Prometheus Bound

A stand-alone edition of Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound taken from Chicago’s renowned translations of the Greek tragedies.

In the wake of the Olympian gods’ clash with the Titans, Zeus punishes his former ally and fellow deity, Prometheus, for having dared to bring knowledge to humankind. In this sole surviving play of Aeschylus’s Prometheus trilogy, we find Prometheus chained in a desolate landscape, suffering great cruelty at the hands of his fellow gods. 

Drawn from the authoritative third edition of the University of Chicago Press’s Complete Greek Tragedies series, David Grene’s searing translation of Prometheus Bound is presented here in a stand-alone edition. An introduction by Glenn W. Most and Mark Griffith provides essential information about the play’s first production, plot, and reception in antiquity.

Aeschylus (c. 525/524–456/455 BCE) was an ancient Greek tragedian who authored an estimated seventy to ninety plays, of which seven survive in their entirety. David Grene (1913–2002) taught classics for many years at the University of Chicago. He was a founding member of the Committee on Social Thought. Glenn W. Most is a visiting member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and an external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Mark Griffith is the Klio Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages and Literature and professor of classics and of theater, dance, and performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley.