The Full Text of “Prometheus”
1Titan! to whose immortal eyes
2 The sufferings of mortality,
3 Seen in their sad reality,
4Were not as things that gods despise;
5What was thy pity's recompense?
6A silent suffering, and intense;
7The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
8All that the proud can feel of pain,
9The agony they do not show,
10The suffocating sense of woe,
11 Which speaks but in its loneliness,
12And then is jealous lest the sky
13Should have a listener, nor will sigh
14 Until its voice is echoless.
15Titan! to thee the strife was given
16 Between the suffering and the will,
17 Which torture where they cannot kill;
18And the inexorable Heaven,
19And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
20The ruling principle of Hate,
21Which for its pleasure doth create
22The things it may annihilate,
23Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
24The wretched gift Eternity
25Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
26All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
27Was but the menace which flung back
28On him the torments of thy rack;
29The fate thou didst so well foresee,
30But would not to appease him tell;
31And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
32And in his Soul a vain repentance,
33And evil dread so ill dissembled,
34That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
35Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
36 To render with thy precepts less
37 The sum of human wretchedness,
38And strengthen Man with his own mind;
39But baffled as thou wert from high,
40Still in thy patient energy,
41In the endurance, and repulse
42 Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
43Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
44 A mighty lesson we inherit:
45Thou art a symbol and a sign
46 To Mortals of their fate and force;
47Like thee, Man is in part divine,
48 A troubled stream from a pure source;
49And Man in portions can foresee
50His own funereal destiny;
51His wretchedness, and his resistance,
52And his sad unallied existence:
53To which his Spirit may oppose
54Itself—and equal to all woes,
55 And a firm will, and a deep sense,
56Which even in torture can descry
57 Its own concenter'd recompense,
58Triumphant where it dares defy,
59And making Death a Victory.
-
“Prometheus” Introduction
-
"Prometheus" is a poem by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, first published in 1816. The poem is a celebration of Prometheus, a figure from Greek mythology known for stealing fire from the gods to help humanity. It makes a claim for the power of resisting tyranny, and for the value of individual sacrifice. Byron himself was a politician-turned-revolutionary who fought in the Greek War for Independence, and the character of Prometheus is typical of Byron's work: the solitary, suffering, defiant hero is meant to empower readers, reminding them that revolutions begin with individuals who dare to imagine the future differently.
-
-
“Prometheus” Summary
-
Titan! With your undying eyes you saw the misery of human beings, a sad reality which would not typically bother the gods. And how were you repaid for taking pity on mortals? You were subject to a silent, harsh suffering: you were chained to a rock, with a vulture coming every day to eat your liver. You experienced what any proud person would feel of pain: an agony they keep to themselves, a sorrow so intense it makes it difficult to breathe. Such sorrow cannot help but cry out in loneliness, but is careful in case someone is paying attention: it does not make a sound until it knows it will not be overheard.
Titan! You were caught between your pain and your determination, a struggle so terrible it is itself a form of torture. And Zeus—relentless, tyrannical, hateful Zeus, who takes pleasure in creating things just to be able to kill them—did not even grant your request to die. Your awful gift was to live forever—and you have handled it well. All that Zeus got out of you was the very anguish he inflicted on you. You saw the future but refused to tell him what you saw. Your silence would lead to his downfall. Secretly he wished he had never punished you because of the dread you inspired in him, a dread so poorly hidden that his lightning bolts trembled in his hands.
Your Godlike crime was to act with kindness, to, by your example, improve humanity's circumstance, giving them the tools of knowledge and enlightenment that they need to improve themselves. And as bewildered as you were looking down on humankind, it is through the example of your patience, endurance, and the rebellion of your unshakeable spirit that we human beings learn an incredible lesson. You represent, to humans, their destiny as well as their power to change it. Like you, humanity is part godlike, an imperfect stream from a perfect source. And while humans are capable of foreseeing their own miserable fates, they are also capable of resistance. Though it is painful, with firmness of purpose and the power of the human mind, the spirit is capable of catching sight of the very thing for which it suffers. Through the act of resistance the spirit triumphs, turning even death into victory.
