I can’t speak plainer than that

I think it’s a shame sir, that an intelligent manAnd as well educated as you areShould miss the point so completely

Why should you speak! Every word you sayIs painful to me

Money, gentlemen, money! The virusThat infects mankind with every sickness

Do the gods love criminals these days?

Or sign, and perhaps from the gods.

there are always menWho can be bought, who will risk anything,Even death, if the bribe is large enough

But people who serve the State, aliveOr dead, that makes no difference –I shall honour them for their patriotism

Equally contemptibleIs the man who puts the interests of his friends,Or his relations, before his country.There is nothing good can be said of him

My own opinion is well known:The ruler who fears the consequencesOf his actions, or who is afraid to act openly,Or take the good advice of his senators,Is beneath contempt

“It isn’t fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head.Old Man Warner was saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.” Steve Adams was in the front of the crowdof villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

the villagers had forgotten the ritual

. It wasn’t fair

“Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery,” Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd.“Seventy-seventh time.”

“Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s goodenough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work anymore, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ Firstthing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” headded petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”

The rest of the year, the box was put away,

The black box grew shabbier each yea

no one liked to upset even asmuch tradition as was represented by the black box

the other peopleof the tribe began gradually to forget about the war.

She had no one with whom to sharethem and so make her grief easier to bear, and there was noone to turn to, except to God himself

It was a shameful thing foreveryone

it was the duty of their fellow tribesmen tobring home the bodies

it wouldbe better to bury him twice than to be tormented by continualfear, continual pain, continual doubt

Naiman-Ana realized thatshe would find no peace until she had searched out in theSarozek that mankurt herdsman and had confirmed for herselfthat he was not her son

And some deaths are more honourable than others.

The laws you will break are not of man’s making.

He is my brother. And like it or notHe’s yours too.

Is not to be buried at all.

I have heard that. Nothing elseTo cheer me up, or depress me further

And suffering,Which was his destiny, is our punishment too

did you notwith your last breath curse God who has created us all in thatworld which he has deserted?

Zhuan'zhuan chose to annihilatehis memory, destroy his reason, to draw out by the roots thatwhich otherwise stays with a man to his last breath, remaininguniquely his, and which dies with him and which cannot bereached by other people.

On his own he could replace alarge number of workers

The mankurt was the exception: he wasabsolutely impervious to any incitement to revolt, quiteinnocent.

First of all their heads were completely shaved andevery single hair was taken out by the root. When this wascompleted, expert Zhuan'zhuan butchers killed a nearbynursing mother camel and skinned it. First they removed theheavy udder with its matted hair. Then they divided it intoseveral pieces and, in its still warm state, stretched it over theshaven heads of the prisoners. At once it stuck in place like asticking plaster, looking rather like a present-day swimmingcap. The man who was subjected to the ensuing torture eitherdied because he could not stand it, or he lost his memory ofthe past for ever. He had become a mankurt, or slave, whocould not remember his past life.

Those who were sold into slavery inneighbouring lands were considered fortunate, because sooneror later they could escape and return to their homeland. But amonstrous fate awaited those whom the Zhuan'zhuan kept asslaves for themselves

And here it comes,in plain view,the onslaughtsent by Zeusfor my own terror.Oh holy Mother Earth,oh sky whose light revolves for all,you see me. You seethe wrongs I suffer.

This was determined a long time ago

don’t serve me the cold truth warmed up with false words.There is no sickness worse than that.

When you are freed, I’m confident of this,you will be no less strong than Zeus himself

You may not know this. Ask no more.

I’ll sum it up for you in one short word:All human arts were founded by Prometheus

Whatever it is,I fear it.

and taught them how to reason.

be willing to meetwhat is new, for a new master rules the gods now.

I gave men power to stop foreseeing their death.

No one opposed this scheme except for me;I was the one who dared; I saved those death-bound creaturesfrom being destroyed and scattered into Hades.

My mother, though, Themis, Gaéa—she’s calledby many names—had given me foreknowledge

I know full wellno power can stand against Necessity

or by some guileful ruseanother seizes his unconquerable throne

f he had banished me—beneath the earth,beneath the House of Hades,down to the endless depths of Tartaros—and bound me there in chains of adamant,no god, no other beingcould feast on my misfortune.But here I hang up high,a plaything for the winds to buffet,and for my enemies to gloat on

no law but that of willful rule,and all who once were great he now destroys

I knew it all before.All that shall be, foreseen and clearly known

Oh sky, oh soaring winds and brightness of the air!Oh river-springs and countless laughter of the ocean’s waves!Oh Mother Earth! Oh Sun, all-seeing brilliant eye!

wish my skill were someone else’s lot.

Yes. But to disregard the Father’s words,how can that be? Do you not fear that more?

Kinship holds fearsome power. So does good fellowship

His power is new,and everyone with newborn power is harsh.

Not of my own will but compelled

Necessity compels me to it:It’s a grave thing to slight the Father’s word.

“threefold tidal wave of misery”

a virgin birth

But I don’t have the courage to chain a god

he may learnto love the tyranny of Zeusand quit his friendship with the human race

It was your flower he stole, the bright and dancing fire,and gave its wonderworking power to mortals

The liberating hero, unnamed in this play, will beHeracles

to give Io hope-—an instance of the “blind hopes” he broughtto humanity as an antidote to the finality of death

his fate is harder to bear than hers. He cannot die. His “suffering willcontinue without end

Okeanos is the prototype of the friend in high office who is eager to helpbut compromised by self-interest

chorus, theyspeak for the polis, reflecting the people’s commonly held values

he does not speak until after they have left

To read the cosmic debate as drama, we need to consider who isspeaking, who is listening, and what is at stake for each of the speakers infinding the right words at the right moment, or the consequence of failing todo so

Prometheus Bound is, like all Greek tragedy, a political as well as areligious play

But speech is action

“drama,” in Greek, means “action,

That idea probably derived from KarlMarx’s lifelong fondness for Prometheus as an archetype of revolutionarywill

Nietzsche sawin him the prototype of the artist, “the great genius for whom even eternalsuffering is a slight price.”