Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

At the world’s remote Scythian cliff, Kratos (Power) and Bia (Force)—silent in the surviving text as an acting presence—drive Prometheus to the rock at Zeus’s command. Hephaestus follows reluctantly: he must pin the Titan with unbreakable bonds, yet kinship and craft-shame make him hesitate. Kratos goads him: Zeus’s will is harsh; pity is useless; nail the culprit who stole fire and gave it to mortals. Hephaestus chains Prometheus’s arms, drives a wedge through his chest, shackles his sides and legs, and leaves him exposed to sun and frost. Kratos mocks the prisoner: mortal-loving god, how will mortals lift this torment? Prometheus remains silent until the ministers depart, then cries to sky, sea, and earth to witness Zeus’s injustice. Aeschylus stages what Hesiod only narrates: the binding as political theater of the new regime. Kratos and Bia embody Hesiod’s Styx-born ministers; Hephaestus is the unwilling technician of tyranny. The eagle and Heracles lie ahead in the trilogy’s lost plays; this entry isolates the prologue’s arrest-and-fetter as the Aeschylean version-line, separate from the Hesiodic aetiology of sacrifice, fire, and liver-eagle.