practical joke and one’s anger should be left behind there in the dining room. To store up one’s hatred against the morrow, to hold spite and to cherish a stale grudge—come, it is not seemly for gods and in any case not kingly. Anyhow, if dinners are deprived of these attractions, of trickery, jokes, mockery and ridicule, all that is left is drunkenness, repletion and silence; gloomy, joyless things, all of them, not in the least appropriate to a dinner. So I should not have thought that Zeus would even

Suppose, however, Hermes, that it was more serious—that instead of giving Zeus the smaller portion I had abstracted the whole of it—what then? Just because of that ought he to have mingled earth with heaven, as the saying goes, and ought he to conjure up irons and crosses and a whole Caucasus and send down eagles and pick out my liver? Doesn’t all this accuse the angered man himself of great pettiness and meanness of disposition and readiness to get angry? What would he have done in ease he had been choused out of a whole ox, if he wreaks such mighty deeds about a little meat ?

How much more good-natured human beings are about such things! One would expect them to be more quick to wrath than the gods, but in spite of that there is not one among them who would propose to crucify his cook if “he dipped his finger into the broth while the meat was boiling and licked off a little, or if he pulled off a bit of the roast and gobbled it up. No, they pardon them. To be sure, if they are extremely angry, they give them a slap or hit them over the head ; but among them nobody was ever crucified on so trivial a ground. So much for the meat—an unseemly plea for me to make, but a far more unseemly accusation for him to bring ;

and now it is time to speak of my handiwork and the fact that I made men. This embodies a

There existed, then, in time gone by (for if I begin there it will be easier to see whether I have done any wrong in my alterations and innovations with regard to men) there existed, as I say, only the divine, the heavenly race. The earth was a rude and ugly thing all shaggy with woods, and wild woods at that, and there were no divine altars or temples—how could there be ?—or images or anything else of the sort, though they are now to be seen in great numbers everywhere, honoured with every form of observance. But as I am always planning something for the common good and considering how the condition of the gods may be improved and everything else may increase in order and in beauty, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to take a little bit of clay and create a few living things, making them like us in appearance; for I thought that divinity was not quite complete in the absence of its counterpart, comparison with which would show divinity to be the

And then, “water and earth intermingling,” in the words of the poet,[*](Hesiod, Works and Days 61.) and kneading them, I moulded men, inviting Athena, moreover, to give me a hand in the task. Therein lies the great wrong I have done the gods, and you see what the penalty is for making creatures out of mud and imparting motion to that which was formerly motionless. From that time on, it would seem, the gods are less of gods because on earth a few mortal creatures have come into being! Indeed, Zeus is actually as angry as though the gods were losing caste through the creation of men. Surely he doesn’t’ fear that they will plot an insurrection against him and make war on the gods as the Giants did ?

No, Hermes, that you gods have suffered no wrong through me and my works is self-evident; come, show me even one wrong of the smallest sort, and I will hold my tongue and own that I have had the treatment that I deserved at your hahds.

On the contrary, that my creation has been actually of service to the gods you will learn if you notice that the whole earth is no longer barren and unbeautiful but adorned with cities and tilled lands and cultivated plants, that the sea is sailed and the islands are inhabited, and that everywhere there are altars and sacrifices, temples and festivals,

1. and full of God are all the streets
2. And all the marts of men.

Moreover, Hermes, please consider this point too— do you think that any choice thing unattested, something that you get or make, for instance, which nobody is going to see or to praise, will give quite as much joy and pleasure to its owner? Why did I ask that question? Because if men had not been created, it would follow that the beauty of the universe would be unattested and it would be our lot to possess wealth, so to speak, which no one else would admire and we ourselves would not prize so highly ; for we should have nothing else to compare it with, and we should not realise how happy we were if we did not see others who did not have what we have. What is great, you know, can only seem great if it is gauged by something small. You should have honoured me for that stroke of policy, but you have crucified me and have given me this return for my plan.

But there are rascals, you say, among them, and they commit adultery and make war and mar ry their sisters and plot against their fathers. Why, are there not plenty of them among us? Yet, of course, fone could not on this account blame Heaven and Earth for creating us. Again, you may perhaps say that we have to undergo a great deal of annoyance in taking care of them. Well, then, on that principle

Be idle and drink our nectar and eat our ambrosia without doing anything! But what sticks in my throat most is that although you censure me for making men “and particularly the women,” you fall in love with them just the same, and are always going down below, transformed now into bulls, now into satyrs and swans, and you deign to beget gods upon them!

Perhaps, however, you will say that men should have been made, but in some other form and not like us. What better model could I have put before myself than this, which I knew to be beautiful in every way? Should I have made my creatures unintelligent and bestial and savage? Why, how could they have sacrificed to gods or bestowed all the other honours upon you if they were not as they are? You gods do not hang back when they bring you the hecatombs, even if you have to go to the river of Ocean,

1. to the Ethiopians guileless,

So much for men; and now, if you wish, I shall pass to fire and that reprehensible theft! In the name of the gods answer me this question without any hesitation; have we lost any fire since men have had it too? You can’t say that we have. The nature of that possession is such, I suppose, that it is not diminished if anyone else takes some

1. bestowers of blessings

On the other hand, men are obliged to use fire, not only for other purposes but above all for the sacrifices, in order that they may be able “to fill the ways with savour” and to burn incense and consume meat on the altars. Indeed, I notice that you all take particular pleasure in the smoke and think it the most delightful of banquets when the savour comes up to heaven

1. curling about the smoke.

HERMES It is not an easy matter, Prometheus, to rival such an accomplished sophist. You are lucky, however,

PROMETHEUS I did know it, Hermes, and I also know that I shall be set free again; before long someone will come from Thebes, a brother of yours,[*](Heracles.) to shoot down the eagle which you say will fly to me.

HERMES I hope so, Prometheus, and I hope to see you at large, feasting with us all—but not serving our meat !