"Prometheus Bound" (Aeschylus): description and analysis of the tragedy. Socio-political orientation of “Prometheus Bound”

Know well that I would not trade mine
sorrows for slave service.
Aeschylus

Literature Ancient Greece played a huge role in cultural development humanity. Many years separate us from the heyday of ancient Greek art, but we still continue to read its best works. These include the tragedies of the great playwright of antiquity Aeschylus.

The most famous work Aeschylus became the tragedy “Prometheus Bound”. It is based on the myth of Prometheus, the Titan, the deity of the older generation, the son of Uranus and Gaia (Heaven and Earth). He rebelled against Zeus, stole heavenly fire from Mount Olympus, where Zeus lived, and brought it to people in reeds. Prometheus made people's lives happier and shook the power of Zeus and his assistants - the Olympian gods.

In the tragedy “Chained Prometheus,” Aeschylus talks about how the cruel tyrant Zeus punishes Prometheus, who rebelled against him. The main thing in this tragedy is the conflict between two generations of gods: the old, defeated one, to which Prometheus belongs, and the new one, led by Zeus. The conflict between the hero, selflessly fighting for human happiness, and the despotic tyranny that hinders progress. Already in the prologue of the tragedy, Zeus is characterized as a cruel ruler. The names of his servants speak about this: Power, Violence. Power appears as a rude, cruel servant of the king of the gods. With rude shouts and threats, she forces Hephaestus to carry out the order of Zeus and chain Prometheus. “You are always ruthless and full of anger,” Hephaestus tells her. Zeus is cruel, rules, “without answering to anyone for his actions.” Zeus is a tyrant who seized power and turns it against man.

The images of Hephaestus, Ocean, Hermes also reveal the theme of tyranny and the harmful influence it has on people. Hephaestus is cowardly and cowardly, although he is kind. With tears of compassion, he fulfills his mission as an executioner. This is a terrible image of an “honest coward” who became an accomplice in the crime of a tyrant. At the decisive moment, he betrays Prometheus, becoming the executor of the will of Zeus.

With irony, Aeschylus painted the image of the Ocean. Once upon a time, Oceanus, along with other titans, took part in the fight against Zeus, but after Zeus’s victory he managed to avoid the punishment that befell his friends. And now he feels good under his new owner. This egoist thinks only about his peace and well-being.

Hermes is an arrogant and rude servant of Zeus, proud to serve his master faithfully. For him, only the will of his master exists; he is not able to understand Prometheus, who does not want to bow his head before Zeus. Material from the site

Zeus is opposed by Prometheus. He gave people fire, taught them to build houses, count and read, tame animals, make sails, find cures for diseases, and mine metals. He saved people from the destruction that Zeus planned. Prometheus knew that for violating the will of the supreme god he would face severe suffering. “I did it voluntarily, voluntarily,” he says. He was prompted to do so great love to people. And now Prometheus must suffer for his excessive love. During a conversation between Prometheus and the Oceanids, their father Ocean flies in to persuade him to come to terms and stop quarreling with Zeus, but Prometheus refuses to do this. Prometheus is not afraid of Zeus, because he owns the secret of his fate, which he knows from his mother Gaia, the goddess of the Earth. Zeus sends the god Hermes to Prometheus to find out this secret from him. But no amount of persuasion or threats can break Prometheus. He does not want to reveal secrets to Zeus until he frees him. Prometheus says to Hermes: “I will never exchange my misfortune for your servile servanthood.” He realizes that he is right and believes in his strength. This helps him endure all the torments that Zeus subjected him to. In the flash of lightning, in the roar of thunder, Prometheus is thrown underground, undaunted by Zeus and disobedient.

The name Prometheus is a symbol of fearlessness, selfless love for people and readiness to fight for their happiness. “Prometheus Bound” by Aeschylus convinces us of the need to fight tyranny, violence and oppression. Aeschylus tells us that progress comes at the cost of suffering, but in the end it wins.

