Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 #21

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.

Classic Play: I seem to remember from a lecture in a Wes Civ course that in Aeschylus’ time the authorities wanted the citizenry to attend plays so that they could have discussions about them, feel more connection with each other, and thus become better citizens. Glad I read this, besides Buckley’s high-flown language that reminded me of Marlowe, it had a lot of ideas for such a short play.

Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus

Fire is a mysterious force that has always attracted and repelled humankind since we realized we were an animal apart from the other animals. It’s understandable, then, that fire is a vivid metaphor for reason, that divine spark of a gift that not only helps us become virtuous (if we choose) but intelligent and creative enough to advance in the arts and sciences.

Fire warms but it also consumes. It never stays still. It can be put out but it flares up. Again, it’s natural that the gods would not want humans to possess fire or reason. Reason says change is inevitable, an awful notion to conservative gods that want to maintain the established order, that desire human beings not to be akin to gods but to stay in caves, hunting, gathering, living lives nasty, brutish, and short.

Prometheus, though, gives the gift of fire/reason to human beings. So Prometheus will be punished by Zeus for bestowing this gift because what’s true nowadays was true in the ancient days: no good deed goes unpunished. Nothing is completely good or completely bad. There’s always upside mixed in with downside, risks blended with benefits. Prometheus gave people fire, taught them crafts and arts and technology, for which he was severely punished by Zeus, who perhaps thought humans would be happier without fire, sadder and more discontented with the knowledge of good and evil and shame and pride, more fearful due to the certainty that we’re all going to die someday.

Aeschylus' Prometheus is one pissed off, proud and vengeful hero. He sacrifices himself for humankind and takes responsibility for his own actions, which he considers just, in contravention of the laws of Zeus, CEO of the gods. In fact, Prometheus claims to have seen the future and announces that Zeus will lose his power. Armed with knowledge and technology, humans beings will see a day when they will no longer need the gods or have to fear them.

Zeus has always seemed to me such a sexual predator (like Orange) that it seems a more interesting take that Aeschylus paints him as a tyrant (like Orange): sullen, stupid, blundering, surrounded by toadies too dumb to give useful advice, cynically telling people this is just the way things are, you’ve got to go along to get along, you have to bend to necessity and you’re foolish if you don’t. Aeschylus has Zeus’ minions respond to Prometheus' fate in the typical beastly ways chuds respond to their strong-man’s every foul decision. Vulcan is saddened by it, but dutifully carries out Zeus’ sentence to fetter Prometheus to the rock. Mercury just delivers messages as he’s told to, since assuming that whatever authority does is right is a lot easier than thinking. The character Power likes hurting people, as happy as a Capitol Stormer to have his violence fomented and blessed by a leader.

I don’t know if Aeschylus is making the claim that resisting authority and persistently putting a thumb in the eye of conservatism is the way we make progress. Nor do I know if Aeschylus is claiming that the abuse of power is inevitable no matter who wields it or even if it is, victimization at the hands of power is an inescapable fact of life. All I know is that I get the feeling that there is no solution to the problem that power seems to make gods – and people, not matter how well-intentioned – overconfident, inattentive, and lack judgement. 

And tyrannical, never forget tyrannical.