-
-
“Prometheus” Themes
-
Tyranny, Rebellion, and Empowerment
The poem honors the rebellious spirit of Prometheus—who, according to Greek mythology, stole fire from the gods and gave it to human beings. Zeus, the most powerful of the Olympian gods, punished Prometheus for this act of defiance by sentencing him to an eternity of being chained to a rock, with a vulture coming every day to eat his liver. The poem casts Zeus as an oppressive tyrant who ruled through fear and enforced ignorance, and uses the mythological figure of Prometheus to celebrate the power of rising up against such tyranny.
The fact that, before stealing fire, Prometheus witnessed "the sufferings of mortality" under the tyrannical rule of the gods reveals that Zeus's reign was hardly a happy one for human beings. Indeed, Zeus is referred to as "inexorable Heaven," "the deaf tyranny of Fate," and "the ruling principle of Hate"—all of which imply his terrifying grip on humanity. He even created things just to enjoy watching them die—something the poem casts as a disturbing display of tyrannical power.
Prometheus is thus a friend to humanity and a traitor to the gods because he helps mortals cast off their oppression. His "crime" was to "strengthen Man with his own mind"—a line that makes sense when considering that fire is usually taken to be a symbol for knowledge and enlightenment. Prometheus's actions thus freed humanity from its ignorance and total subservience to the gods.
Towards the end of the second stanza, the speaker describes a shift in the power dynamic between Zeus and Prometheus. In Prometheus's "Silence" was Zeus's "Sentence"; though Zeus had the power to punish Prometheus, Prometheus's sense of conviction undermined Zeus's power. Zeus felt so threatened by Prometheus's silence that he began to feel "a vain repentance" and "an evil dread" that caused his lightning bolt—the fearsome weapon he used to rule gods and mortals—to tremble in his hand. In other words, Zeus feared the power represented by Prometheus's rebellion so much that his belief in his own power began to weaken. The poem thus implies that rebellion itself is a form of power; that in the very act of standing up to tyranny and oppression one may crack the foundation of the oppressor.
Finally, in the third stanza, the poem becomes explicit about using the figure of Prometheus as "a symbol and a sign." Though the poem is addressed to Prometheus, it is really meant for the reader, who is supposed to take from the poem a sense of empowerment. Like Prometheus, the speaker claims, human beings are capable of patience, endurance, and of possessing an "impenetrable Spirit." These qualities mean that people do not need to suffer under the rule of tyrannical leaders; they have at their disposal all the necessary tools to fight for their own liberation.
The poem concludes not with an image of Prometheus, but with the human spirit catching sight of the reward for its suffering, "triumphant where it dares defy." Like Prometheus, the poem asserts, human beings are well-equipped to rebel against the "funereal destiny" imposed on them by their oppressors. The poem then ends with the word "Victory," leaving the reader with a sense of empowerment.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
Sacrifice and Suffering
Prometheus's struggle "between the suffering and the will" speaks to the inner battle everyone must face between choosing what is easy and what is right. As a Titan (that is, one of the gods from Greek mythology who ruled the world before the rise of the Olympians), Prometheus was not personally affected by the gods' oppression of human beings; had he not chosen to act on their behalf, his life likely would have gone on much the same as before, and he would not have been subject to the wrath of Zeus. Choosing to fight for the freedom of mortals could not have been an easy choice for him, yet ultimately his will triumphed over his fear; he acted on his principles in full understanding of the price he would pay. The poem praises Prometheus's bravery and promotes the value of individual sacrifice in the fight for collective freedom.
