We turn now from the Trojan legend to that of Thebes. We are still in the realm of Tragedy; and in some respects the Theban story is more barbarous than that of Troy. But by some means the tension is slightly relieved, and the atmosphere is lightened by one degree. Perhaps that is because, in the dramas which treat of this subject, the poets seem to have gone back further into the remote past and to have steeped themselves in the spirit of those early times. Perhaps, too, it is on account of something wilder and more primitive inherent in the Theban story itself. Such elements, and such a treatment by the poets, would tend to remove the persons of the drama a step further from probability, and would make them to that extent greater or less than human. Thus their appeal to the emotions would not be so direct, nor so intimate. On the other hand, the figures so presented gain in sublimity. Their mythical origin surrounds them with a halo, through which they loom vast, mysterious, and inaccessible.

Such a being is Io. In the Prometheus Bound, the drama in which her story is given, Æschylus has gone back for his subject literally to the beginning of things; to the time when Zeus was young and the reign of Chaos was not long overpast. We must be prepared then for a tale which in its details is marvellous and incredible: for a naÏve account of the love of the supreme god for a mortal woman: of the anger of Hera, his jealous queen: of the metamorphosis and long wanderings of the innocent maid: and of her reward at last, when she becomes the ancestress of the founder of Thebes, and ancestress too, in a remote generation, of Heracles, the deliverer of Prometheus.

It is here that we touch Io’s connexion with the Theban legend, into which as a fact she does not otherwise enter. For her son Epaphus, wondrously born at the touch of the finger of Zeus, had two grandsons, Cadmus and Cilix; and a granddaughter, Europa. The well-known legend tells how Zeus, in the shape of a bull, carried off Europa. Whereupon her two brothers went in search of their sister and wandered many a long day. They did not recover her, however, and at length gave up the search. Cilix settled down in a country which was called Cilicia after him; and Cadmus, instructed by the oracle at Delphi, followed a straying cow into Boeotia. On the spot where the animal should happen to lie down he was commanded to found his city. But his task proved to be no light one. For there was a dragon to be overcome; and a weird army, sprung from the earth where the dragon’s teeth were sown, had to be vanquished in battle before Cadmus could begin his work of founding the city of Thebes.

This event, as we see, is only remotely connected with Io, although the connexion is precise and clear. In point of time, if chronology is the least use in such a case, it is several generations nearer to us than she is. Yet we have only to cast one glance at the story of Cadmus to see at once its youthful element of marvel. Its wonders are so crude as almost to raise a smile—the half amused, half tender smile with which we turn over in our hand some grotesque plaything of our childhood. It is indeed only the humorous aspect of these old stories which seizes us when we look back at them from a detached standpoint, and with minds bent to the critical attitude. But that was not the poet’s attitude; not, at least, when he was making poetry. Doubtless there must have been moments when the Comic Spirit rebelled, since even poets do not live alone by the emotions. But when tragedy first entered life’s deep waters its captains bound the mischievous laughing spirit securely under hatches. It could be of no service in such a stern battle with the elements.

So we find that the tragic poets (except perhaps Euripides occasionally) treat these strange old stories in what is called ‘the grand manner.’ Do not be disturbed by something stiff and formal in the expression. Like all definitions, it is smaller and harder than the thing it tries to define. For the poet has not the least intention of being ‘grand,’ and is as far as possible removed from any conscious ‘manner.’ On the contrary, it is true as a rule that the greater he is, the simpler his thought and expression are. He comes to these old themes with the eye and the heart of a child as well as the brain of a great genius; and the spirit of poetry, with all the knowledge of all the ages, utters its message through his lips in limpid song. Matters of probability and questions of logic, which seem so important to the mere intellect, bow their chastened heads before him. The whole scheme of values is changed, and that which appeared to the arrogant intellect as wild and ludicrous is perceived by the poet full of strange beauty and significance.

In this way Sophocles approached the Theban legend, as we shall see when we come to Jocasta and Antigone, presently. In this way, too, Æschylus gave us the story of Io in his Prometheus Bound. Just when Io is supposed to have lived we do not know. She is said to have been the daughter of Inachus; and she was a priestess of Hera in Argos. But Æchylus has made her coeval with the Titans. In this poem, therefore, she is a denizen of that early world which saw the overthrow of Cronos from the throne of heaven, and the rise of his son Zeus. All the Titans save one had opposed the new god when he rose in rebellion against the primeval powers. But Prometheus, far-seeing from the first, and knowing that Zeus must conquer, lent him aid. It was a long and bitter struggle in the youth of the world. But at last Cronos and the Titans who had opposed him were hurled by Zeus into Tartarus—“under the misty darkness... in a dank place, at the verge of the earth.” Typhon was buried under Etna; and Atlas, far in the West, was bowed beneath the pillar of the heavens, “where night and day meet and greet one another, as they pass the great threshold of bronze.”

