Becoming

For Νίκη

Your Parian wings, your pale and flawless skin,
your figure poised in triumph on the stone seat
hold solid sunlight moulded deep within
and rise above my heavy, earthbound feet.

I age and cannot match time’s racing pace
like you, an exile in a changing world.
If you should ask me, I would lend my face
my smile still buried in the past, tight-curled.

My mother bears your name, my daughter too.
She is the proof that love outlives the tomb
a gift I gave her with her breath; and through
my blood I nourished her inside my womb.

In you stand all the women we became;
by the unseen hand that sculpts us name by name.

Counting Black Beads

For Julia

Another love was torn out from your side,
a black bead bound into your cord of days
the morning cracks in silence, splitting wide
the night bleeds, weeping salted moon rays.

I’ve seen you pause before a crumpled shirt
a Raphael copy: Christ upon the cross
and know how absence waits, poised to hurt
to teach the bones the language of the loss.

His rocking chair lies empty by the fire
your hands reach out, cold fingers tracing air
in quiet grief you smooth your black attire
and though his seat awaits, you can’t sit there.

Your love is stitched forever in your breath
you carry him still and carry him past death.

Featured in New Lyre - Spring/Summer

Subscribe now

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. But what of that fire today?

What are the opposing images and traditions of the Prometheus myth, from Hesiod to Aeschylus and Julian Huxley to Reza Jorjani? What does our understanding of the Promethean myth say about our own epistemological development? Finally, how might the Prometheus story reflect a higher reality, the kind acted on by the likes of a Benjamin Franklin, a Beethoven and an Aeschylus during some of the most pivotal moments in the history?

Join us as we survey the role of Prometheus across the ages and his relevance today.

Subscribe now

Subscribe to the Rising Tide Foundation for weekly live lectures where distinguished guests present the kinds of strategic topics and questions that most outlets aren’t willing to address.

Rising Tide Foundation

Dedicated to the enhancement of cross-cultural understanding and dialogue between east and west.

In our latest Age of Muses production, we feature Friedrich Schiller’s provocative historical sketch, “The Jesuit Government in Paraguay.” Schiller’s sketch describes an episode from the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay.

Jesuit Paraguay was a theocratic collective where property, huts, fields & tools belonged “to God” aka Jesuit control, with no personal liberty, early forced marriages, language bans & harsh punishments.

The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní were a type of settlement for the Guaraní people (”Indians” or “Indios”) in an area straddling the borders of present-day Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, known locally as the triple frontier. The missions were established by the Jesuit Order of the Catholic Church early in the 17th century and ended in the late 18th century after the expulsion of the order from the Americas. ^[1]

Schiller’s devastating sketch was originally published in the October 1788 volume of Wieland’s German Mercury. Schiller’s main source for this historical snapshot was Christoph Harenberg’s Pragmatic History of the Jesuit Order.

Subscribe now

We’d like as many of our original productions as possible to remain free for all viewers. Please consider becoming a premium subscriber as we continue to pursue ever larger and more ambitious projects.

Stay tuned for our next full-length feature

Discover more historical deep-dives

The Mission of Moses by Friedrich Schiller

Making a thoroughly composed features requires a lot of time and resources. If you would like to be a patron, please become a Founding Member (Renaissance Patron). Renaissance Patrons get Executive Producer credits in our films.

Subscribe now

This was the fate of Prometheus Unbound (Prometheus Lyomenos in Greek), the sequel play to Prometheus Bound (Prometheus Desmotes). Although not chosen as part of the Aeschylean canon, the Unbound was widely read in antiquity and quoted in literary works that still survive. As a result, we have enough quotations and other information about this play to form a general idea how its plot and themes progressed.

Prometheus Unbound carries forward and completes the story of Prometheus begun in Prometheus Bound. The two plays were intended as a unity; Prometheus Bound cannot be fully understood as Aeschylus intended without some knowledge of its sequel. In this article, I translate the surviving Greek and Latin passages of the Unbound and assemble them into the framework of a proposed plot. For the portions of the play where no confirmed passages exist, I used other evidence from classical sources when available and, where all else fails, my poet’s sense of where the play’s momentum is heading.

What survives of Prometheus Unbound is fascinating. Studying, translating, and attempting to reassemble its puzzle pieces gave me new respect for Aeschylus as a playwright and for the scope of his dramatic ideas. In this article I wish to give readers some sense of what I think occurred in this lost play and how it fits into Aeschylus’ concept of the Prometheus myth. I hope I can give readers new insights into what Aeschylus intended to tell us through the Prometheus story, a story that continues to have relevance for our modern age.

Background

Before they were ever written down, the tales of Greek mythology were orally transmitted and, over many centuries and in different regions, developed multiple, often conflicting, story lines. These variant tellings gave Greek tragedians considerable freedom in molding these tales to suit their immediate theatrical needs. They also freely invented their own backstories or new plot twists whenever necessary to convey a moral or just write good theater. This is what Aeschylus did in his handling of the Prometheus story.

Aeschylus’ Athenian audience would already have been familiar with the Prometheus legend from Hesiod. His Works and Days and Theogony recount how Zeus overthrew his father Cronos for supremacy of the gods in an epic battle against the Titans (the “Titanomachy”). Following his victory, Zeus banished Cronos and the Titans to Tartarus. He also planned to obliterate humanity to create a new race of people. Prometheus (whose name means “Forethought”), son of the Titan Iapetus, thwarted this plan by stealing fire from Olympus in a fennel stalk to bestow on mankind. This gift allowed humanity to acquire the skills needed for survival. But Zeus’ punishment was severe. He ordered Hephaistos to chain Prometheus to a cliffside in the remote Caucasian Mountains. He then sent an eagle to consume Prometheus’ liver, which continually regenerated and was reconsumed in an unending cycle. Ages later, the hero Heracles killed the eagle and freed Prometheus from bondage. Zeus and Prometheus reconciled.

