The sophist, the didaskalos, and political resistance in Prometheus Bound

Brett M. Rogers (University of Georgia)

The notion of education plays a fundamental but hitherto misunderstood role in the interpretation of the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. Audiences have commonly viewed Prometheus as a teacher who instructs humankind in various tekhnai, and some scholars have gone so far as to understand the play (and, consequently, the question of its authenticity) in terms of the increasing prominence of the sophists in the mid- to late-fifth-century BCE (e.g., Marzullo 1993, Bees 1993, but rejected by Podlecki 2005). Indeed, the adherents of Zeus in the play, Kratos and Hermes, specifically attack Prometheus as a sophistês (PV 62, 944) and thus attempt to draw a distinction between Zeus the new tyrannos and Prometheus the clever sophist (as investigated by Saïd 1985).

However, Prometheus Bound presents a much more subtle picture of education. Prometheus actively refuses to be called a didaskalos or ‘teacher’ (PV 322, 373-4), while it is Zeus who is described as a didaskalos violently inscribing his lesson upon the very body of Prometheus (cf. Steiner 1994). Prometheus does not refuse entirely to be acknowledged as a source of technical innovation and wisdom, describing himself variously as an object of theôria (cf. Allen 2000) and as an interpreter of oracular knowledge, but he characterizes the acquisition of this knowledge in terms of his interlocutor’s own learning. Thus Prometheus Bound does not present Prometheus as a purveyor of sophistic education but rather displays two competing educational models, the violent teaching of Zeus and the collaborative pedagogy of Prometheus.

The preponderance of educational language and imagery throughout Prometheus Bound moreover has a pointed political aim, mapping out social and political hierarchies, promoting or critiquing tyranny. The notion of teaching is used to represent the tyranny of Zeus as a form of political oppression, while the notion of learning in Prometheus’ pedagogy offers a form of political resistance, which lesson the young Chorus of Oceanids display when they take their stance against Zeus at the end of the play (PV 1063-1070). Prometheus Bound therefore invites viewers upon a theôria of their own, providing an opportunity to examine the political ends of teaching and learning in the early classical Greek polis.