Prometheus Bound

by Aeschylus, Joel Agee (Translator), Joel Agee (Introduction)

Overview

Prometheus Bound is the starkest and strangest of the classic Greek tragedies, a play in which god and man are presented as radically, irreconcilably at odds. It begins with the shock of hammer blows as the Titan Prometheus is shackled to a rock in the Caucasus. This is his punishment for giving the gift of fire to humankind and for thwarting Zeus’s decision to exterminate the human race. Prometheus’s pain is unceasing, but he refuses to recant his commitment to humanity, to whom he has also brought the knowledge of writing, mathematics, medicine, and architecture. He hints that he knows how Zeus will be brought low in the future, but when Hermes demands that Prometheus divulge his secret, he refuses and is sent spinning into the abyss by a divine thunderbolt.

To whom does humanity look for guidance: to the supreme deity or to the rebel Titan? What law controls the cosmos? Prometheus Bound, one of the great poetic achievements of the ancient world, appears here in a splendid new translation by Joel Agee that does full justice to the harsh and keening music of the original Greek.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590178614
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	03/24/2015
Series:	NYRB Classics Series
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	100
File size:	585 KB

About the Author

Aeschylus (525 bc–456 bc), the first of ancient Greece’s major dramatists, is considered the father of Greek tragedy. He is said to have been the author of as many as ninety plays, of which seven survive.

Joel Agee is a writer and translator. He has received several prizes, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin in 2008 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s verse play Penthesilea. He is the author of two memoirs—Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany and, more recently, In the House of My Fear. His translation of Prometheus Bound was produced at the Getty Villa in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Prometheus Bound.

What People are Saying About This

Seth L. Schein

“This is the best Prometheus Bound in English. Deborah Roberts’ translation is accurate, readable, and true to the original in idiom, imagery, and the combination of a high style with occasional colloquialism. The informative notes and perceptive Introduction will help readers to experience the play with heightened pleasure and understanding. ”
—Seth L. Schein, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis

Rachel Hadas

”This is an outstandingly useful edition of Prometheus Bound. The translation is both faithful and graceful, and the introduction to this difficult play is a model of clarity, intelligence, and a profound familiarity with the workings of Greek myth, Greek literature, and literature in general. ”
—Rachel Hadas, Department of English, Rutgers University

Editorial Reviews

This is the best Prometheus Bound in English. Deborah Roberts' translation is accurate, readable, and true to the original in idiom, imagery, and the combination of a high style with occasional colloquialism. The informative notes and perceptive Introduction will help readers to experience the play with heightened pleasure and understanding. —Seth L. Schein, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, Davis

From the Publisher