The poem begins with the speaker acknowledging first "the sufferings of mortality" and then "the rock, the vulture, and the chain" that Prometheus faced as his punishment for standing up for mortals. By juxtaposing these two kinds of suffering—collective (that is, all of humanity's suffering) and individual (Prometheus's)—the poem immediately outlines the choice Prometheus faced: to allow humanity to continue to suffer, or to sacrifice himself in order to help them.
Prometheus acted on principle; he could not sit idly by and watch human beings suffer under "the ruling principle of Hate" when his values compelled him to "render less ... The sum of human wretchedness." He knew it was within his power to make a difference in the lives of human beings; to not act on their behalf would have been a betrayal of everything in which he believed.
Prometheus also fully understood what the consequences of giving fire to mortals would be; he did not act from a place of naivety, but from a place of forethought. "The fate [he] didst so well foresee" was a future where he was chained to a rock, but mortals were free to "strengthen [themselves] with [their] own mind." He chose to sacrifice himself for the collective good.
And like anyone faced with such a difficult choice, Prometheus struggled between what would have been easy and what was right. The speaker describes Prometheus as "baffled" by the choice before him, looking into a future comprised of "wretchedness," "resistance," and a "sad, unallied existence." He knew that if he chose to help mortals, his own fate would be rendered miserable. And yet, despite his misgivings, Prometheus did indeed choose to help mortals.
Zeus punished Prometheus for his defiance, just as Prometheus knew he would. And though Prometheus suffered, he did not crack under his punishment. He was fortified by "patience," "endurance, "a firm will," and "a deep sense." He was proud of the sacrifice he made; he continued to believe in the value of standing against Zeus's tyrannical rule, and his silence in the face of torture suggests his continued belief in the righteousness of his cause.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Prometheus”
-
Lines 1-4
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;The poem opens with the use of apostrophe. By having the speaker address Prometheus directly, Byron is able to immediately create a sense of closeness between the speaker and Prometheus; though Prometheus is not present, the speaker (and reader) feels an affinity with him.
The apostrophe also emphasizes that Prometheus is not a human being. Instead, he is one of the Titans—in Greek mythology, a race of gods who ruled before the Olympians (Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, etc.) took over. The reader is thus introduced to a significant aspect of Prometheus's character within the first four lines. If Prometheus is a god, and gods do not despise human suffering, then why is Prometheus moved to help humans? Prometheus is at odds with his own kind. There is a dissonance between who he is expected to be and who he actually is.
Thematically, this dissonance upsets the status quo—the status quo being like an equation where on one side there is human suffering, and on the other the gods looking on, unbothered. By caring about the suffering of humans, Prometheus has upset this equation, unbalancing the very reality of the world. Things that were taken for granted as true before may no longer be treated as such.
It's subtle, but the first four lines both establish and undermine the rules of the poem. For example, simply by addressing Prometheus, the speaker has disrupted the norm of the poem's meter: the trochee created by the word "Titan" at the beginning of the poem is in contrast to the iambic tetrameter seen throughout the rest of these four lines (recall that an iamb is a poetic foot with a da DUM rhythm, and tetrameter means there are four of those feet per line).
This happens at the very beginning of the poem, which thrusts the reader into a narrative where Prometheus's rebellion has already occurred. Indeed, the story of Prometheus is being told in past tense; the gods' tyrannical reign has already been disrupted. The speaker is recalling it now because it bears significance to what the poem hopes to convey. The reader is made (perhaps subconsciously) aware that the speaker addresses Prometheus as a stand-in for any individual who rebels against oppressive norms.
Within the first four lines, the poem also establishes an obvious rhythm. The clear, full end rhymes form a rhyme pattern of ABBA (known as an enclosed rhyme). There is a mirror-like quality to this initial rhyme pattern, the reflection of AB being BA. This is notable as the lines seem to mirror each other thematically: the first line addresses Prometheus's "immortal eyes," the second what he is seeing (human suffering); the third line again addresses what he is seeing (the sad reality of humanity), and the fourth again addresses who is seeing this scene, though this time more generally.
