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The Seven Tragedies of Ęschylus; Literally Translated
The Seven Tragedies of schylus Literally Translated Author:Aeschylus General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1829 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: ARGUMENT. " The Chained Prometheus held a middle place between two others, the Fire-bringing and the Freed Prometheus, if we dare reckon the first, which without question was a satirical drama, as part of a trilogy. A considerable fragment of the Freed Prometheus has been preserved to us in the Latin translation of Attius. " The Chained Prometheus is the representation of constancy under suffering, and that the never-ending constancy of a god. Exiled to a naked rock on the shore of the encircling ocean, this drama still embraces the world, the Olympus of the gods, and the earth of mortals, all scarcely yet reposing in a secure state above the drcsul abyss of the dark Titanian powers. The idea of a self-devoting divinity has been mysteriously inculcated in many religions, as a confused foreboding of the true; here, however, it appears in a most alarming contrast with the consolations of Revelation. For Prometheus does not suffer on an understanding with the power by whom the world is governed, but he atones for his disobedience; and that disobedience consists in nothing but the attempt to give perfection to the human race. It is thus an image of human nature itself; endowed with a miserable foresight and bound down to a narrow existence, without an ally and with nothing' to oppose to the combined and inexorable powers of nature, but an unshaken will, and the consciousness of elevated claims. The other poems of the Greek tragedians are single tragedies; but this may be called tragedy itself: its purest spirit is revealed with all the annihilating and overpowering influence of its first unmitigated aust...« less