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Date and Stage Arrangements of the ‘Prometheia’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
Although Professor Murray in his edition of Aeschylus' plays puts Prometheus between Persae (472 b.c.) and Septem (467 b.c.), many students nowadays show a tendency to place it in the last period of the poet's work. For instance Mr. W. F. J. Knight (J.H.S. lviii, 1938, p. 53) says:
‘It is important to regard all the extant plays of Aeschylus, and at least some of the plays that are lost, as a single sequence of developing poetic thought. Accordingly, at the end, when Aeschylus solves the hardest problem of all, the marriage of Heaven and Earth, something like the Prometheia with a satanic Zeus might almost have been predicted…. In fact the metaphysical argument may even have some force in determining the date and authenticity of the Prometheia.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1939
References
page 160 note 1 I do not mean to dispute the rejection of Westphal's theory of a recension, but merely to present an exhaustive list of possibilities.
page 161 note 1 His arrival in Persia coincided with the accession of Artaxerxes (464 b.c.), but he might have been regarded at Athens as a προλότης several years before.
page 162 note 1 See Hoernle, , Notes on the Text of Aeschylus, App. III.Google Scholar
page 166 note 1 I think the character of Oceanus also explains Page's other two difficulties, viz., (a) that Prometheus' mood has changed very suddenly and violently; (b) that his character is somewhat overdrawn in this scene. As regards (a), Prometheus, of course, reacts differently to his different visitors. The Hermes scene shows a similarly abrupt change—to acerbity, scorn, and defiance. Oceanus' compromising attitude naturally irritates the fanatical Prometheus. He is violent to Oceanus because he is breaking down his ‘façade’. The strangeness is due to the fact that Prometheus knows Oceanus from the first, the reader or audience only at the end of the scene. If the mood of Prometheus seems overdrawn, I think it is because Aeschylus means it to be partly assumed to expose and turn away an unwelcome ally, partly a genuine reaction to the mildness of Oceanus—a weakness inherent in fanatical single-mindedness. But this subject needs more than a footnote.
page 168 note 1 The statement of the Scholiast on P. V. 511 may not be quite as literally accurate as it seems at first sight.
page 169 note 1 I owe these to the kindness of my friend Mr. Michael Goodliffe, who is engaged professionally on the stage. He himself thinks that the Greeks would not have bothered with complicated effects like this.