This is important as the poem is essentially using Prometheus as a mirror for the "godlike" aspects of the speaker. In summoning the spirit of Prometheus, the speaker hopes to speak to his own heroic potential, and to that of the reader as well.
-
Lines 5-10
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Unlock all 342 words of this analysis of Lines 5-10 of “Prometheus,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Lines 11-14
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless. -
Lines 15-17
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill; -
Lines 18-23
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die: -
Lines 23-28
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack; -
Lines 29-34
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled. -
Lines 35-38
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind; -
Lines 39-44
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit: -
Lines 45-48
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source; -
Lines 49-54
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself— -
Lines 54-59
—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.
-
-
“Prometheus” Symbols
-
The Vulture
According to different tellings of the Prometheus myth, Prometheus is visited each day by either a vulture or an eagle (there is some ambiguity depending on source text, translation, etc.) which eats Prometheus's liver. In Greek mythology the eagle was commonly used as a symbol for Zeus, and due to this context the vulture in the poem is more or less representative of Zeus as well.
However it is worth considering why Byron chose to invoke the vulture rather than the eagle; vultures are famously scavengers and, it follows, commonly symbolize death, decay, and unscrupulous greed. As such, they do not carry the same symbolic weight as an eagle, which has associations of majesty and strength.
On the one hand, the vulture, because of the context of the myth, still represents Zeus; but it indicates the poem's attitude toward Zeus and the oppressive rulership Zeus represents. Byron's Zeus does not inspire veneration or loyalty or fear, as an eagle might; there is nothing majestic about his form of power.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
Prometheus
By the end of the poem, Prometheus himself has been turned into a symbol of rebellion, resistance against tyranny, and sacrifice. He is not just a heroic character but a symbol of heroism itself—as well as of the heroic capacities that exist in everyone. Byron wanted his readers to understand that they did not have to wait for a hero to come along and represent them, that each and every person is capable of heroic action by recognizing "the divine" in themselves—and then using it to fight against "human wretchedness."
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
-
“Prometheus” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Apostrophe
The poem's use of apostrophe makes it feel more urgent and immediate. Through this apostrophe, which begins each stanza, Byron brings the myth of Prometheus into the present, making a centuries-old mythological hero relevant to the socio-political concerns of Byron's own time. Even now, two centuries after Byron wrote it, the poem retains its relevancy. And part of what makes the poem feel so urgent is that Byron's speaker is addressing not just Prometheus, but the characteristics symbolized by Prometheus—characteristics the speaker reveres and wishes to see embraced and enacted by other human beings.
The use of apostrophe also has the effect of summoning the divine aspects of the speaker as well as of the reader. When the speaker exclaims "Titan!" at the beginning of a stanza, it is easy to imagine that he is calling upon his own, inner Prometheus—a part of himself which is powerful and enlightened and will not stand for injustice. This is a reminder of the poem's core argument, which is that anyone is capable of standing up to tyranny and, in so doing, emulating Prometheus's "impenetrable Spirit."
The use of apostrophe throughout the poem also allows the poem to be written in the second person; rather than a poem about Prometheus, it is a poem to Prometheus that eventually reads as a poem to the reader. The reader gets drawn in more intimately than they might otherwise be; their own identity becomes conflated with Prometheus's. This is a useful tool in a poem that is meant to stir the emotions and imagination of its reader into action.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
End-Stopped Line
Unlock all 232 words of this analysis of End-Stopped Line in “Prometheus,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
Plus so much more...
Get LitCharts A+ -
Enjambment
-
Aporia
-
Allusion
-
Alliteration
-
Sibilance
-
Parallelism
-
Caesura
-
-
“Prometheus” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Prometheus
- Titan
- Recompense
- The rock, the vulture, and the chain
- Lest
- inexorable
- Boon
- The Thunderer
- Rack
- Dissembled
- Precepts
- Funereal
- Sense
- Descry
- Concenter'd
Prometheus-
Prometheus is a character from Greek mythology known for stealing fire from the gods to give to humanity, a tool which allowed mortals to resist the tyranny of the gods. His name is usually thought to have Greek origins, and possibly means "forethought," though it has also been suggested it comes from the Vedic (and early form of Sanskrit) pra math: "to steal."