Aeschylus made important changes to this fire-legend, all of which enhance the story’s dramatic impact. Prometheus is now the child of Gaia, the Earth Goddess, a primordial deity with knowledge of the hidden workings of fate. (Her divine DNA also readily explains Prometheus’ “forethought”). In Aeschylus’ version, Prometheus was Zeus’ ally in the Titanomachy, and his counsel was decisive in Zeus’ victory. Because Zeus owed his throne to Prometheus, the punishment he later inflicts becomes an especially harsh betrayal. In addition, Prometheus not only grants mankind fire, but also teaches them the arts and sciences, enabling them to develop culture and civilization. Finally, Prometheus is now possessor of a momentous secret: he knows how Zeus will one day be overthrown, a secret he refuses to disclose even under torture. (Spoiler: Thetis, with whom Zeus desires an affair, is fated to bear a child greater than his father.) These reworkings of the legend create a dramatic tension in Bound that ultimately resolves in Unbound.

Aeschylus’ dramatic concepts were too large for a single play, so he usually wrote plays in trilogies that carried a character or legend through three successive dramas, their tragic intensity subsequently relieved by a comic satyr play. Prometheus Bound reads like a middle play: the action is already afoot, and the ending is inconclusive. A prelude seems to be called for—a play recounting the theft of fire and Zeus’ apprehension and trial of Prometheus. Yet we have no conclusive evidence from antiquity that a third play existed (or a concluding satyr play). A single line attributed to a play called Prometheus the Fire-Bringer (Pyrphoros) might refer to Prometheus the Fire-Kindler (Pyrkaeos), the satyr play appended to the Persians trilogy in 472 B.C. These descriptive suffixes were attached to play titles by Alexandrian scholars centuries after Aeschylus lived and were not always uniformly applied.

Unlike Aeschylus’ other six remaining plays, we have no information for the date of the first production of the Prometheus plays, or if they were ever produced during his lifetime. My impression is that both Bound and Unbound were left on Aeschylus’ desk, more or less complete, when he died in Gela, Sicily, in 456 BC, and that he simply did not live long enough to write a third play. His son Euphorion, also a playwright, could have edited these two plays for a posthumous production in Athens, completing the trilogy with a third play of his own composition. Maybe this play was the shadowy Fire-Bringer. But we will likely never know the answer, and so must consider Bound and Unbound as a “duology” rather than a trilogy.

Reconstructing the Play

Prometheus Unbound was written in a structural framework typical of Greek tragedy. The action was presented in a series of episodes for actors. These episodes were separated by choral hymns sung by an onstage chorus with choreographed dancing and musical accompaniment. The speeches and dialogue of the actors were usually declaimed but sometimes sung to musical accompaniment. In addition to singing hymns functioning as interludes, the chorus also sometimes engaged in dialogues with the characters, but only rarely participated in the action.

The greatest obstacle in reconstructing Prometheus Unbound is deciding what happened during the parts of the play for which no quotations survive. Almost nothing remains of the choral songs. The middle and concluding episodes are completely blank. For these episodes, even knowing which characters appeared is challenging. In making these difficult surmises, an ancient copyist’s mistake is enormously helpful. The oldest manuscript tradition of Prometheus Bound (the 11^th century Medicean manuscript) contains a dramatis personae that includes Gaia and Heracles, although neither appears in that play. We know from contemporary writers that Heracles appeared in Unbound, so it is thought that the Medicean text tradition inadvertently copies the character list for both plays. Medieval manuscripts are riddled with all sorts of copyist mistakes that hound academicians like Furies in trying to decide what ancient authors actually wrote. This particular error is indispensable in reconstructing Unbound.

When the play begins, ages have passed since the end of Prometheus Bound. Thirteen generations, per Prometheus’ statement in Bound (line 774). Prometheus remains chained to the Caucasian rocks. At some point after the first play ended, Zeus sent the divine eagle to consume Prometheus’ liver. In Aeschylus’ version, this feasting occurs every three days. The stage would depict the eagle in the background, perched on high rocks, waiting to descend again.

We do not know if Prometheus Unbound had a prologue. The first lines that we possess are from the chorus that now enters the stage. They are the Titans, the same Titans who battled against Zeus in the Titanomachy and were hurled into Tartarus following their defeat. In an astonishing act of clemency, Zeus has freed the Titans from their imprisonment. The newly-liberated Titans now make the pilgrimage to Caucasia to visit their kinsman Prometheus.

Judging from the locations mentioned in this fragment, Aeschylus placed the Titans’ exit from Tartarus somewhere south of Egypt in lands the Greeks broadly called “Ethiopia.” These lines from the entrance of the Chorus of Titans describe their route from Tartarus to Caucasia.

… beyond the Red Sea’s depths
that glitter like bronze,
Ethiopia’s sacred river, nourishing all,
and the circling streams of Ocean
where all-seeing Helios daily
bathes his immortal body,
refreshing his weary horse-teams
in gentle upwellings of water…
... by Phasis, rugged border
of Europe and boundless Asia…
we come…
to witness your sufferings, Prometheus,
the piteousness of your bonds.

