Prometheus destined analysis essay

A monologue from the perform by Aeschylus

NOTE: This monologue is reprinted coming from The Dramas of Aeschylus. Trans. Anna Swanwick. London: George Bell and Sons, 1907.

PROMETHEUS: Believe not which i through satisfaction or obduracy, pigheadedness

Keep quiet, nay, my personal brooding center is gnawed

Seeing myself thus marred with contumely

And yet what other but me personally marked away

To these fresh gods their very own full prerogatives?

But We refrain, to get, nought my own tongue could tell

Save what en know. But rather list the ills

Of mortal males, how being babes prior to

I built them sensible and professionals of their sensibilities.

This will I tell, less in blame of males

But exhibiting how via kindness flowd my items.

For they, in the beginning, though viewing, saw in vain

Hearing they observed not, however like styles in dreams.

Through the long time all things randomly mixed

Of brick-wove residences, sunward-turnd, nought knew

Nor joiners craft, but digging they dwelt

Like puny ants, in caverns depths unsunned.

Not of winter, nor of spring flower-strewn

Nor successful summer, had they specific sign

Nevertheless without common sense everything they will wrought

Until I to them the risings of the stars

Uncovered, and their settings hard in scanning.

Nay, likewise Number, skill supreme, for them

I found, and marshalling of written indications

Handmaid to memory, mom of the Muse.

And I in traces initial brute pets yokd

Controlled by harness, with vicarious durability

Bearing in mortals stead their largest toils.

Hearken the rest, and thou wilt marvel even more

What disciplines and what resources We devised.

This chief of all, if anybody fell ill

No help there was, diet plan nor liniment

Nor curing draught, although men, to get lack of drugs

Wasted away, till I to all of them revealed

Commixtures of assuaging remedies

Which may disorders manifold get rid of.

Of prophecies the various ways I fixed

And amongst dreams do first discriminate

The honest vision. Noises ominous

Hard to interpret, I to them made known:

And way-side auguries, the trip of wild birds

With crooked talons, evidently I defined

Showed by their nature which auspicious are

And which ill-omenedtaught the settings of existence

Native to each, and what, among themselves

Their feuds, affections, and confederacies.

Coming in contact with the smoothness of the essential parts

And what the hue most desirable to the gods

I taught them, and the mottled symmetry

Of gall and liver. Thighs enveloped in body fat

With the extended chine My spouse and i burnt, and mortals led

To a mystical art, of fire-eyed indicators

I purged the eye-sight, over-filmed ahead of.

Such had been the boons I gave, and neath the earth

Individuals other helps to men, concealed which lie

Brass, iron, silver, rare metal, who dares affirm

That before myself he had discovered them?

No-one, I know, although who would idly vaunt.

The sum of all learn thou in one short word

Most arts to mortals by Prometheus came up.

Such cunning works pertaining to mortals My spouse and i contrived

But, hapless, for myself can not find device

To free me from this present agony.

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