[173] Of the tragedy called Προμηθεὺς Λυόμενος some few fragments yet remain: Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος was a satyric drama, according to Dindorf. Welcker recognizes a third tragedy, Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος, and a satyric drama, Προμηθεὺς Πυρκαεύς (Die Griechisch. Tragödien, vol. i. p. 30). The story of Promêtheus had also been handled by Sapphô in one of her lost songs (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 42).
[174] Apollodôrus too mentions only the theft of fire (i. 7. 1).
βροτῶν δὲ τῶν ταλαιπώρων λόγον Οὐκ ἔσχεν οὐδέν᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἀϊστώσας γένος Τὸ πᾶν, ἔχρῃζεν ἄλλο φιτῦσαι νέον.
As the Æschylean Promêtheus, though retaining the old lineaments, has acquired a new coloring, soul and character, so he has also become identified with a special locality. In Hesiod, there is no indication of the place in which he is imprisoned; but Æschylus places it in Scythia,[179] and the general belief of the Greeks supposed it to be on Mount Caucasus. So long and so firmly did this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the literary Greek Theophanês, a special march to view the spot in Caucasus where Promêtheus had been transfixed.[180]
[179] Prometh. 2. See also the Fragments of the Promêtheus Solutus, 177-179, ed. Dindorf, where Caucasus is specially named; but v. 719 of the Promêtheus Vinctus seems to imply that Mount Caucasus is a place different from that to which the suffering prisoner is chained.
Having briefly enumerated the gods of Greece, with their chief attributes as described in legend, we come to those genealogies which connected them with historical men.
In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large or small, in whom there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that union to some common initial progenitor; that progenitor being either the common god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine person closely allied to him. What the feelings of the community require is, a continuous pedigree to connect them with this respected source of existence, beyond which they do not think of looking back. A series of names, placed in filiation or fraternity, together with a certain number of family or personal adventures ascribed to some of the individuals among them, constitute the ante-historical past through which the Greek looks back to his gods. The names of this genealogy are, to a great degree, gentile or local names familiar to the people,—rivers, mountains, springs, lakes, villages, demes, etc.,—embodied as persons, and introduced as acting or suffering. They are moreover called kings or chiefs, but the existence of a body of subjects surrounding them is tacitly implied rather than distinctly set forth; for their own personal exploits or family proceedings constitute for the most part the whole matter of narrative. And thus the genealogy was made to satisfy at once the appetite of the Greeks for romantic adventure, and their demand for an unbroken line of filiation between themselves and the gods. The eponymous personage, from whom the community derive their name, is sometimes the begotten son of the local god, sometimes an indigenous man sprung from the earth, which is indeed itself divinized.