Prometheus then addresses the Titans. His remarkable speech was translated into Latin by the Roman statesman Cicero for the philosophical treatise Tusculan Disputations. The original Greek text is lost. After ages of torture, Prometheus remains defiant, but it is now a defiance mixed with resignation and a longing for an end to suffering:

Race of Titans, kinsmen of my blood,
Heaven’s progeny, behold me shackled, bound
to harsh rocks, like a ship moored fast by sailors
timid and fearful of night’s thundering sea.
Zeus, Cronos’ vengeful son, transfixed me thus;
Hephaistos’ craft then hardened the god’s rage.
With cruel hands he split my limbs with bolts
that, by his handiwork, I miserably
inhabit this bleak stronghold of the Furies.
Every third dismal day, with dreadful swoop,
Zeus’ minister, an eagle, with hooked talons
slashes my liver for its gruesome feast
until, glutted and stuffed on my fat vitals,
it utters a horrendous scream and soars
aloft, its feathered tail fanning my blood.
Then when my liver swells, regenerating,
it swoops back hungry for fresh butchery.
This guardian of my sorrows, whom I nourish,
consumes me living with unending pain,
for, as you see, imprisoned in Zeus’ chains
I cannot hurl this monster from my breast.
Deprived of any aid, I must endure
pernicious tortures, yearning for the death
that ends my woes, yet by the wrath of Zeus,
despite my wish, I keep this bed of anguish.
These ancient, grievous torments, magnified
through horrid ages, fasten on my body
from which drops, melted by the torrid sun,
run ceaselessly down the rocks of Caucasus.

The metaphor comparing the chained Prometheus to a ship moored in a stormy sea is one of the most compelling images in ancient literature. For me, this speech refutes the claim some make based on “stylometric analysis” that Aeschylus could not have authored the Prometheus plays. The spirit matters: the grandeur and pathos of Prometheus’ words could only have been written by Aeschylus.

During a subsequent dialogue with the Titans, Prometheus recounts some of the benefits he bestowed on mankind:

…Horses, asses I gave them, the race of bulls
to bear their burdens and relieve their labors.

A lost choral song by the Titans followed, after which comes a section which, I feel, was the central episode of the play. Gaia, the Earth Goddess and mother of Prometheus, rises from the earth to console and advise her son. A true matriarch, Gaia was ancestor, one way or another, of every divinity in the play—mother of the Titans, grandmother of Zeus, and so on. Her advice would be worth having: she was one of the primal gods, the original deity presiding over the Oracle at Delphi, a prophetess intimately familiar with the workings of fate.

What did she tell Prometheus? No certain quotations survive, but Prometheus relates in Bound that Gaia often told him the course of future events. We can imagine she did so here, too. But she also worked to shape events. Prometheus also says in Bound that during the war between Cronos and Zeus, Gaia foresaw that victory would be won by strategy (dolos), not by brute force. After the Titans rejected this advice, Gaia and Prometheus shifted their allegiance to Zeus, a switch that was crucial in Zeus’ triumph. This partnership was broken when Prometheus made the decision to steal fire—a personal decision, not fated, as he makes clear. Given Gaia’s active role in creating the Zeus-Prometheus alliance, I expect she would offer Prometheus practical advice how to mend the rift and thereby end his captivity.

In fact, Prometheus had already foreseen his pardon. He declared in Bound that his release by Zeus was preordained by the Fates, acting on behalf of Necessity (Anake). The reference to Anake, the Greek goddess Necessity, is significant, for her name was a fearful one. Necessity was the oldest, most mysterious, most powerful of the primordial Greek gods. Self-created from Chaos, she, along with her consort Time (Chronos—not to be confused with Cronos, father of Zeus), created the cosmos. She carried in her hand a spindle on which she spun the course of future events. Even Zeus was powerless to change what Necessity decreed. Despite being arguably the most powerful deity, Greeks seldom dared to mention her name or even pray to her. As her verdicts were unalterable, there was no point in making sacrifices to her. Prometheus had the ability to sense the outline of her plans, but Gaia, the daughter of Necessity, would know those plans in granular detail, and what actions they required.

We can imagine Gaia explaining the reasons for Zeus’ new-found clemency. An ordered cosmos is guided by principles of justice—brute power alone is unsustainable. Zeus obtained supremacy by force and violence, but he can keep power only by ruling justly. His overthrow is not unalterable fate, however, but depends on actions. Between plays, Zeus must have realized this. During the ages Prometheus was chained to the rock, Zeus softened his harshness and became merciful, as shown by the freeing of the Titans. He has aligned his rule with the cosmic order. Because he now rules justly and wisely, Gaia says, Prometheus’ defiance serves no purpose. In all creation, now only Prometheus refuses to acknowledge Zeus’ rule. His stubbornness alone keeps him chained. The time for reconciliation has come. The newly-freed Titans, listening in the background, would have surely voiced their approval. If Zeus indeed grants him freedom, Prometheus agrees to reveal his secret. Gaia then departs for Olympus to plead with Zeus for his pardon.

Hearing this motherly advice would not be easy for the pain-racked Prometheus. But he had foreseen in the earlier play that Zeus might grow milder and wish a reconciliation, and that Prometheus would then welcome him as a friend. Yet we have to wonder—how did Zeus acquire this insight? Divine introspection is possible but unlikely—we know from mythology this was not a god’s usual path to maturity. Maybe it was through prophecy: perhaps Gaia, not averse to putting her thumb on fate’s scales, appeared to Zeus and prophesied his downfall unless he moderated his harshness and reached an accord with Prometheus. The Gaia-Prometheus dialogue would have been fascinating to read, but evidently the complexity of its ideas did not lend itself to short quotations.

Whatever they discussed, the play’s events now move quickly. Following Gaia’s departure and a further choral song by the Titans, Heracles marches onto the stage, draped in a lionskin, a bow and quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder. He tells the Titans he is passing through Caucasia on his trek northward to steal the apples of the Hesperides, the eleventh of his Twelve Labors. He wishes to ask Prometheus for advice on the route he must take and the dangers he will face. In return, Heracles promises to grant him any favor he requests.

Prometheus answers Heracles in a lengthy “journey narrative,” a passage corresponding to his prophecy of Io’s wanderings in Bound. The account of Heracles’ travels contained colorful descriptions of foreign peoples and picturesque geographical details. As a result, several classical authors quoted passages from it.