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Characteristics of Zeus in Prometheus Bound

Composition

PROMETHEUS (Greek - foresight, seer) -

1) the hero of the tragedy of Aeschylus (525-456 BC) “Prometheus Chained” (the year the tragedy was composed and staged is unknown; the authorship of Aeschylus is regarded as hypothetical). IN Greek mythology P. is the son of the titan Nalet and the oceanid Clymene, cousin Zeus. Having stolen the fire, P. brings it to the people, for which Zeus orders P. to be chained to the Caucasus mountains so that every day an eagle will devour his liver, which grows during the night. The torture is stopped by Hercules, who kills the eagle. To the myth about P. in ancient times Philosophers, poets, and sculptors approached, offering different incarnations of this hero and various interpretations of him. In Athens there were special festivals - “Prometheans”. P. was glorified as a god who brought people crafts, literacy, and culture, and was condemned (for example, by Hesiod), seeing in him the cause of all the troubles and misfortunes that plague the human race. In the tragedy of Aeschylus, P. is a hero who dared to oppose himself to the autocrat Zeus because of his love for man. The greatness of this feat is emphasized by the fact that the seer P. knew about the coming punishment, about the torment destined for him, and therefore his choice was conscious. P. Aeschylus, remaining equal to the gods (“Look at everything that the gods have done to God!”), at the same time experiences everything that is inherent in man - both pain and fear. But he finds the courage to confront the servants of Zeus, Power and Strength. Aeschylus created the image of a titanic personality, for whom moral freedom is higher than physical suffering, and the happiness of humanity is higher than one’s own grief. P. does not repent of what he has done and does not give his enemies a reason for gloating: he even allows himself to moan only when no one is around. Thanks to all these qualities, P. has become a symbol of self-sacrifice for centuries, an example of a fighter for the good of people, for their right to think freely and live with dignity. “They still can’t kill me!” - exclaims P. at the end of the tragedy, having inherited the gift of prophecy from his mother. The phrase turned out to be truly prophetic: the noble image of the god-fighting hero was immortalized not only in literature (Calderoy, Voltaire, Shelley, Byron, Goethe, Kafka, A. Gide, etc.), but also in music (Liszt, Beethoven, Scriabin), in fine arts, starting with Greek vase painting and Pompeian frescoes and then in the paintings of Rubens, Titian, Carracci, Piero di Cosimo and others. The ethical philosophy of Aeschylus, coupled with his rich poetics, allowed the great tragedian to create a convincing image of a martyr in the name of an idea who suffered execution several thousand years. At the same time, Aeschylus was more high level developed the myth about P., the creator of people: in “Prometheus Bound” the hero, through the sciences he gave him (construction, writing, counting, navigation, healing, etc.) improves not only the bodies, but also the souls of people. As Byron put it, P.'s only crime was that he wanted to “ease the suffering of people.” P. not only challenged Zeus, but also proved to Olympus that his name is rightly translated into all languages not only as “seer,” but also as “trustee.”

Lit.: Kerenyi K. Prometheus.Z., 1946; Sechan L. Le mythe de Promethee. P., 1951; Yarkho V. Aeschylus. M., 1958; Trousson R. Le theme de Promethee dans la lit-terature europeenne. Gen., 1964; Lurie S.Ya. Bound Prometheus // Lurie S.Ya. Ancient society. M., 1967.