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Prometheus”
-
Form
"Prometheus" consists of three stanzas of varying lengths, adding up to a total of 59 lines. None of the stanzas follow a specific form—such as that seen in the sonnet, for example—but the way the poem is structured is evocative nevertheless.
Each of these three stanzas helps to develop the poem's attitude toward the myth of Prometheus. The first stanza relates the myth the most straightforwardly. It moves forward in a linear way, beginning with Prometheus witnessing humanity's suffering and going on to describe his own suffering. This stanza also employs the poem's most consistent use of meter and rhyme.
In the second stanza, Prometheus, though he is being tortured, continues to stand against the tyranny of Zeus. By not giving in to his pain and suffering, he begins to shift the power dynamic between Zeus and himself. The shift in the poem's rhyme scheme reflects this change, and the longer length of the stanza (20 lines as opposed to 14) seems to make room for the gathering force represented by Prometheus, as well as the poem's shifting gears into not just relating Prometheus's struggle, but interpreting it and assigning it human value.
The third stanza is the longest, as well as the most complicated and unpredictable. Rhyme is present, but the rules seem to be constantly shifting (more on this in the Rhyme Scheme section of this guide). This seems indicative of where the poem has arrived in the third stanza: a place of struggle and of resistance.
-
Meter
The poem is mostly written in iambic tetrameter, which means generally there are four iambs per line. An iamb is a poetic foot comprised of one unstressed and then one stressed syllable. For example, take line 5:
What was | thy pi- | ty's re- | compense?
Occasionally these lines contain an extra syllable, where one foot is inconsistent with the others in the line. These lines are, for all intents and purposes, often simply maintaining the overall meter of the poem. Line 43 is a perfect example:
Which Earth | and Hea- | ven could not | Convulse
Here the line contains one extra unstressed syllable, technically making its third foot an anapest. This is a minor blip, the kind of which would be expected in a poem of this length. Because the meter is still mostly intact, readers can just call it an imperfect iambic tetrameter.
In other instances, however, breaks in the meter are more deliberate. Take the first lines of the first and second stanzas, when the speaker addresses Prometheus as "Titan." The unstressed-stressed pattern of the iamb is absent and instead readers see the stressed-unstressed pattern of the trochee. Here's line 1:
Titan! | to whose | immort- | al eyes
The trochee is significant as it further emphasizes Prometheus's rebellious nature: just by addressing him, the speaker of the poem is disrupting the current order of things (that is, the poem's iambic meter). This disruption is all the more conspicuous because of the exclamation point that follows both instances of "Titan" (an instance of caesura). The exclamation point forces the reader to place full emphasis on the word and then pause, giving the word and—as the word acts as a kind of invocation of Prometheus—Prometheus himself more power.
Notably, there are a couple of places in the poem where the meter breaks down altogether, or is replaced by a different kind of meter. For instance, there is no discernible meter in line 18, and line 26 employs a dactylic meter (a dactyl follows a stressed-unstressed-unstressed pattern):
All that the | Thunderer | wrung from thee
Thematically, this abrupt change in meter signals a shift in the power dynamic between Prometheus and Zeus. It coincides with the reader's dawning realization of Zeus's faltering confidence.
-
Rhyme Scheme
"Prometheus" does not have a consistent, overarching rhyme scheme. However, it does employ multiple, changing rhyme schemes whose rules are constantly shifting and which are occasionally interrupted altogether.