As Heracles journeys northward, Prometheus warns, he must face the North Winds:

Take this straight road, where you will first encounter
the gales of Boreas—there stay vigilant
against the howling blizzards that can swiftly
snatch men away like leaves in freezing whirlwinds…

On the northern plains, Heracles will also meet

…free-roaming Scythians fed on mare’s milk cheese…

After the theft of the apples, further passages describe Heracles’ homeward journey. His route takes him from the West through what is today southern France, then into the Italian peninsula.

Prometheus describes the Ligures, a historically-documented people who inhabited the area in what is now northwestern Italy and southwestern France. They were known to be warlike, but Heracles, a favorite child of Zeus, travels with divine protection:

…You then confront fearless Ligurian warriors, |
where, I foresee, your courage will desert you,
your arrows prove too few, and where you cannot
even throw stones, for the whole plain is smooth.
Yet, pitying you, the Father will spread clouds
above the land that drop a blanket of stones.
Hurl these, and you will rout the Ligurian hordes.

Heracles then meets “the Gabians,” perhaps a reference to the Gabii, a tribe that in Roman times lived in central Italy. Their life resembles a remnant of the Golden Age:

…Thereafter you will meet a folk more righteous
and more hospitable than any other,
the Gabians, a people who require
no plow or spade, no tool that breaks the earth,
to raise crops, whose fields, self-sown without toil,
ripen in bountiful harvests for mankind.

In gratitude for this advice, Heracles grants Prometheus’ request to slay the eagle perched on the crags above them, the dramatic high point in what is primarily a speech-play. Putting an arrow on his bow and aiming carefully at the eagle, Heracles prays for divine aid:

Archer Apollo, guide my arrow straight!

Heracles’ arrow finds its target. The eagle drops. Heracles then unshackles Prometheus. After ages of bondage, Prometheus rises, freed. He thanks Heracles—and does not fail to note the irony that a son of Zeus has freed him:

My fiercest foe has sired this dearest friend!

Heracles departs, leaving the liberated Prometheus and the Titan Chorus to contemplate the implications of what has occurred.

The play is nearing its conclusion. How did it end? Again no quotations exist, but other evidence helps us. The third century grammarian Athenaeus, in his encyclopedic banquet-tale Deipnosophistae, states that when Prometheus was freed from bondage, he agreed to wear a flower garland around his neck as atonement for the theft of fire. Athenaeus relates this garland to a then-existing Athenian custom: “Aeschylus clearly states in the Unbound that in honor of Prometheus we place a garland on the shoulders as recompense of his bondage.”

Aeschylus’ trilogies often seem to have ended by linking the events of mythology to some current custom or ritual practiced in Athens. The events of the Oresteia, for example, concluded in the establishment of the law court of the Areopagus. Athenaeus’ statement indicates the ending of the Unbound described the initiation of the “Prometheia,” the annual torch-festival in Athens honoring Prometheus. Participants in the race carried torches symbolizing the gift of fire and wore a garland on their shoulders to commemorate Prometheus’ bonds.

The proclamation of a festival would have culminated a speech announcing Prometheus’ pardon. Only Zeus could grant such a pardon, but the ruler of Olympus was too imposing a figure to be portrayed in a play. An emissary on his behalf was required. Hermes, the messenger god, performed this role at the end of Prometheus Bound. Moreover, if we assume the Medicean manuscript lists all the characters who appeared in Unbound, there is simply no other contender. His reappearance at the end of Unbound would make sense, too—it would be a dramatically effective way to bring the two plays full circle.

Imagine, then, that Hermes now appears, still dutifully fulfilling Zeus’ bidding, but not as the sarcastic minion we saw in the first play. He might be wearing white robes of peace, holding a flower garland in his hands. He announces that Heracles killed the eagle and freed Prometheus at the order of Zeus. Prometheus has been punished enough. The civilizing arts Prometheus taught mankind made them a wise, worshipful race. Prometheus broke Zeus’ command by stealing fire, but his punishment is reduced to wearing a flower garland, which Hermes now ceremoniously places on Prometheus’ shoulders. To commemorate Prometheus’ story, an annual torch-festival in his honor will be held in Athens. The garland will be worn as a perpetual memorial of the theft and of Prometheus’ bonds.

In a spirit of reconciliation, Prometheus now discloses the secret he withheld for so long. He warns that Zeus must abandon his desire for an affair with the nymph Thetis, because she is destined to give birth to a child greater than his father. Instead, Prometheus urges Zeus to marry Thetis to the mortal Peleus. She will then give birth to a son named Achilles, who will become a famous hero. Prometheus then prophesies Achilles’ future glory in the Trojan War. Praising Prometheus for bravely enduring so many trials, Hermes departs for Olympus with this news. Prometheus’ final speech summing up his experiences would have been worth reading, if it had survived. The Titans sing a celebratory closing hymn as they and Prometheus slowly leave the stage.

Conclusion

Perhaps someday an archaeologist in Egypt will unwind a mummy to find the complete text of Prometheus Unbound pasted inside its wrappings. Until that happens, we will have to use plausible conjecture and a bit of imagination to reconstruct this lost play. It does not end with the cosmic crash that concluded Prometheus Bound. A battle for supremacy makes better theater than peacemaking. Was this why Bound, and not Unbound, survived the ages?

Unlike Shakespeare, though, “the play’s the thing” was not the operative principle for Aeschylean drama. He wrote for a religious festival, the City Dionysia. His plays were not just plays, but teaching tools in service of the state religion: they had to convey a moral. The Promethean plays orient themselves around the idea that beyond the chaos of events there is a cosmic order. It is obscure, enigmatic, often harsh and destructive of individual hopes, but it exists. Prometheus Unbound tries to assure spectators that the fractured world of Bound was inevitably heading toward a better place. At the end of Unbound, the cosmic order reasserts itself. The gods are just. The system works.

