Search results
The drama of the play lies in the clash between the irresistible power of Zeus and the immovable will of Prometheus. who has been rendered still more stubborn by Io’s misfortunes at the hands of Zeus. The most striking and controversial aspect of the play is its depiction of Zeus as a tyrant.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
A brief dialogue reveals that Prometheus and Io are both victims of Zeus and that in the future Prometheus will eventually be freed by the descendants of Io. Prometheus asks Io to choose: Does she want to hear the rest of her own future, or the name of her descendant that will rescue him?
There is a suggestion that Prometheus's own fate will mirror Io's and that, after a lengthy procrastination, he will also be reconciled with Zeus. Io's wild thrashing as she is stung by the gadfly contrasts sharply with Prometheus's complete immobility.
If Io’s father did not “drive [Io] from [her] home” and turn her out to “wander at [her] will,” Zeus would “blot out” all of Io’s people with a fiery thunderbolt. Aeschylus’s language here reflects Io’s existence as a cow.
Io tells how Zeus became infatuated with her and forced her father to drive her out of his house. Io was turned into a cow and guarded by Argos, but he was killed and returned as a ghost along with a gadfly that drove her around the world.
Prometheus is then visited by Io, once a beautiful maiden pursued by the lustful Zeus, but now, thanks to the jealous Hera, transformed into a cow, pursued to the ends of the earth by a biting gadfly.
People also ask
What does Prometheus tell Io about Zeus?
How are Prometheus and IO bound together?
What does Prometheus say about Io's descendants?
What does Prometheus say to Io?
How does Io influence Prometheus's prophecy?
Did Prometheus say Zeus will fall?
Prometheus's point is that, while Hermes is free to move around, he is still a slave because he obeys Zeus completely. Unlike Oceanus and Hephaestus, Zeus's other servants in this play, Hermes can feel neither pity nor friendship because he acts and thinks only in agreement with Zeus's orders.
