Aeschylus brings in Io, not part of the original Prometheus story, as a positive female figure replacing Pandora. Turned into a cow and stung by a gadfly, she wanders the world, an innocent sufferer. But from her line will come Herakles or Hercules, who will release Prometheus.

An “act” in Greek tragedy consists of dialogue between the hero and another character, followed by an interchange with the Chorus and a Choral Ode. In the second “act,” Prometheus speaks to Oceanus, the ocean, who counsels repentance and humble obedience. Prometheus responds by a remarkable speech in which fire becomes the fire of the creative mind.

Greek tragedy was not realistic, but stylized, ritualized, with actors wearing masks and a Chorus that sang and danced. The opening scene: Prometheus bound to the rock by Hephaestus. Key thematic words are repeated. This is a play about “limits” of all kinds.

Hesiod, a partisan of Zeus, casts Prometheus, the antagonist of Zeus, in a negative light. Zeus’s revenge against humanity is Pandora, an artificially-constructed woman given to Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother. She opens a jar (“box” is a mistranslation), and all evils fly out. Theories that Pandora is a patriarchal distortion of an original Goddess myth.

The myth of Prometheus has been recreated over time by different authors for radically different purposes. The earliest account is in Hesiod’s Theogony. Hesiod champions Zeus as a figure of law and order, and disapproves of Prometheus the Trickster

A thank you to my listeners, all over the world, on our 200th episode. The thematic spectrum of Donne’s love poetry, continued. Moods of skepticism (“Go and catch a falling star”), hatred (“The Apparition”) and requited sexual and romantic love (“The Good Morrow,” “The Sun Rising,” “The Canonization”).

Donne’s are arguably the greatest love poems in English after Shakespeare’s sonnets. Donne as a Metaphysical poet. Donne’s fascinating and troubled life. A spectrum of types of love, beginning with the satiric and overtly erotic: “Elegy 19” and “The Flea.”

Shakespeare’s enigmatic and fascinating poem about the love-death union of two lovers symbolized as the phoenix and the turtledove. The symbolism of two who are paradoxically one in love, in religion, and in poetic metaphor, which says “A is B.”

The ironic themes in the beautiful youth sequence include old age and death and the possibility of infidelity. The Dark Lady sequence begins with mildly tender irony and moves to fierce condemnation of both the Lady and love itself.

Ideal resolutions in the beautiful youth sequence include (1) urging the youth to marry and perpetuate his beauty through offspring; (2) finding their own Platonic love satisfying; (3) making the youth immortal through the poet’s art. Famous examples of each.