2) In Russian literature, the image of P. first appears in M.V. Lomonosov’s poetic “Letter on the Benefits of Glass” (1752). Here P. is shown as a titan of science who became a victim of human ignorance. P., according to Lomonosov, did not gift people with fire as such: he gave them a magnifying glass that concentrated Sun rays and turning them into flames. However, “the ignorant, ferocious regiment misinterpreted noble inventions.” The image of P. often appears in Russian poetry of the 19th century. (Baratynsky, Kuchelbecker, Benediktov, Polonsky, Shevchenko, etc.), where he symbolizes the idea of freedom, personifies a feat that is as sublime as it is reckless. This image is also found in Soviet poetry, serving as a metaphor for socialist transformations and, in particular, electrification. So, Belarusian poet Yakub Kolas interprets P.’s fire as “Ilyich’s light bulb,” and the Georgian writer R. Gvetadze directly identifies the ancient titan with Stalin, who “gave the peoples the flame of Prometheus.” The writer G.I. Serebryakova in the novel “Prometheus” describes the life of K. Marx. (Cf. A. Maurois’s work “Prometheus, or the Life of Balzac.”) All these metaphors and allegories are not related to literary hero as such. In fact, P. appears as a literary (dramatic) hero, objectified in the narrative (action), in Vyach. I. Ivanov’s tragedy “Prometheus” (first edition entitled “Sons of Prometheus” - 1914, second - 1919). In the tragedy of the symbolist poet, attention is drawn to the absence of the civilizing pathos characteristic of many developments of the myth of P., starting with Aeschylus, whose hero suffered unfairly and, according to Ivanov, paid for his excessive philanthropy. In Vyach. Ivanov himself, P. expresses the “negative self-determination of a titanic being”, destroying the unity of being. The tragedy uses the main plot circumstances of the myth: the theft of fire, which P. gives to the people he created. Unlike traditional interpretations Where fire was a symbol of consciousness, in Ivanov it expresses freedom. Having transferred fire to people, P. makes them free and expects to use their freedom in the war against the Olympian gods, so that later he can “become the one head over everything,” a plan that is quite in tune with the intentions of Tantalus from Ivanov’s tragedy (1904). For the poet and thinker, the author of “The Hellenic Religion of the Suffering God,” whose entire consciousness was immersed in ancient culture, the modernized Prometheans of modern times were alien. This made it possible, despite the plot liberties, to give, according to A.F. Losev, a “deeply ancient” reading of the myth - by no means indifferent to the spiritual collisions of modernity, but devoid of allegorism and metaphor, through which “ silver Age"resurrected Hellenism. Therefore, for Ivanov, some aspects of the myth were significant, which seemed too philological to other authors. P. is a titan, a chthonic deity, for whom “the Olympic thrones are fragile and new; // Ancient chaos in a holy dungeon.” In this context, P.'s revolt against Zeus takes on ontological significance. However, the “negative self-determination” of titanism is expressed in that it involves all things in discord and war, and ultimately destroys its own carriers. P.'s fire, which gave people freedom, turns out to be a “seed of discord.” The young man Arhat kills his brother Archemorus, jealous that P. appointed him as a fire-bearer. The blood shed by the “firstborn of destructive freedom” begins a series of deaths, and soon “a war breaks out with everyone: the earth with the gods, and the gods with people.” P. is convinced: “Everything is for the good!”, for “I do not need peace, but the seed of discord.” However, the discord also affects him: people take up arms against P., go over to the side of Zeus, are ready to swear allegiance to the insidious Pandora, and at the end of the tragedy they “remain silent” (a reminiscence of Pushkin’s famous remark from “Boris Godunov”), when the demons Krotos and Biya take P. into custody . The ending of the tragedy, it would seem, repeats the denouement of Tantalus: Zeus crushed the rebel and approximately punished him. However, if Tantalus's rebellion remained without consequences, then P.'s “social experiment” achieved its goal. The earth is populated by the sons of P., filled with “greed for action but powerlessness for creativity” (Ivanov’s commentary). Due to this greed of “Prometheism,” they kill each other, and therefore choose a mortal fate for themselves.

Lit.: Losev A.F. The world image of Prometheus // Losev A.F. The problem of symbol and realistic art. M., 1976; Stakhorsky S.V. Vyacheslav Ivanov and Russian theatrical culture beginning of XX"Sw. M., 1991.

The ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus in his work reflected an entire stage in the formation of the Athenian state. His tragedies captured many of the events of that heroic time when Greek people defended his freedom and independence. Therefore, the poet’s works are full of conflicts of powerful passions, and majestic heroes act in them. The tragedy “Chained Prometheus” is precisely such a work, which is based on the ancient myth about the titan Prometheus, who provided invaluable services to people.

From the first lines we learn that the formidable ruler Zeus doomed the hero to eternal torment because he dared to go against him, stealing fire and giving it to people. And Zeus came up with a cruel punishment for Prometheus so that he would pay for his guilt before the gods.

To finally recognize the primacy of Zeus

And so that I swore to love people boldly.

The servants of Zeus, rude and unceremonious, do their job with pleasure - they chain the hero and entangle his body with iron chains. But courageous Prometheus utters neither a word nor a murmur. He doesn't ask for pity. And only when left alone does he give vent to his feelings:

I see no end to the torment...

... I'm languishing in the yoke of trouble

Because he showed honor to people.

However, despite the unbearable suffering that the eagle causes him by pecking out his liver, Prometheus does not submit. To Hermes, sent by Zeus to persuade the hero to reconciliation and submission, and at the same time to find out the secret that he possesses, Prometheus proudly replies:

He ate his sorrows with slave food.

He does not give in to any persuasion or threats and remains adamant: “I will not answer a single question of yours.”

