Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus

Aeschylus, Volume 1. Smyth, Herbert Weir, translator. London; New York: William Heinemann; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.

  1. hated of all who enter the court of Zeus, because of my very great love for mankind. Ha! What’s this? What may be this rustling stir of birds I hear
  2. again nearby? The air whirs with the light rush of wings. Whatever approaches causes me alarm. The Daughters of Oceanus enter on a winged car
Chorus
  1. Do not fear! For our group has come in swift rivalry of wings to this crag
  2. as friend to you, having won our father’s consent as best we might. The swift-coursing breezes bore me on; for the reverberation of the clang of iron pierced the depths of our caves and drove my grave modesty away in fright;
  3. unsandalled I have hastened in a winged car.
Prometheus
  1. Alas! Alas! Offspring of fruitful Tethys and of him who with his sleepless current encircles the whole earth, children of your
  2. father Oceanus, behold, see with what fetters, upon the summit crag of this ravine, I am to hold my unenviable watch.
Chorus
  1. I see, Prometheus;
  2. and over my eyes a mist of tears and fear spread as I saw your body withering ignominiously upon this rock in these bonds of adamant. For there are new rulers in heaven, and Zeus governs with
  3. lawless customs; that which was mighty before he now brings to nothing.
Prometheus
  1. Oh if only he had hurled me below the earth, yes beneath Hades, the entertainer of the dead, into impassable Tartarus,
  2. and had ruthlessly fastened me in fetters no hand can loose, so that neither god nor any other might have gloated over this agony I feel! But, now, a miserable plaything of the winds, I suffer pains to delight my enemies.
Chorus
  1. Who of the gods is so hard of heart as to exult in this? Who does not sympathize with your woes—save only Zeus? But he in malice, has set his soul inflexibly