Book Description

Henry David Thoreau's translation of "Prometheus Bound" was published in 1843 in the "Dial," the most important magazine of the American transcendentalist movement. This edition makes it available to a wide audience in book form for the first time. This edition also includes descriptions and fragments of the other two plays of Aeschylus' Prometheus trilogy. "Prometheus Bound" has been one of the most influential of the classical Greek tragedies, inspiring poems by Goethe, Shelly, Byron and others. But it is often misunderstood, because it is read in isolation. Read by itself, "Prometheus Bound" seems to tell the story of Prometheus' heroic resistance to Zeus' tyranny. But when we read the entire trilogy, we can see that the relation between Zeus and Prometheus is far more complex. "Prometheus Bound" has always been considered one of the greatest Greek tragedies-and this book lets us see that the Prometheus trilogy as a whole is more powerful than this one play. This edition includes an introduction by the great classical scholar, Nikolaus Wecklein, which has long been out of print. It also includes commentary by Charles Siegel, which makes an important new contribution to scholarship about reconstructing the Prometheus trilogy.