The titan retains its determination until last minute. When the rock with the chained Prometheus falls through the ground, he only cries out for justice higher powers:

I suffer without guilt - look!

Aeschylus calls his hero a “philanthropist” - a word that he himself invented and which means: one who loves people, is a FRIEND of people. However, his image is incredibly broader and more meaningful than in ancient myth: he not only gave people fire, but also opened for them all the benefits of civilization. The author, through the mouth of a titan, tells how, having emerged from a primitive state, people increasingly awakened to conscious life and developed their culture. We see the role that Prometheus plays in this, how many discoveries he brings to humanity. It’s as if the entire history of humanity is passing before us, the history of its intellectual and spiritual growth, its development material culture. The hero taught people crafts, counting, and determining the seasons; he stood up for them before Zeus, who wanted to destroy humanity. He also turned out to be a skilled doctor and passed on this knowledge, taught people to make medicines, interpret signs, mine gold, iron, copper and other riches hidden underground.

Aeschylus created in his work the image of a fighter for truth and justice. He contrasted him with all the other characters. Thus, he surpasses Hephaestus in strength of spirit, Ocean - in uncompromisingness, Hermes - in self-esteem and independence.

Loving humanity, Prometheus is irreconcilable to the “tyranny of Zeus.” For him, the king of the gods is the embodiment of cruelty and injustice. Thus, he also acts as a fighter against tyranny, with the absolute power of the Father, capable of any crime.

The image of a courageous, fearless, noble and strong-willed titan has been recreated more than once in world culture even after Aeschylus. Prometheus became the hero of Goethe's rebellious poem, the poems of Byron and Schiller, imbued with the spirit of freedom, musical works Liszt, Scriabin. It was also sung by many Russian poets of the 19th-20th centuries.

Taught me to think intelligently.

For his love and devotion to people, for goodness and the desire for progress and enlightenment on earth, the hero was executed by Zeus, who in Aeschylus personifies the unknown forces of nature, jealously protecting its secrets. However, Prometheus is not afraid of terrible torment - he decisively and boldly challenges the tyrant and is ready to defend his rightness to the end. The hero firmly believes in the triumph of justice:

But the time will come:

... The wisdom of numbers, the most important of the sciences, I invented for people the addition of letters, the essence of all arts, the basis of all memory. I am the first who accustomed animals to the yoke, and to the collar, and to the pack, so that They would save people from the most exhausting Work. And I harnessed the horses, obedient to the lead, The beauty and shine of wealth, into carts, It was none other than me who equipped the Court with linen wings and boldly drove them across the seas. That’s how many tricks I, ill-fated, have come up with for the people of earth...

The myth of Prometheus and its reflection in the tragedy of Aeschylus

Aeschylus has long been deservedly considered the “father of tragedy.” In fact, in terms of the number and monumentality of his works, he is the most brilliant of the tragic poets. “One of his greatest discoveries was the introduction of a second actor, which enhanced the dramatic effect, creating the possibility of depicting the struggle of opposing forces, which formed the basis of the plot.

In his work, Aeschylus sought to reveal the most important issues of his time: the problems of guilt and retribution, human responsibility for his actions, the confrontation between good and evil, the desire for the triumph of justice, the relationship between man and the forces of the outside world expressing the divine will. The most outstanding of the creations of the ancient Greek poet is the image of the titan Prometheus, without which it is now difficult to imagine a number of great images of world literature.

The tragedy “Chained Prometheus” occupies a special place in the playwright’s work and is the first of a trilogy. Later, the poet created “Prometheus the Liberated” and “Prometheus the Fire-Bearer”. However, to this day from latest works very little came through.

Aeschylus' trilogy is based on an ancient myth, according to which Prometheus is the protector of people from the tyranny and injustice of the gods. In order to save people from death, he stole fire from Olympus, for which the formidable Zeus ordered him to be chained to a rock, thereby dooming him to eternal torment. Every day an eagle flew to the rock and pecked out Prometheus’s liver, which was then restored again. The hero's torment continued until Hercules freed him, killing him with an eagle's arrow. According to various versions of the legend, these sufferings lasted from several centuries to thirty thousand years. Aeschylus took this myth as the basis of his work, but significantly expanded and deepened its meaning.

