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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 Excerpt: ...faith, and therefore in some way to be harmonised with the highest morals. Yet it seems very strange that he should represent Zeus as a tyrant, and Prometheus--a god not by any means of importance in public worship--a noble sufferer, punished for his humanity. Still worse, Zeus is represented as the enemy of men, and completely estranged from any interest in their welfare. I do not know how these things are to be explained in such a man as Eschylus. and cannot say which of the more reasonable theories is to be preferred. This seems certain, that the iron power of Destiny was an extremely prominent idea in his mind, and that no more wonderful illustration could be found than this story, in which even the Ruler of die Gods was subject to it, and thus at the mercy of his vanquished but prophetic foe. 178. The history of opinion about the Prometheus is somewhat curious. The great French critics of the seventeenth century could not comprehend it, and Voltaire, Fontenelle, and la Harpe were agreed that it was simply a monstrous play, and the 1 Cf. Bernhardy's Comm. on most of these theories, LG. iii. p. 272, sq. work of an uncultivated boor with some sparks of genius. The colossal conceptions of the great Greek, and the gigantic words with which he strove to compass his thought, were essentially foreign to the rigid form and smooth polish of the French tragedians. Of late years all this feeling has changed. Lemercier, Andrieux, and Edgar Quinet1 have adopted the tone of Schlegel and Goethe, and everybody is now agreed as to the merit of the play. I would they were equally persuaded of the impossibility of imitating it. There are allusions to two translations or adaptations by the Romans, attributed to Attius, Varro, or Maecenas. Cicero seems to have been p...

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