Though their tonality is completely different, Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound are written like mirror reflections of each other. The chorus of both plays consists of sympathetic but ineffectual deities from the older generation: the Daughters of Oceanus and the Titans. The successive episodes parallel each other, too: Oceanus and Gaia, the older generation of gods come to console and counsel, the first brushed off, the second dutifully heeded; Io and Heracles, members of the post-Zeus generation bound on dangerous journeys, one abused and cast away by Zeus, the other his cherished, protected son; and the Janus-faces of Hermes, first a scornful lackey, then reflecting his master’s newfound mildness. Throughout both plays, except for the beginning and the end, Prometheus remains a monolith at the center of the action, receiving a succession of pilgrims to his rock. Omnipresent, too, though he never appears in either play, is the mighty shadow of Zeus.

Beneath these surface resemblances, the two plays head in different directions. Bound was about the shattering of the cosmic order. It portrays one individual’s unequal struggle against tyrannical force, armed only with knowledge in confronting raw power. At the conclusion of the play, darkness falls, the story cuts off at mid-point, and the audience is left in an unjust world where brute force has gotten the upper hand. The sequel play resolves these dissonances. From the entrance of the Titan Chorus, each succeeding scene is like a world waking up from a nightmare. Chaos begins to coalesce into recognizable shapes. For Zeus, this change occurs between the two plays; his new clemency is on display at the outset. The Unbound focuses sharply on Prometheus’ awakening to this transformed world.

In Bound, Prometheus was an outcast punished for violating the authority of Zeus. He admits in Bound that he committed a crime in stealing fire, but his defense is his compassion: his greater knowledge tells him there is an overarching morality transcending Zeus. Knowledge is his only weapon, so he openly flaunts knowing the secret of Zeus’ downfall. In the amoral world of Bound, this only makes his situation worse. Despite all he knows, Prometheus lacks the wisdom needed in his predicament: the patience to let events sort themselves out and the ability to know when to keep quiet. In I-told-you-so fashion, Oceanus reminds Prometheus in Bound that all his bragging changed nothing and only compounded the troubles he brought on himself. In the second play, I imagine Gaia, in a more subtle motherly way, reminding Prometheus that events were going to take their course regardless, things were destined to get better, all part of the master plan spun on the spindle of fate. Why did he interfere?

After ages of evisceration, Prometheus’ defiant spirit is now eroded by pain. While he remained isolated on the rock, the world has inexorably moved toward justice without him. His superior moral stance is now self-isolating, his pride pointless, his continuing torments a product of his own stubbornness. Confronted with Zeus’ olive branch, or rather, flower garland, Prometheus realizes there is no longer any logical reason to refuse a reconciliation.

His freedom, though, comes only at the end of a harrowing gauntlet. As he said in Bound, “Only when I have been bowed by pains and unending torture, am I to escape my bondage.” Does this imply that his torments will ultimately transform knowledge into wisdom? Has the chained Titan, like Io and Heracles, been on his own dangerous journey? Prometheus has obtained new insight into the nature of things only after the catharsis of traveling the darkest depths of suffering—just as Dante could not ascend to Paradise until first passing through Inferno. In this sense, Aeschylus’ Prometheus plays conclude not as a tragic cycle, but as a Commedia, where, after experiencing the worst, all finally turns out for the good.

This is an ending some will find unsatisfactory. In the preface to his version of Prometheus Unbound, Percy Shelley asserted he could never complete the play the way Aeschylus intended. For him, Prometheus’ struggle for the rights of man was the moral center around which the universe revolved. His crime was like a poetic inspiration: the “Promethean fire” was its own law superseding any law of man or god. Zeus was irredeemable, a corrupt tyrant who deserved to be toppled. All this is an understandable viewpoint for a poet writing in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the unsatisfactory peace that followed. Aeschylus, on the other hand, could never justify a crime to his spectators, especially one against the king of gods. As Aeschylus saw it, Zeus had his zone of authority and the right to impose laws on gods and man. The theft of fire, even from benevolent motives, was punishable.

Then helping mankind was wrong? Technically, yes. This is a point where our post-Enlightenment ethical sensibilities will rebel a bit. Yet Aeschylean drama concerns the triumph of universal principles. The individual’s moral imperatives were subordinate to the larger demands of city, nationality, and the gods. In the Oresteia, Orestes killed his mother, his filial duty to his murdered father, but he is not absolved from the Furies’ wrath until acquitted by a lawful tribunal with Athena’s blessing. The fire-thief, like the matricide, must act within a cosmic order that revolves in many concentric spheres. This order is pervasive enough to encompass Prometheus’ compassion for humanity and Zeus’ right to punish him for law-breaking—and to demand that Zeus exercise clemency in judging Prometheus. This moral ambiguity makes knowing the right course of action practically unfathomable for humans and even most gods, thus keeping the oracles in business. But this order did exist, and it was the cosmology that Aeschylus and his audience wished to see vindicated on the stage.

At the conclusion of Prometheus Unbound is the concept that justice is built into the fabric of the cosmos, imposing a duty of moderation on Prometheus and Zeus. Zeus’ power and Prometheus’ foresight were intended to form a unity. Acting in opposition, they negate each other. The result is the opposite: impotence and ignorance careening toward disaster. Operating in unison, they become an unstoppable engine moving creation forward. This was a lesson highly relevant for fifth century Athens, after its miracle victory over the Persians and on the precipice of the hubris of the Peloponnesian Wars. Yet it is a theme that is pertinent for the discord of our own age, too. And for every age.

That great idea is underscored in a final quotation attributed to the Unbound, words probably sung by the chorus in the celebratory conclusion of this lost play:

When Strength links arms with Justice,
what mightier pair than this?

