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The authoritative presence in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound was Fate. Some might argue that it was Zeus, but in fact it was very much Fate that had control, which Prometheus himself knew. Zeus, like his father, Chronos, knew his fate of demise and tried to save himself. It is apparent that despite Fate’s inevitability, many Greek heroes chose to fight it rather than give up. Fate predicted in Oedipus the King that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother, but both he and his parents fought to prevent this from happening. Teiresias, the blind prophet, told Oedipus that he would not want to know the truth in the end, and tries to withhold the vital information he knows. Teiresias also warned Pentheus in The Bacchae to heed Dionysus’s new religion and not to anger him for this new god will be great in the future, but his advice falls on deaf ears.
Zeus tried to battle Fate by demanding that he gets things his way. His father, Chronos was told that one of his children would bring about his end. He tried to avoid this prophesied defeat by swallowing his children when they were born. However, Rhea, his wife, asked for help from Gaia, her mother, to bear a child in secret. This child was Zeus. After the Titans overthrew Chronos, Zeus overthrew the Titans with the help of the Hundred-Handers. The Titans had overthrown Chronos despite his preventative measures. Zeus’s demanding character helped him get what he wanted in being the divine ruler of all the gods. When he wanted Io, she came to him for fear of displeasing the supreme divinity. When he heard of Prometheus’s knowledge of Zeus’s downfall, he sent Hermes to inquire of Prometheus’s knowledge of how this would happen.
Prometheus said,
“So shall at last the final consummation be brought about of Father Kronos’ curse which he, driven from his ancient throne, invoked against the son deposing him no one of all the Gods save I alone can tell a way to escape this mischief I alone know it and how.” (Prometheus Bound, 11-17)
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Zeus did not offer to loosen Prometheus from the crag or engage in a trade of favors, but instead, he threatened Prometheus through Hermes in saying that if Prometheus did not say what he knew of Zeus’s destiny that the chains Hermes carried would “prove to [Prometheus] that Zeus is not softhearted” (Prometheus Bound, 51-5). Prometheus asserts many tmes that he is the only one that can save Zeus’s reign from downfall and that without great compensation. At one point, Prometheus boasts that one day Zeus will need him to “show the new plot whereby he may be spoiled / of his throne and his power” (Prometheus Bound, 171-17), and that he will not tell “until he free me from my cruel chains / and pay me recompense for what I suffer” (Prometheus Bound, 178-17).
But of course, Zeus, being hotheaded, would simply make conditions worse for Prometheus by sending him into darkness still chained to the rock, lightening would strike him, and a vulture would eat out his liver everyday. Zeus was not willing to set a deal with Prometheus to gain information. He forced fear onto people to get his way. By doing this he thought that he would be able to change Fate also to do what he had planned for himself.
In Prometheus Bound, Io relates her story about her relationship with Zeus. She tells of how her father, Inachus, was ordered by Zeus to cast her out and let her wander the country or else “the fire-faced thunderbolt would come from Zeus / and blot out his whole race” (Prometheus Bound, 668-66). Here again, Zeus threatens mere mortals to obey what he says, since he is superior to them. When Io finishes telling her story, she wants to know what is in store for her future and whether she will suffer even more pain. Prometheus, as a prophet, must know that he will end up telling her, but he still refuses to tell her in that moment. Although he does tell her that in her fate, there still remains much suffering and toil. She responds by saying, “Do not offer me the gift and then withhold it” (Prometheus Bound, 777). Finally, Prometheus gives in and tells her everything that her intended journey holds. However slight this resistance may have been, Prometheus resisted doing what would happen anyway � telling Io her fate. This seems to contradict what Prometheus had done from the start, which is to accept his fate of suffering for his love of mankind. He does this, because he knows that eventually Hercules will free him from bondage.
Also, another strong-headed character is apparent in The Bacchae. Teiresias warned Pentheus “this god whom you ridicule shall someday have enormous power and prestige throughout Hellas” (The Bacchae, 7-74). If Pentheus denounced this god, then his fate would be to suffer or to die as punishment. Pentheus, however, tried to be rational by denouncing Dionysus and told Teiresias and Cadmus, “do not wipe your madness off on me. By god, I’ll make him pay, the man who taught you this folly of yours” (The Bacchae, 4-46). Clearly, he was not rational at all and always spoke out of anger.
Teiresias denounced Pentheuss actions as “lunacy” (The Bacchae, 5), and, even though Euripides made Teiresias look weak and almost comical, he was correct in the end. Pentheus was violent and disrespectful to the age and position of not only Teiresias, but also his own grandfather, Cadmus.
Pentheus, furious with all these followers, whom he thinks are ridiculous for following the new religion, bound Dionysus without believing he was a god. Dionysus gave Pentheus a warning “place no chains on me” (The Bacchae, 507), but Pentheus gave no heed to the warning. He continued to push his own view that the followers were fools, and refute the warnings that they were trying to give him as Dionysus repeatedly said that the god was present and that he saw everything that was going on. Finally, he forewarned that “Dionysus whom you outrage by your acts, who you deny is god, will call you to account. When you set chains on me, you manacle the god” (The Bacchae, 517-51). Eventually, Pentheus does get his end by being torn to pieces by his own mother, whom Dionysus drove temporarily insane.
Pretentious characters were not the only ones that trie to battle their own fate. There were noble characters that also fell while trying to evade the path that had already been set. In Sophocles’s Oedipus the King, King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes had a son who was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this, the king and queen sent it off with a messenger boy after which, they presumed it to be dead. However, the son, Oedipus, came into the hands of Polybus and Merope of Citheron who raised him to be their own. Later, Oedipus also heard this same prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. So he set off on the road to try to fight this inevitable outcome. Ironically, on his journey, he did kill his real father, King Laius, and eventually married Jocasta as the King of Thebes.
Oedipus’s self-assured nature was important in his denial of his fate and his own demise. He was willing to take on full responsibility for dealing with crises and had a powerful sense of his own self-worth. We see this especially after he learned about the death of King Laius, and he tried to discover who the murder was. In his quarrel with Teiresias, some may think that Oedipus was acting odd and too proud, but his denial was reasonable considering that Oedipus was someone with no sense of ambiguity in life. His view on the world was that the only thing that matters is truth. Knowing this, he had good reason to be angry with Teiresias for withholding such valuable information from him. Oedipus had no reason to suspect that he himself was the “land’s pollution” (Oedipus the King, 5). Oedipus fought, unknowingly, what his fate had already fulfilled. To him, Teiresias must have been lying, and he must have had a reason � a secret agenda. It was also for this assertive and righteous attitude that he had set out on his own in the first place to save his “parents.” He refused to accept that fate, and he constructed a life where he had been told what would happen, would not happen.
The vision of life here was very mysterious and very cruel. Even the best and most innocent men who strived to live the best life possible and who endured hardship would be horrified to learn the truth. Fate did not seem to be fair in setting up some clear rules and a happier future. As far as the story was portrayed, Oedipus did not deserve such suffering and there did not seem to be any sense that it was linked to some sin he had committed. Here Fate punished arbitrarily and mercilessly those who chose to confront it. On the other hand, Fate seemed to deliver what was just to those who were too pompous to accept it such as Zeus and Pentheus. But deserving or not, when faced with a choice to fight or take flight, many chose to fight in the end for the hope that Fate was not Destiny.
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