The tragedy, apparently, takes place at the moment when Zeus had just come to power, overthrowing his father Cronus and the entire generation of elder gods. Prometheus, according to legend, helped Zeus become the king of the gods. However, by stealing the fire, he angered the almighty ruler and subjected himself to severe punishment. But in the image of Prometheus, Aeschylus portrayed not only a fire-getter for people. He presented him as the inventor of various sciences and crafts, who brought to people all the cultural benefits that made the development of human civilization possible:

... I made them, before the foolish ones,

Taught me to think intelligently.

Prometheus taught people to build houses, mine metals, cultivate the land, and tame animals. He developed shipbuilding, astronomy and the study of nature, taught people the “science of numbers and literacy,” medicine and other useful and important activities.

In short, find out that everything

People's arts come from Prometheus!

The hero firmly believes in the triumph of justice:

I know that Zeus is harsh, what should he

Justice is his arbitrariness

But the time will come:

He will soften, broken by the blow of fate...

In addition, he knows a secret that Zeus is trying to wrest from him by any means. This secret lies in the fact that the great king of the gods will fall:

... his wife will take him off the throne...

Having given birth to a child stronger than the father.

Prometheus steadfastly endures all the trials and threats of the tyrant, remaining proud and unconquered.

Be sure that I would not change

My sorrows into slave service...

In the person of his hero, the author affirms nobility, courage, fortitude, as well as faith in progress human culture, V creative possibilities person. His work is permeated with the spirit of protest against violence and tyranny. It most fully reflected the problems that worried the poet himself and the entire people. Aeschylus' tragedies convey the most current phenomena and events in the political and spiritual life of Athens. They are distinguished by their special sublimity and solemnity. No wonder K. Marx put the poet on a par with Shakespeare, calling them two greatest geniuses, “which humanity gave birth to.”

Has the fire of Prometheus gone out today, or is altruism still relevant? Man is a social being, that is, living in society. Outside of society, people's actions have no meaning. We are surrounded by our relatives, friends and acquaintances, classmates and fellow students, colleagues, neighbors. It is not easy to maintain friendly relations with everyone. It depends not only on you, but also on the person with whom you communicate. But first of all - from you.

You need to treat other people selflessly, thinking first about them and not about yourself, as the hero did ancient Greek tragedy Aeschylus "Chained Prometheus". Prometheus, despite the prohibition of the supreme god Zeus, brought fire to people. He brought it simply because he wanted to help people survive. Prometheus also taught ordinary mortals various crafts and arts - he advanced the progress of mankind with a huge leap forward. For this, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock, where every day an eagle flew and pecked his liver. Within a day, the liver was restored, the eagle flew again, and this continued endlessly - after all, Prometheus, like Zeus, was also a god and therefore immortal.

Prometheus could save himself - he possessed the secret of overthrowing Zeus from the throne. But he continued to endure inhuman torment so that people would have a saving fire, without demanding anything in return.

Altruism is a selfless concern for the welfare of other people. Altruists move progress forward.

We would not be at such a relatively high level of social, scientific and economic development, if there weren’t scientists among us who put the idea above all else, and not how much they will pay for it. Scientists who are completely immersed in their theories and work selflessly. It would take a long time to list such great people: there are hundreds of them in every country. Pavlov and Tsiolkovsky, Maria and Pierre Curie, Einstein and Korolev.

There are still altruists today. These are, for example, people who have adopted a child or opened a family Orphanage. The life of small children in an orphanage, boarding school or in a family simply cannot be compared! Once in a family, children receive that huge portion of love, affection, care and tenderness that they did not receive while in state children's institutions. After this, children begin to develop faster, become healthier, and their character changes in better side, - they just bloom. It is a great happiness to see how much joy you have brought to someone without demanding anything in return. This is what I think real altruists think. And always honest and naive children's eyes looking at you with a smile are the best reward.

True altruists want there to be no wars, diseases or disasters in the world. That's why people with missions good will from many countries of the world come to various parts of the planet, trying to resolve some important state and political issues peacefully. They come to help

For those who have a difficult and difficult time carrying the overwhelming burden of unresolved problems on their own shoulders. Many famous people they do this not to become even more famous, but to help.

If there were no volunteers from the Red Cross, then, for example, there would be no one to help people caught in a natural disaster zone.

They would not be helped with food, a roof over their heads, warm clothes and medicines. The Red Cross employs altruists who help people regardless of their nationality, religion, place of residence and what social status they borrow.