Carey Jobe is a retired attorney and judge. Prior to beginning his legal career, he was a student of Classical Literature and Latin Language. His Latin translations have appeared in The Classical Outlook, the journal of The American Classical Society. He is also a widely published poet whose work regularly appears in numerous literary journals. He lives and writes near Tallahassee, Florida.

For the first time, we offer a complete English translation of Friedrich Schiller’s “The Gods of Greece.” The poem was originally composed in 25 stanzas (1788), but Schiller later revised it with Goethe after some public criticism and published a shorter 16 stanza version (1793). The latter has been the only one publicly available in English — until now.

We know Franz Schubert was especially moved by Schiller’s poem, given he composed a beautiful setting using the 19th stanza. Schubert’s musical setting captures the poem’s melancholy longing for a lost world — a world where the Beautiful still ruled over a nascent Western civilization.

Listen to Schubert’s setting of “The Gods of Greece” (Der Götter Griechenlands)

Oh beautiful world, where art thou gone?
Oh face of nature’s purest bloom, return!
Now only in the fairy land of song
Still lives a trace of that for which we yearn.
No Godhead reveals itself to my gaze;
Now desolate mourn the once blooming fields;
How from the world’s every life-giving image,
Naught but a shadow yields!

Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder
Holdes Blütenalter der Natur!
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.
Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde,
Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick,
Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen
Bilde Blieb der Schatten nur zurück.

The original version of “The Gods of Greece” dates from Schiller’s Second Period, when he was more openly critical of the religious tendencies of his age. One finds echoes of a similar theme in his most famous poem from the period, “Resignation.” The latter tells the story of a young a man who struggles with his lot in the mortal world and the fate of his immortal soul. Specifically, he struggles with his decision to lead a life of faith when confronted with the prospect that he might not be rewarded in the afterlife, and that faith should rather be its own reward. But if his faith is rooted in his expectation of being rewarded for every foregone pursuit and forsaken dream on this side of life, a “Spirit Voice” reminds him:

Eternity will not redeem the hours
And minutes man lets slip away.

Similarly, “The Pilgrim” describes a man searching for the promise land in the East. He wanders across the world in hopes of reaching the fabled destination. Finally, weary and spent of all hope, he remarks:

Alas, no way could take me there;
The heavens stainless and so clear
Can never kiss the sea below —
And there is never here.

However, rather than being an overt criticism of Christianity (as usually interpreted by critics) or a Pagan paean, “The Gods of Greece” explores the tension inherent in the rigid formalism of Enlightenment philosophy and its detrimental effects on both the spiritual and worldly life of man.

Schiller expresses a sentiment similar to Keats in his Lamia, where he famously writes:

“Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—
Unweave a rainbow…”
― John Keats, Lamia

In Schiller’s eyes, those who worshipped Reason or Philosophy by sacrificing the sanctity of the heart were just as capable of unleashing monsters as those who blindly worshipped the heart at the expense of their God-given reason. As Schiller elaborates in his philosophical works, a system which only allows the development of one at the expense of the other is destined to produce a denatured humanity — one constantly at war with itself (and others).

Schiller believed Beauty held the key to refining and developing both mankind’s sensual and formal drives to their full maturity — the prerequisite for an age of Reason. No heart could be truly mature without developing its rational faculties and no reasoning mind could attain its full potential without nourishing the sacred emotions of the heart. Only through Beauty were the seemingly opposed natures united in their mutual development.

Schiller called those individuals who achieved this harmonious union of their faculties “Beautiful souls.”

He famously laid out the underlying philosophy for his ideas in his 27 Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind — his most important work on aesthetics and philosophy.

So “The Gods of Greece” describes the culture of Classical Greece before the rigid Formalism unleashed by Enlightenment philosophers created an unbridgeable gulf between the worlds of Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften (Art and Science), Mind and Matter, the spirit and senses. It was the paradox which Descartes, Kant and all the Enlightenment philosophes from Locke to Hume failed to resolve, and which reactionary occultists and Romantics simply muddled further, leading to the West’s current cultural and spiritual quagmire.

Schiller describes the tension between two sisters: a “harsh and earnest” one who rules the new world, and a banished “lovely sister” who once ruled the former.

The Gods of Greece

I.

When you still governed, our world was more beautiful;
The graceful blessings of your gentle hand
Descended on a happier people —
Beautiful beings in a fabled land.
For when your images still charmed each mind,
How brightly shone the world in every gaze,
When we still laid a wreathe before your shrine,
Oh Venus Amathusia!

II.

When poetry’s enticing alchemy
Still veiled the Truth in all its worldly garbs,
Life’s joyfulness swept through the world —
And mystery still stirred in every heart.
Pure Nature flourished to her highest form,
When men still freely fell in her embrace;
All was shared with initiates newborn —
Who traced in all one godly face.

III.

And there, where we’re by our wise sages told
A soulless ball of fire swims through the skies,
Helios’ blazing chariot of gold
Traversed the darkness of a speckled vault.
The Oreads once inhabited the heights,
The lovely Dryads frolicked in those trees;
And from each Naiad still more lovingly
Gushed out their lambent streams.

IV.

Once Daphne vanished in that laurel tree,
Niobe’s grief transformed her into stone;
The cries of Syrinx rang out from those reeds;
Sad Philomela warbled in that grove.
The quiet brook received Demeter’s tears
When her fair daughter found the Underworld;
The hillside echoed Aphrodite’s cries
When her Adonis met the bore.

V.

Immortals made their heavenly descent
Unto the races of Deucalion;
To vanquish Pyrrha’s daughter, the shepherd’s staff
Was taken up by old Hyperion.
Between all deities, and men, and heroes,
A happy blindness forged love’s sacred bonds.
And there, in holy Amathus, both gods
And heroes made their sacred vows.

VI.

Before her charming retinue of Graces,
Sweet Cytheria’s sacred priestesses
Devoutly knelt before her altar steps,
And shared with her their deepest wishes.
In heaven, Aphrodite proudly ruled
As sacred keeper of the magic girdle,
Wooing all races from her divine stage,
And taming Zeus’ rage, once so wild.

