ABSTRACT
The rocks which cannot be less than 1000 feet in perpendicular height sometimes overhang the road on each side & almost shut out the sky. The scene is like that described in the Prometheus of Aeschylus, Vast rifts & caverns in the granite precipices, wintry mountains with ice & snow above, the loud sounds of unseen waters within the caverns, & walls of topling rocks only to be scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of the Ocean Nymphs. The composition and publication history of Prometheus Unbound (PU) is exceptionally complex, and constitutes an editorial problem which defies any single completely satisfactory solution. PU draws in an obviously direct way on Aeschylus, in its dramatic conception, and in numerous verbal echoes, particularly in the first act, and to a lesser extent the second act. In Aeschylus Prometheus, whose name means 'forethinking' refuses to win his freedom by disclosing the secret of Zeus's future downfall.