I think Prometheus's fire has not gone out. Maybe at some moments it does not burn as brightly as we would like. But I believe that altruism is relevant today and will always be relevant. As long as humanity exists, people will live with with a pure heart, with an open soul, selflessly bringing joy to others and driving progress.

Aeschylus worked in Greece in the 5th century BC (about 525-456 BC). This was the era of pan-Hellenic patriotic upsurge after the victorious war of Athens with the Persians, the formation of Greek city-states, the flourishing public life and culture. Aeschylus lived during the era of the Greco-Persian wars and the strengthening of the democratic system in Athens, and he himself participated in famous battles with the Persians at Marathon, Salamis and Plataea. He wrote 90 tragedies, of which only 7 have survived. This was the time of famous poets, sculptors and architects.

“When they say “Aeschylus,” some immediately have a vague, others a more or less clear image of the “father of tragedy,” a reverently textbook, even majestic, image; they imagine a marble antique bust, a scroll of a manuscript, an actor’s mask. An amphitheater flooded with the southern Mediterranean sun,” wrote the researcher ancient drama S. Apt. The images of Aeschylus had a huge influence not only on the theater, but also on poetry, musical art, painting.

Aeschylus is called the father of tragedy, rightly believing that he did more for the development of this genre than Sophocles and Euripides. The poet himself spoke very modestly about his work, noting that it was crumbs compared to Homer, although it was in the genre of tragedy that he revealed himself with particular strength and uniqueness. creative talent ancient Greek author.

His tragedy “Prometheus Bound” had particular success among Aeschylus’ contemporaries. In Aeschylus, pride in victorious Greece turned into pride in man. Aeschylus immortalized the image of a tyrant-hater, a fighter for the happiness and culture of mankind in the image of Prometheus.

Prometheus was punished by Zeus because, in an effort to save the human race from destruction, he stole fire from him and gave it to people. Prometheus taught them arts and crafts: to build houses and ships, to tame animals, to recognize medicinal plants, and taught them the science of numbers and literacy. For this, Zeus severely punished the titan: Prometheus was chained to a rock in the Caucasus mountains. Every day an eagle flies to him and pecks at his liver. Prometheus's liver grows again, and the eagle pecks at it again. Prometheus is doomed to eternal torment because he is a god, and gods are immortal. The screams and moans of Prometheus are heartbreaking, but the titan is not broken and in response to the messenger of Zeus, Hermes, who threatens him with new torment, Prometheus proudly declares:

Know well that I would not trade

It's good that I wouldn't trade it

Your sorrows into servile service,

I'd rather be chained to a rock

How faithful is it to be a servant of Zeus.

Prometheus refuses Zeus' offer to give him freedom in exchange for humility.

Aeschylus goes beyond the myth and deepens the conflict. Prometheus, as becomes clear from his famous monologue, not only gave people fire, but also invented many sciences and crafts. Prometheus becomes a symbol of human progress. And the tyrant Zeus is a symbol of the unknown forces of nature, which jealously guards its secrets. Another intriguing moment enhances the drama of the situation: Prometheus also has a secret that Zeus needs to find out at all costs.

Prometheus knows that Zeus will fall when he has a son from the sea goddess Thetis. Viewers and readers are interested in whether Prometheus will resist the threats of Zeus and keep the secret.

The Greeks greatly valued their democratic order and therefore perceived the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus as a symbolic condemnation of autocracy. Zeus is “an unaccountable, stern king,” so his arbitrariness knows no bounds. The Greeks criticized Zeus because the gods were not a model of behavior and justice for them. They were very afraid of them, organized holidays in their honor, made sacrifices to them, but they could be criticized, because above the gods were Rock and the three terrible Moiras, who followed the inevitable course of fate.

Inquisitive Prometheus personifies human mind and world progress. He argues with Zeus and his assistants Hermes, Hephaestus, Strength, Power, and the old man Ocean, who are the personification of inertia, opportunism, ignorance and cruelty of morals.

“Prometheus Unchained” has been preserved in separate passages and fragments, from which we learn that Hercules, on the advice of Thetis, killed the eagle and freed Prometheus. Prometheus revealed a secret to Zeus, for which Zeus promised Prometheus eternal glory in Athens. This unexpected and disappointing reconciliation will become clear to the reader if he knows that thirty years must have passed between the action of Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unchained. Zeus softened, Prometheus yielded, and over time, the harmony so necessary for the world won.