VII.

Heavenly and immortal was the fire
That flowed from Pindar’s hymnals,
The awesome power of Arion’s lyre,
The marble carved with Phidias’ chisels.
Fair beings in their nobler forms announced
To all their high and divine lineage.
All gods descended from the heavens’ heights
To share with men their heritage.

VIII.

More precious was the goodness of a god,
And sweeter Nature’s gifts bestowed on man;
Beneath bright Iris’ golden rainbow gleamed
More charmingly each wave upon the sand.
When clad in Himeren’s rosy-red dress,
More welcoming appeared galloping Dawn;
Inspired by Pan the shepherd god’s genius,
Each forest whispered a Faun’s song.

IX.

So lovingly was blooming youth painted
In the fairest of mortals, Ganymede;
Never was the valiant virtue tainted
Of the brave Triton’s Medusan shield;
Still gentler was the bond that Hymen wove
Between the hearts of each young loving mate.
Life’s shortening thread still delicately slipped
Between the fingers of dark Fate.

X.

A merry chant and jovial thyrsus swinger,
With panthers and his votaries, announced
The reign of the ecstatic rapture bringer.
Euphoric satyrs and fauns wildly pranced;
The Maenads in their jolting fits rose up
In praise of his immortal wine.
Thus, all paid homage to the hallowed cup,
And welcomed back their host divine.

XI.

With greater worth was every gift bestowed
Upon the ones who befriended Nature.
What greater joy there seemed in each creation!
It flowed to the created from Creator.
Thus, can one penetrate the cloudy fences,
Arriving at the seat of Understanding?
Struggling with unfathomable ideas,
I sink — with every sense now fleeing!

XII.

Your temples sprawled like kingly palaces once,
When games still granted glory to your name,
And at the festive Isthmus men announced
Charioteers with all the crowd’s acclaim.
Beautiful dances entwined all around
Your altars decked with freshly-woven wreathes,
Which welcomed proud young victors wearing crowns
Of wild-picked celery.

XIII.

The stranger was still welcomed in each home:
The shepherd gave his most beloved lamb
When hospitality to foreign guests
Was still a sacred honor to each man.
But where to turn? For is this silence now
The herald of the highest Creator?
Unfathomable, like him, is His form —
Must I renounce all for this savior?

XIV.

No spectral skeleton descended on
The dying man, foreboding his life’s end;
A kiss drew the last breath from his pale lips,
When solemnly, a quiet spirit came
And lowered its torch. Beautiful, revered
Bright images still garbed Necessity;
And even Fate pierced through the worldly veil
With strange familiarity.

XV.

For by the spirit’s most exacting laws
No wild barbarian from mankind’s early dawn
Could judge, whose cold blue eyes had never thawed
With tears — sweet beings by a woman borne.
Even Orcus’ stern justice scales belonged
To Minos, grandson of a mortal male;
And then the Thracian’s trembling zither songs
Made even the Erinyes wail.

XVI.

His happy shadows joyfully retraced
Life’s treasures through the Elysian grain;
True Love found for itself a husband’s grace,
Charioteers were followed by their trains.
Orpheus’ strains spoke both to stones and men,
Alcestis fell back in Admetus’ arms;
Orestes found once more his dearest friend,
Philoctetes his sacred darts.

XVII.

But lost and never to return again
Is all that I had known of this fair world,
The earthly bliss can never be regained —
Gone is the life once breathed into these words.
I shudder at this strange, unsought-for mercy,
Which exiles all of us from this fair world;
Such that the lightening joys which strengthened duty,
Must now give way to ones untold.

XVIII.

When higher stakes still spurred the sturdy wrestler
Along the winding path of labors,
Those who accomplished noble deeds and feats
Still reached Olympus’ starlit bowers.
In silence, deities bowed solemnly
Before the one who claimed the souls of men;
The sailor’s prow still cut across the sea
With help from two bright Twins.

XIX.

Oh beautiful world, where art thou gone?
Oh face of nature’s purest bloom, return!
Now only in the fairy land of song
Still lives a trace of that for which we yearn.
No Godhead reveals itself to my gaze;
Now desolate mourn the once blooming fields;
How from the world’s every life-giving image,
Naught but a shadow yields!

XX.

A frost devours the flowerets of May;
They wilt amid the gales from Northern strand.
Now to enrich the worship of one God
A universe of deities are banned.
Weeping, I search the starry spheres in vain,
But I can’t find you anywhere, Selene!
I call across the woods and darkened dale —
The echoes dare not answer me!

XXI.

Estranged from all of Joy’s celestial charm,
Delighted no longer by her perfection,
No longer guided by a steady arm,
No longer enriched by our devotion:
Made cold to glorious art’s charm and honor,
Just like the droning of a pendulum,
She serves the laws of gravity alone —
A disenchanted Nature!

XXII.

To breathe new life into the coming world,
She digs her grave amid the fallow fields;
The paling moon upon her solemn spindle
Now surrenders to uniformity.
For having been deemed useless by this world,
The bards now lead the gods back to their home.
Having outgrown her once enchanting bonds,
Earth wanders every night alone.

XXIII.

Friendless, with neither kin nor equal,
No divine goddesses, no loyal son,
Someone else now rules the mysterious ether,
Upon dejected Saturn’s ancient throne.
Blessed beings once rejoiced over him,
But now in every lifeless field and valley,
Across the eons of unfolding time
One face recurs eternally.

XXIV.

You gods, whom sculptors with their marbles praised,
And in who’s likeness they resembled,
If I could live in that creator’s shadow,
What next would I find closest to a mortal,
Which gave birth to our earthly human kind?
The first and noble worm is all we find.
When gods were closer to the humankind,
Each soul felt itself more divine.