The first stanza begins and ends with an enclosed rhyme (i.e., ABBA), with three couplets in between:
ABBACCDDEEFGGF
The progression of enclosed rhyme to couplets back to enclosed rhyme feels intentional. It could be said to reflect Prometheus's own trajectory from god witnessing the suffering of humans to god trying to intervene on behalf of humans to god suffering alongside humans.
The second stanza is more complicated. It begins with the same structure as the first stanza; after the first six lines, however, the rhyme scheme begins to change:
ABBACCCC
As is clear from the above, instead of introducing a new rhyming couplet after lines 19-20, the poem continues the same rhyme sound for two more lines ("Fate," "Hate," "create," "annihilate"), creating a monorhyme. The monorhyme emphasizes the stifling cycle of hate perpetuated by Zeus. By the time Zeus denies Prometheus's request to die, the break in the monorhyme (in line 23) creates a sense of relief that goes along with the notion that Prometheus is bearing "the wretched gift Eternity ... well." In terms of rhyme, lines 23-26 are the most irregular in the stanza:
DEFE
Rather than an enclosed rhyme or a couplet, there are two alternating lines that don't rhyme ("die"/"well"), and two that do ("Eternity"/"thee"). This sudden irregularity feels welcome after the oppressive monorhyme, and coincides with a shift in the power dynamic between Prometheus and Zeus.
Notable here, too, is a kind of rhyme the poem has not used up until now: a cross rhyme. While "die" appears at first to not rhyme with anything, it becomes apparent upon reading that it is meant to resonate via assonance with "thine," which arrives early in line 25, right before the em dash caesura:
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.The em dash helps emphasize the rhyme by creating a pause in the natural rhythm of the line. It also emphasizes the juxtaposition between "the wretched gift Eternity" and the way in which Prometheus has handled his punishment, which is with pride and fixity of purpose.
From this point on the poem continues to undergo shifts between various rhyme schemes. These shifts reflect the struggle of the poem, which is an external struggle against tyranny and oppression, as well as an internal struggle against the urge to give up in the face of suffering. These struggles manifest in the poem in various ways, rhyme being perhaps the most visceral.
The other notable rhyme scheme that happens occurs late in the poem, in lines 41-48, and looks like this:
DEDEFGFG
This is called an alternating rhyme scheme. It is important as it shows up late into the poem and in conjunction with the speaker's more explicit treatment of Prometheus as a symbol (of the rebellion against tyranny) as opposed to character in the poem. The alternating rhymes mirror the back-and-forth between Prometheus and what Prometheus represents.
-
-
“Prometheus” Speaker
-
It is safe to say that the speaker of Prometheus overlaps a great deal with Byron himself; Byron is known to have read and been profoundly influenced by Prometheus Bound, the Greek Tragedy penned by Aeschylus, when he was quite young. Byron himself wrote of the tragedy's lasting influence on his life and work, and it's not difficult to find parallels between the story of Prometheus and some aspects of Byron's life—his passion for social reform apparent in both his poetry and his political career, and particularly his choice to fight in the Greek War of Independence, which ultimately led to his death.
Regardless of proximity to Byron, it is clear the speaker is someone who greatly admires Prometheus and the values he represents: kindness, patience, endurance, defiance, and an "impenetrable spirit." Prometheus's choice to defy tyranny in favor of alleviating human suffering is a shining example to all humankind of the power at their disposal: the ability to fight for a more equitable world.
The speaker not only admires Prometheus, but identifies with him as well. They are addressing their own struggle, and the struggle of humans generally, "between the suffering and the will"—that is, between doing what is right and doing what is easy. The repetition of the declarative "Titan!" in the first two stanzas is not just a form of address; it is an attempt to summon the very best parts of the speaker's self, as well as the reader's. In other words, it is as if the speaker is not just calling out to Prometheus, but to his own internal spirit of rebellion.
