Prometheus

Byron’s goal in “Prometheus” is to relate the ancient Greek titan to the modern human. He wishes to express the idea that suffering and sacrifice can represent victory over death and the oppressors who wish to hold us down. While the Romantics (and other artists) looked to the Prometheus myth for different reasons, including its connection to innovative and scientific thought and its notion of individuality, Byron is chiefly concerned with Prometheus’s rebellion, suffering, and response to suffering.

The speaker illustrates this early in the poem when he introduces the concept of suffering not in Promethean terms, but in human terms. What initially brings about Prometheus’s suffering is his compassion for “[t]he sufferings of mortality” (Line 2). For the titan’s empathy, Byron asks, “What was thy pity’s recompense?” (Line 5). This question is answered right away: “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” (Lines 6-10). In essence, Prometheus receives suffering as punishment for his empathy for human suffering.

This moment in the poem introduces an important aspect that the speaker focuses on, which is Prometheus’s response to suffering. As the speaker illustrates later in the poem, Zeus takes pleasure in watching things he created suffer: “Which for its pleasure doth create / The things it may annihilate” (Lines 21-22, emphasis added). This demonstrates that when humans suffered before Prometheus stole fire for them, Zeus enjoyed the suffering, but when Prometheus ended the suffering, Zeus attempted to replicate the pleasure he felt before by enacting the same kind of suffering on Prometheus. However, regardless of the suffering Prometheus endured, in Byron’s poem, he refuses to let Zeus take pleasure in it. The speaker expresses this at the end of the first stanza when after describing Prometheus’s punishment, he says the titan’s pain “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 11-14). The speaker compliments the titan’s silence, saying of his torture, “thou has borne it well” (Line 25).

The power of Prometheus lies here: in his silence in the face of Zeus’s torture. Prometheus denies Zeus the pleasure of his pain, thus taking away Zeus’s power over him. Additionally, Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” denies Zeus his power of foresight. Prometheus can foresee Zeus’s eventual downfall, and he withholds that knowledge in defiance of his tormentor: “The fate thou didst so well foresee / But would not to appease him tell; / And in thy Silence was his Sentence” (Lines 29-31). The speaker claims that this is the way, Prometheus has actually gained power in this relationship: “All that the Thunderer wrung from thee / Was but the menace which flung back / On him the torments of thy rack” (Lines 26-28). Not only does Prometheus deny Zeus the pleasure of his suffering, but he also denies Zeus the knowledge that the god desperately needs, making him suffer as well. This creates irony in the situation, as the one god that Zeus needs is the one god he has wronged the most.

In perhaps the most striking image of the poem, the speaker visualizes the shift in power by showing how the realization of his mistake creates fear in Zeus: “And in his Soul a vain repentance / And evil dread so ill dissembled / That in his hand the lightnings trembled” (Lines 32-34). Note here how Byron builds tension with the repetition of structure at the beginning of each line: “And in his Soul … And evil dread … That in his hand …” The end of the second stanza here is the climax of the imagery between Zeus and Prometheus. The speaker clearly demonstrates the way that the oppressed has turned his suffering on the oppressor, as the symbol of Zeus's power—the lightning bolt—"tremble[s]" with anger and uncertainty. Now the roles are fully reversed: Not only does the speaker glorify Prometheus for defying Zeus through action, but he also glorifies Prometheus for defying Zeus through language—or lack thereof.

The final stanza fleshes out the connection between Prometheus’s actions and what Byron wishes for readers to take away from the myth. Byron has used the first half of the poem to visualize Prometheus’s revolutionary, defiant spirit. He has shown Prometheus’s wit and creativity, and he has used imagery to show how strength and power come from these things instead of from totalitarian authority like Zeus wields. These were central tenants of Byron and the Romantics’ philosophy (See: Background), and Byron brings this all together in the second half of the poem.

In this final stanza, the speaker begins by recounting Prometheus’s crime (“Thy Godlike crime was to be kind” [Line 35]) and previewing what he will ultimately argue for at the end of the poem (“And strengthen Man with his own mind” [Line 38]). The speaker then makes clear his intent with the poem: “Still in thy patient energy / In the endurance, and repulse / [ . . .] A mighty lesson we inherit” (Lines 40-41, 44). Here, the speaker further builds the majesty of Prometheus as a symbol, yet this building is accompanied by a link between Prometheus and man. The speaker is humanizing the titan to draw him closer to humanity, and as if to reinforce this, he builds the connection even further in the next lines: “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; / And Man in portions can foresee / His own funereal destiny” (Lines 45-50). Here, the speaker, who has already romanticized Prometheus, now romanticizes mankind, arguing that man is "in part divine" and has inherited some of Prometheus’s foresight. We are keenly aware of our own mortality, and this knowledge makes us like the great titan who could even foresee the downfall of Zeus.

The speaker then asserts that, like Prometheus, humans can respond to their destined fates with silent strength and resistance. The speaker declares that man’s “Spirit may oppose / Itself” (Lines 53-54). He argues that “a firm will, and a deep sense” (Line 55) can be enough to make mankind “Triumphant where it dares defy” (Line 58), and ultimately, man's will and spirit can make “Death a Victory” (Line 59). Just as Prometheus turned the tables on his tormentor and made himself victorious in the face of injustice and power, humans can also demonstrate this mythic power through honorable suffering. In the end, struggle, sacrifice, and rebellion can make mankind victorious over all things, including death.