All now seemed calm and fair for the establishment of the new Hierarchy. Too calm and fair; for Zeus, with all his enemies subdued and possessing absolute power, soon grew tyrannical. With leisure now from Olympian warfare, he looked down upon the earth and the feeble race of men. It seemed to him a contemptible thing, struggling weakly against pitiless forces and groping its way, by minute degrees that were imperceptible from his lofty height, toward a larger and a better state. It was a mean and futile and impotent race, he pondered. Surely it would be better to wipe it out of existence altogether, than let it continue to blot the face of the fair world.

So concluded the youthful ruler of Olympus, in his haughty strength. But Prometheus knew mankind better than Zeus. The hills and valleys of earth were his kin, dear and familiar to him; and he had come to love the imperfect human soul that had just managed to get itself born in those rude cave-men. He saw the violent act that the Lord of Olympus was planning in his mind; and resolved to save humanity. So, as the old poet Hesiod says in his Works and Days, “he stole fire for men from Zeus the Counsellor in a hollow fennel stalk, what time the Hurler of the Thunder knew not.” But the boon to man meant sheer disaster to himself, as he knew when he filched it from Olympus. The purpose of Zeus could not be thwarted with impunity. Prometheus was condemned to age-long punishment, chained to a rock on an icy mountain top until such time as a deliverer should come, and an immortal being could be found willing to give up life for him. The punishment of Prometheus is the subject of the present drama. It is believed to have been the middle play of a trilogy, of which the last was the Prometheus Unbound, and the first probably related the bringing of fire to earth. The Prometheus Bound is not dramatic in the sense that the Agamemnon and the Choephoroe are. There is hardly any action in it, for the suffering Titan continues chained to his rock throughout the poem. From the nature of the theme, too, the characters are too colossal and remote to make an intimate appeal to us. Yet the drama is charged with the deepest emotion, transcending the pity or fear of common experience. If it does not start into life before our eyes as an actual conflict, that is because it is rooted in a deeper and more crucial struggle between cosmic forces. And if the persons of the drama are unapproachable and unfamiliar, it is from the very reason of their sublimity. We see the protagonist first as he is being riveted to the rocky wall by the god HephÆstus. The Fire-god reluctantly performs the task, bidden to it roughly by Force, who is invested for the moment with the strength of Zeus, but without his dignity. HephÆstus is indignant at the sentence on his kinsman, the titan, and declares that he has no heart to chain him in this stormy mountain region, merely because of his beneficent help to man. But Force is inexorable: he urges on the work until every limb of the titan is secured, and an adamantine wedge is driven through his breast. When all is accomplished, Prometheus is left alone; and then for the first time he breaks silence. He invokes the elements that are his kindred: the sky, the winds, the rivers, the smiling sea, the sun, the great earth-mother.

While Prometheus is speaking, there gather softly round him the gentle sea-nymphs who are to be the chorus of the drama. They question him tenderly, in words that fall like balm, and elicit all his story. It is pitiable, they say, and they marvel at the penalty which Zeus imposes on so kind a creature.

Presently Oceanus himself, god of the dreadful river that circles the world, approaches in his chariot. He is old and grave and prudent. The action of Prometheus seems to him rash and daring: his opposition to Zeus mere pride. He advises the titan to yield, since it is expedient to bow to the superior power. But Prometheus fiercely rejects such timid counsel. Nothing shall shake his resistance to the tyrant, and Oceanus may spare his breath. Let him go save himself: as for Prometheus, he will endure until it shall please Zeus to relent.

Hot words pass. Oceanus tries in vain to teach prudence to the high heart of the titan, and departs angrily. Then the sea-nymphs sing a sweet song of pity; and Prometheus, touched to a softer mood, begs them not to think him hard and proud. Only, the thought of his wrongs is intolerable, received at the hand of one whom he himself had helped to place upon the throne of Olympus. And what had been his crime? None. His hands are clean: his integrity absolute. His sufferings are an amazing injustice: the price of beneficent deeds to humanity that he tells over to the wondering maids.

So he continues to narrate all that he had achieved for the welfare of man: how he had taught him Medicine, Prophecy and Augury; and had brought to light the treasure of precious metals that lay hidden within the earth. Indeed, as the long recital falls from his lips, we know that the poet has symbolized in him all the great civilizing influences on mankind.

But the sea-nymphs, though they sympathize with his sorrow, cannot rise to the height of his thought. To them mankind is a “fleeting, dream-like race,” unworthy of the sacrifice that he has made. They chide him gently. Why has he dared the wrath of Zeus, and why will he bear the weary ages of torture for such a people? The beauty of the lyric casts a spell upon us. The thought of the long-drawn agony, endured from century to century, makes us waver. Might he not have been misguided? Was Zeus right, perhaps? And would not the titan be wise to make peace with so powerful a ruler?