-
-
“Prometheus” Setting
-
"Prometheus" makes use of the mythological setting which contextualizes it: Prometheus was a Titan, one of the Greek gods who ruled the world before the rise of Zeus and his fellow Olympians. By the time Prometheus was driven to steal fire on account of mortals, the Olympians were in power. Prometheus stole fire from Mt. Olympus, home of the Olympians, and gave it to human beings.
Though early tellings of the myth name the Caucuses as the geographic location for the rock to which Prometheus was chained, the poem opts for only a vague gesture toward this physical setting. This may partly be due to the popularity of the myth; Byron trusted his readers to know the reference. But it also underlines the poem's interest in Prometheus's situation; the specifics of his punishment are not nearly as important as the specifics of his character.
Towards the end of the poem, as the speaker draws connections between the myth of Prometheus and what it may symbolize to the reader, the setting becomes less and less important: the value of Prometheus's story is not bound to a particular time or place, and the lesson the reader may take from it is just as valid today as it would have been in 1816, when the poem was first published, or in antiquity, when the myth of Prometheus first came into being. The incorporeal setting lends itself to the timelessness of the poem's message, and its call for a strong spirit to triumph over the tortured body.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Prometheus”
Literary Context
One of the most famous of the English Romantic poets, one cannot overstate how influential Lord Byron was in his own time, and he remains widely read to this day. Literature and film have Byron to thank for the archetype of the "Byronic hero," named after Byron as a tribute to perceptions of his own character as well as the characters he brought to life in his poems. One of the most famous of these characters, Harolde from his epic poem Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage, was described by British historian and essayist Lord Macaulay as "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection." Such is the Byronic hero, a character Byron himself was inspired to emulate after having read Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound early in his life. The character of Prometheus deeply influenced his life's work not only as a poet, but also as a politician and later a revolutionary in the Greek War of Independence.
Byron wasn't alone in his fascination with Prometheus; the Greek god played a huge role in the Romantic imagination, as evidenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, a retelling of Aeschylus's tragedy, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, subtitled The Modern Prometheus.
Prometheus was a perfect symbol for the Romantic writer. According to Romantic Literature author John Gilroy, "In the revolutionary climate of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Romantic artist is often seen as a Promethean figure who, resisting the oppressive forms of society and fired by imagination, foresees a future in which all such repression will be overthrown." The Romantic artist—Byron being no exception—believed in social responsibility and revolution. "Prometheus" was not just born from this tradition, but actively speaks to it.
The Prisoner of Chillon, the collection of poems in which "Prometheus" was published in 1816, was likely written between June and July of 1816, when Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley travelled through Switzerland together. The work's title is also the name of the longest poem in the collection which, like "Prometheus," details the narrative of a strong, solitary figure in suffering.
Historical Context
Byron lived during a time of great political upheaval and social reconfiguration. The French Revolution began just a year after his birth, a long and violent struggle that aimed to overthrow the French monarchy and its feudal system, ushering in a rapidly changing world. The ideals driving the revolution were central to the rise of Romanticism.
Romanticism was a response to Enlightenment-era art, which emphasized rationalism and upheld traditional artistic forms and styles. Romantic artists believed instead in the value of expressing emotion authentically and spontaneously. The individual imagination was of utmost value. Nature and natural settings took precedence over the growing industrialization of the world. In the spirit of revolution, Romantic art sought to end oppression and injustice. It elevated the individual and celebrated the heroic acts of the individual as a means to improve society as a whole.
-
More “Prometheus” Resources
-
External Resources
-
Prometheus Bound — The full text of the Greek tragedy which inspired Byron to write "Prometheus."
-
The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems — A digitized copy of the first edition of The Prisoner of Chillon and Other Poems, the volume in which "Prometheus" was first published.
-
Romanticism — An overview of the Romantic movement.
-
The Poem Out Loud — Hear the poem read by Jordan Harling.
-
Selected Letters — A selection of Byron's correspondence.
-
Byron's Life and Poems — Biographical resources from the Poetry Foundation.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Lord Byron
-
