The 306 Greatest Books #67 - Prometheus Bound

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Prometheus Bound  by Aeschylus. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

This is one of the earliest writings that are on any of the 100 Greatest Books lists. The story is about the gods, which is typical of the Greek and Roman literature at the time. More particularly, Prometheus, the Titan who brought fire to mankind. The play takes place at the start of Zeus' punishment to Prometheus for bringing the fire, where Zeus had Hephaestus chain Prometheus to a rock to be roasted alive everyday. The play is very short, it took me only about 45 minutes to read. However, I could not find any strong "moral lesson" in it, so my assumption is that this is an entertainment piece. At first I thought the play was about Prometheus' vanity and pride and that was why he was being punished, but the more the play went on the more it seemed to be anti-Zeus with his pride. Zeus' pride is shown when Prometheus reveals that he knows the possible downfall of Zeus and he is the only one who can stop it. Zeus then proceeds to torture Prometheus more until he reveals that information. Maybe this is a piece about pride? I am not really sure. Overall, the play is enjoyable but I feel it is not strong enough to be on my list.