Not everything in the world is static, everything changes over time, but the image of Prometheus will always be before our eyes. The image of a man who thought not about himself, the immortal god, but about the future of people. And just as Prometheus, with the advent of sciences and crafts, moved the progress of mankind forward, so other people, if they acted as selflessly as he did, would raise human relations to unattainable heights.

The servants of Zeus, Strength and Power, brought the titan Prometheus to the deserted country of the Scythians at the edge of the earth and, by order of the supreme god, Hephaestus chained him to a rock as punishment for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to people. Prometheus did not say a word while Hephaestus chained him to the rock, and, left alone, began to call on the forces of nature, the rocks to witness his suffering. Then the Oceanids, the daughters of the Ocean, appear, playing the role of a chorus in the tragedy. They feel sorry for their relative Prometheus, whose wife Hesion is their sister.

Prometheus tells the Oceanids why Zeus punished him: because he gave people fire, taught them various crafts, counting and writing, thereby saving them from the death Zeus prepared for them. The father of the Oceanids, old Ocean, appears, he also sympathizes with Prometheus and tries to persuade him to submit to the power of Zeus, with whom it is useless to fight, he offers to persuade Zeus to change his anger to mercy. Prometheus refuses help and remains adamant.

Chased by a huge gadfly, covered in blood, covered in foam, the unfortunate Io rushes in a frantic, crazy run, turned into a cow by the jealous Hera because Zeus loved her. She tells Prometheus about her suffering and asks him when her torment will end. Prometheus predicts her many more sufferings.

The fleet-footed Hermes appears, he demands on behalf of Zeus from Prometheus the discovery of an important secret on which the power of the supreme god depends, and also threatens him with new punishments. Prometheus proudly replies: “I will never exchange my misfortune for your slavish service.” After this, Zeus fulfills his threat: thunder roars, lightning flashes, and Prometheus, along with the rock, falls underground.

The image of the unbending Prometheus has become a symbolic image of a fighter for the liberation of humanity from the chains of slavery, the embodiment of courage and rebellious spirit. Masters turned to this image in their works artistic word of all times and peoples: Calderon, Voltaire, Shelley, Byron, Goethe, Ryleev and others.

“Prometheus Bound” is a tragedy included in the circle of works of Aeschylus and, apparently, constituted the second part of the trilogy (which also included the tragedies “Prometheus the Fire-Bearer” and “Prometheus Unbound”). There are still scientific disputes about the dating of the tragedy and even about its very attribution to Aeschylus, caused primarily by its content, where the confrontation of the titan Prometheus with Zeus is shown as a struggle with a certain divine tyrant, lording over other deities and hostile to the entire human race. At first glance, this atheistic pathos does not correspond to the picture of divine justice in other works of Aeschylus and forces researchers to associate the tragedy with the views of the “enlightenment of Greece” - sophistic scientists and attribute it to a later time. Indeed, the main theme of Prometheus’s speeches in the tragedy is suffering, and undeserved suffering. Complaints about these innocent torments frame his monologues, practically from his first words to his last. At the same time, he talks at length about his benefits to people and appears as a kind of intercessor for humanity; the humiliation of Prometheus, chained to a rock by order of Zeus, becomes a symbol of dependence and subordination of the entire human race.

The unconditional emphasis of the main character also determines the unusual structure of the tragedy, the main part of which consists of the mournful and angry speeches of Prometheus. Their background is the chorus of the Oceanids, the daughters of Ocean, who sympathize with the hero, the Ocean admonishing Prometheus, as well as the servants of Zeus opposing the titan - Power, who does not utter a single word, Strength, and finally Hermes. Prometheus’s confrontation with the servants of the supreme god is a stage manifestation of the main conflict of the tragedy, the peculiarity of which is that it manifests itself in the opposition of Prometheus, who is present on the stage, and Zeus, who is formally absent from it. It is characteristic that this conflict is conceptualized as an opposition between old and new deities, which makes us recall a similar dispute in the last tragedy of the Oresteia - “Eumenides”. Zeus appears as a “new” tyrannical ruler, whose arbitrariness is elevated to the rank of law. Prometheus, in turn, represents the ancient divine forces. But at one time, Prometheus himself helped put Zeus on the throne, giving him advice that allowed him to win the battle with the Titans. For the hero, this is a reason to accuse Zeus of ingratitude, however, the very fact that he acted as an ally of Zeus against his closest relatives marks the special character of both this character and his enmity with Zeus. In the tragedy “Prometheus Bound,” Prometheus sympathizes with other overthrown opponents of the king of the gods, and he also introduces into the work the theme of the curse of Zeus by Cronus, according to which Zeus, like his father, should be deprived of power by his own son. Thus, in “Prometheus Bound”, albeit on a different, “divine” level, there is a motif generational curse, a series of mutual crimes of members of the same family, which constitutes the main conflict of other tragedies of Aeschylus, and Prometheus is a kind of “avenger” on behalf of the overthrown previous generation, representatives of which in the tragedy are also his passive allies of Prometheus - Ocean and his daughters.

