I had completely forgotten I’d read Prometheus Bound until I went to reread it. After all, there isn’t much drama in this play. Nothing in particular happens. But it is an incredible source for Greek mythology. I look forward to your thoughts on this play.
Discussion Prompts
- Who is your favorite character? Why?
- If you were directing this play, how would you handle the fact that the title character is stationary for the majority of his time on stage?
- What are your thoughts on the way Zeus is described in this play? How does it align (or not) with what you know about Greek mythology?
- In the episode, I mentioned the themes of women and the gods. What are your thoughts on these themes?
- What else stood out to you in this play? What other themes did you notice?
Triumvir Clio's School of Classical Civilization 
I found this podcast while doing some research on Prometheus. I really enjoyed that episode and thought I would share a thought that I had on this story. Zeus was afraid that humans would obtain equal standing with the gods. Since we no longer use a pantheon of Gods to describe reality, this has become true. The gods like Zeus and titans like Prometheus would require our belief in them so that they could exist in some sense. Bringing fire to humans was then clearly bad for the gods but the question that this play proposes is, was it also bad for humanity?
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The perils of technology! What do we gain? But at the same time what do we lose? I don’t know that I’d really looked at it from that perspective before, but it definitely is another of those themes that can be seen across the millennia. The technology of the myth may change, but the question remains.
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