THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS 21

this victim and to assisc the god in tracking him down, of
wreathing him for sacrifice, of catching him in the labyrinth
of his own waywardness, of blinding him with his own conceitt
of knowledge, of tricking him with his own plans, of humbling
him with his own arrogance, and of destroying him with his
own power, so that at length he may be taught to mock his

existence with his own life, making cf it a sacrifice, the god
being present in him.

In Aeschylus’ tragedy it was the giant figure of man him-
self, Titan man, in the figure of Prometheus, that the chor-
us offered up to the god. Calling on Prometheus to divulge
to them his deed, the chorus of Oceanids, alternately pitying
and feeling terror at his crime, repelled, attracted and mes-
merized by him in turn, induced him to speak.

Though all the creatures of earth acknowledged a nat-
ural sympathy for Prometheus, they could neither soften
his asperity nor pierce the loneliness of this pride. He called
out for witnesses to his pain and unjust suffering but rejected
with contempt all offers of help or mediation. He took com-
fort only with lonely, half-mad Io, whose sufferings bore on
his. Pregnant with the seed of Zeus’ son, Heracles the recon-
ciler, she has been turned away from her father’s house and
made to wander through unknown wildernesses, a stranger
to the earth and pursued by Argus, earth’s evil eye. Both are
on fire with divine agony for the sake of men. He suffers with
immovable chains from the wrath of heaven, she with
unresting movement from the wrath of earth. Both are
exiles.

Exulting in solitude and chains, glorying in his crime,
Prometheus reasserted his absolute rebellion. He chose to
serve the rock in a landscape monstrous in its contradictory
shiftings from ice to thaw, from mountain peak to abyss, rath-
er than to compromise his pride. He longed for the god’s
life, yet he would not forego exile if if meant the negation
of his act, He willed to be master of an eon,even an eon of
agony. By his own will was he bound. The more rigid and 1nes-