But at the same time, in his confrontation with Zeus, Prometheus in many ways turns out to be closely connected with his opponent. They are connected in the past - by their alliance against the Titans. In the tragedy itself, their connection is emphasized by similar characteristics: both of them are stern, adamant, proud and furious, and the same epithets are applicable to them. Finally, they are connected by the future - a secret known to Prometheus: it depends on it whether the supreme god will retain his power. Prometheus, it would seem, predicts the inevitability of the fall of this power and rejects for himself the opportunity to open the future to Zeus in exchange for liberation. But he also claims the opposite: his enemy will find out the truth if he frees and rewards Prometheus, moderates his anger and again seeks an alliance. Prometheus almost completely reveals the secret, saying that Zeus will die from an unhappy marriage, he does not pronounce only the name of a possible wife, but names his own savior, who will come from the family of Io who came to Prometheus. The Io episode is getting kind of compositional center tragedy “Prometheus Chained”: the suffering of a girl turned into a cow for the love with which Zeus was inflamed for her, and the madness that comes over her are similar to the torment of Prometheus himself. Zeus is to blame for her bitter fate, but at the same time the hero himself predicts that Io will be delivered from suffering by Zeus, just as salvation will come to Prometheus himself from Hercules, a descendant of Io and the son of the supreme god. Then Prometheus will finally reveal to Zeus the name of the woman forbidden to him - Thetis - and thereby retain his power. The next part of the trilogy after “Prometheus Bound”, “Prometheus Unbound,” was devoted to these events.

Thus, Zeus and Prometheus turn out to be allies in the past and future, enemies in the present. The power of Zeus, against which the hero of the tragedy seems to rebel, rests on the knowledge of Prometheus, and Prometheus’s salvation comes from Zeus. Their connection is determined by “inevitable fate”, the prediction of which becomes the main power of Prometheus, understood as the power of his knowledge (the name Prometheus itself means “knowing in advance, provident”). But this knowledge in many ways turns out to be in vain, because it cannot save Prometheus himself from the suffering.

Thus, the interpretation central image and the plot of the tragedy “Prometheus Bound” by Aeschylus as a whole turns out to be dual, and the emphasized confrontation of the hero supreme god- dictated by the place of this tragedy within the reconstructed trilogy. It is no coincidence that in antiquity we encounter a reduced image of Prometheus the deceiver, harming the gods (for example, in Aristophanes and Lucian). The theme of the destructiveness of Prometheus' gifts also arose, in particular, in Horace and Propertius. At the same time, the influence of Aeschylus's plot on subsequent tradition is determined largely by the image of the main character, perceived as a symbol of suffering in the name of humanity and as the personification of knowledge. The church fathers identify Prometheus with God and the prophets (Tertullian, Augustine). Subsequently, the idea of knowledge and creative search, personified by Prometheus, gradually comes to the fore (D. Boccaccio; Calderon - “Statue of Prometheus”, 1669-1674), popular in the Age of Enlightenment (J.J. Rousseau, Voltaire; I.-V. Goethe - “Prometheus”, 1773) and continued by the literature of romanticism (P. Shelley, “Prometheus Unchained”, 1819). The result of a certain godless interpretation of the hero was the phrase of F. Nietzsche, who saw in the protest of the hero Aeschylus a “hymn to godlessness.” “The negative self-determination of a titanic being” expresses the image of Prometheus in tragedy of the same name IN AND. Ivanova (1919). The theme of reason and rationality in the interpretation of the image of Prometheus was continued by the philosophical and aesthetic thought of the 20th century (A. Gide, A. Camus).