Schmidt is a professor of English at California State University, Stanislaus. In this essay he examines the myth of Prometheus, discussing the missing plays of the trilogy that concluded the Titan's tale and also appraising Aeschylus's play as a psycho-drama—a struggle in personality and ethics between the title character and Zeus.

Poets and scholars have traditionally read the tale of Prometheus as a lesson in revolution, seeing the imprisoned Titan as an emblem of the lone individual in heroic rebellion against mindless tyranny. This view became more common during the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods of the nineteenth century, when Prometheus became a symbol first of freedom, and later, of the leader Napoleon himself. We encounter this image of Prometheus in poems by various Romantic era poets, in particular Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley, himself an accomplished classical scholar who translated works by Plato...