Thus the softer mood of the sea-maidens wins upon us. Viewed through it, the resistance of Prometheus begins to look like stubborn self-will; and the decree of Zeus a righteous chastisement. But just as the feeling is gathering strength an episode occurs which reverses the current of emotion. For there rushes suddenly on the desolate scene a strange wild creature, half woman and half beast. Under the curling heifer’s horns there is a fair white brow; and below the brow sweet human eyes, distraught with fear and pain. This is Io, the maid beloved by Zeus. Cast out of her home by the god’s command, she has been chased from the society of her kind, and her fair woman form has been partly changed to bestial shape. For many a weary league she has been goaded onward by the gadfly of Hera; and even now she is haunted by the wraith of Argus, the huntsman of the hundred eyes whom the angry goddess had set to watch her. Good and beautiful she had been, her serene life gladly given to the service of Hera in an Argive temple. Yet now she is doomed to wander restlessly over sea and land, through sun and storm, and by many an unknown lonely path, without apparent aim and for no apparent cause. As her feet stumble up the mountain side and she stands before Prometheus, innocent and mercilessly persecuted, we feel that the moment is crowded with all the elements of tragedy. If we had wavered before, standing on that ridge of neutral ground where the cool airs of reason calm the passions; if the poet meant that we should waver for a moment, giving us in his unifying purpose some perception of the higher power as it would ultimately justify itself; he plunges us now into the arena again, with every emotion clamant to defend these victims of tyranny.

As they confront each other, Io speaks, forgetting her own griefs for the moment in contemplation of the suffering titan.

Prometheus does indeed hear and know her, he says, the poor frenzied daughter of Inachus, whom Zeus loves. As he speaks her father’s name, Io catches at it eagerly. Perhaps this may be a friend.

In rapid interchange of question and answer, the cause of the quarrel, and its consequence, are related to Io; and then, because she knows that Prometheus can foresee the future, she begs him to tell her what is in store for herself. The titan warns her that the knowledge can only bring fresh pain; and for awhile the prophecy is delayed, as Io, at the petition of the nymphs, tells her own strange story.

Her father Inachus sent anxious messages to the oracles at Delphi and Dodona to inquire what this persistent vision might mean. At first ambiguous answers came.

With sorrowful heart, Inachus obeyed the oracular command, constrained thereto by Zeus. Io was driven out to the pastures of her father’s herds.

Io is asking more than she knows, and the prophecy that Prometheus will make to her is more wonderful than she could ever dream. In careful detail, and so impressively that she must remember every word, he indicates the first part of her wanderings. She must turn her face eastward, and faring through Scythia, pass along the sea-coast, avoiding the fierce Chalybes. Then on wearily to the range of the Caucasus, which she must ascend to the very summit; and following afterward a southward road, she will come to the land of the Amazons and down to the sea which separates the continents. Here she must boldly ford the strait, which in later times will be called Bosphorus because she, the cow-maiden, crossed it; and leaving Europe behind, she will tread on Asian soil.

But Prometheus, looking further still into the future, sees some hope for her, as he contrasts her fate with his. However great her affliction, it must end some day; he can even foretell just what the issue will be, and when. But for him, suffering must continue until Zeus is hurled from his throne.

She begs for a revelation of the fate of Zeus; and the titan tells briefly of a certain marriage that the god is contemplating, which must bring him ruin if Prometheus will not interpose.

Io’s mind cannot take so great a leap forward; and Prometheus, resuming the course of her wanderings in Asia, gradually leads up to the climax of her story. Having crossed the strait, she is again to bend her steps eastward. Through the land of the Gorgons she must go, and of the Griffins, and of Phorcy’s daughters, the three hags with one eye and one tooth between them. On the golden shores of Pluto she will see an army of one-eyed horsemen, whom she must carefully avoid; and toiling onward still, she must follow the course of the river Ethiopia far up to its very source. Then, at Canopus, a town upon the shores of distant Nile, she will find rest.

So is completed the tale of Io’s wanderings. And now, before Prometheus reveals the strangest thing of all, he would convince her that he is speaking truth indeed. So he recalls to her mind a marvel that had happened on her way thither, but which she had not spoken when she related her story.

The weird music of the oaks came back to her as the titan spoke, phrased intelligibly now. It had haunted all her journey, but confusedly, hinting at something she could not clearly understand, and dared not name. But in the words of Prometheus its meaning pealed. Becoming in that far Eastern country the bride of the ruler of Olympus, she would found a splendid race. From her the Danaans would spring, one root of that Hellenic people which should civilize the Western world. She would give a line of kings to the Argive throne. But greater and more blessed than all, from her should come the supreme Greek hero Heracles, destined to release this suffering titan from his misery.

As she muses on the wonder of it, Prometheus takes up again the thread of his prophecy. In that rich land which borders on the Nile she may at last stay her weary feet.

From Io’s son Epaphus should descend, generations afterward, a princess.

To immortal eyes, seeing the end in the beginning, it was a glorious destiny; one to compensate perhaps, if not to justify, all that she had endured. But Io is only a mortal maid. The vision of the future opens before her in one radiant moment, and then all is dark again, and nothing remains but her inexplicable pain. Even before Prometheus has finished speaking the cloud had fallen upon her mind again.

Tormented and distracted, she rushes from the scene as wildly as she had come; but as the titan and the sea-nymphs sadly watch her go, they see that her face is set now toward the East.