XXV.

But these rays strike me prostrate to the ground;
I languish beneath the Creator’s mind!
I ache, but give me wings, or send a scale
So we might measure you — or be so kind,
And call the strict and earnest goddess back,
The one in whom the glaring Truth’s undressed.
Return her lovely sister back to Earth
And keep the harsh one for the next.

Translation © David B. Gosselin

Featured in New Lyre Spring-Summer 2026

Subscribe now

Read our magazine

There will be times,
oh my child,
when it all seems hopeless.

When the trees all have QR codes
and the bank boys and balrogs
are holding all the cards.

When your refrigerator tells you
“THE IRANIAN PEOPLE YEARN FOR FREEDOM”
and your electric shaver can smell
if you’ve been reading Parenti.

When you’re on a first-name basis
with the police surveillance drones
and your colonoscopy screen
in the exam room
is running ads for Northrop Grumman.

And it is true,
oh my child,
it is true that the machine is mighty
and that its armor is very thick.

It is true that the bank boys
have long fingers
and they are putting marbles
in our minds.

The sky is red,
and the moon has a FOR SALE sign,
and parts of Palestinians
are turning up in our tap water.

But oh my child, do not be daunted,
and oh my child, do not despair.

There are forces within us
the Flock cameras can’t see.
There are depths within us
not even the balrogs can reach.

Beneath all the doomscroll addiction psychosis,
beneath all the oceans of trauma and toil,
a creature is stirring
and opening its eyes,
its eyes full of primordial déjà vu,
its eyes full of Big Bang recursions
full of eyes
watching eyes
watching eyes
watching eyes.

It looks at you,
and you meet its gaze.

Everything goes still.

You remember what you are.

Oh my sweet, darling child,
you see it now.

You see that This
could never be contained.

Subscribe now

Caitlin’s Newsletter

Articles, poems, stories and thoughts by Caitlin Johnstone and Tim Foley. Everything published here will always remain free to read.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Caitlin Johnstone is an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz. Her collection of poems is entitled Poems for Rebels.

My gods, this smoke, it chokes, and shrouds their eyes,
the smog hangs low and clogs their ears with soot!
If the constant clanging ever stopped, they’d still
hear nothing but their own hot blood rushing
in their ears and down the palace steps. Oh Zeus!
I cannot tell if it is thunder or
the crash of bronze on bronze that falls on me
from heaven. Why waste breath to cry the truth
or hiss in sleepers’ ears, “Oh, Ilium,
our fathers’ town, is doomed to burn to dust.”

What a scorching burden Prometheus has left!
These visions crowd my mind like teeming shores
of Acheron. If I could only wash
these thoughts in Lethe would the city fall
the same? Please listen, listen, bend your head
my way, you good old king, I fear I’ll die
a thousand times a day, the eagle tears
again at my liver, and my heart and stomach
turn: this, this is the price of sacred truth.

They’ve brought our Hector’s body back. His skin
is mostly gone, red-raw and smeared with dirt
and ash. I dreamed this scene three weeks ago.
His wife wails, keens and shakes, I try to give
her comfort, offer her my hand to hold,
but still she rasps, “I am alone in our halls,
alone!” The cart tilts, stumbles over stones,
my brother’s body shifts with every jolt,
as though he were a child in restless sleep.

Featured in New Lyre Spring-Summer 2026

Subscribe now

Order New Lyre

Elena Streett is about to complete her B.A. in creative writing at Oklahoma Baptist University, after which she hopes to teach literature and pursue an M.F.A. in creative writing. Her poems have previously appeared in Vita Poetica, The Oakland Arts Review, and Trampoline.

Watch: Trailer for our new film

Read our magazine

What ideas took root during the 1960s and how have these ideas continued to shape Western society? Who were those individuals behind the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s and what concepts shaped their vision for a new Transhumanist age?

Most importantly, were these visionaries really new Prometheans, or has a new generation of Prometheans yet to emerge?

What will follow is a tale of Transhumanists, human reproduction, and the ongoing battle to shape the image of modern man.

Subscribe now

If you’re enjoying our work, consider becoming a premium member and supporting our expanding roster of projects and productions.

Read our exclusive magazine

Many who hear it picture outer space—
in that uncanny, almost human song,
the sound of all that’s alien to us.

But no, that’s not quite right. The void is silent—
our utter opposite, devoid of voice.
This is something else. Closer, stranger.

A poor soprano’s ghost betrayed and drowned,
resounding through distortions of the sea;
a children’s doll, yearning to be alive.

But stranger still, the bare reality:
the lonesome, half-imagined sympathy
of brain and air’s shared electricity.

Tripping the Light

Daylight’s veil has lifted:
the dark and lifeless infinite
now stretches forth to meet his living eye.

The reeling child, distracted,
instinctive, seeks his absence in
the beauty of the absence of the sky.

There, shining angels borne upon the void
self-immolate and thereby light our world,
and blaze to certain death.

Adrift in mindless martyrdom,
they circle the dread altar of their gravity,
a cavity of black and holy depth.

This ritual is lost upon the child,
who has not yet evolved to worship nothing.
He revels in each scintillating star.

He traces in his mind fresh constellations
that link indifferent depths to human dreams.
Not for mere consolation, but the far-

out thrill in order toward which faith advances.
And, like the stars suspended in the dark,
he makes light, and he dances.

Featured in New Lyre Spring-Summer 2026

Subscribe now

Become a member and access our entire New Lyre Magazine vault.

Elijah Perseus Blumov is a poet, critic, and host of the poetry analysis podcast, Versecraft. His poems have been published by or are forthcoming from periodicals such as Literary Matters, Birmingham Poetry Review, Able Muse Review, Think Journal, and others. He lives in Chicago.

Versecraft

The most rigorous poetic and prosodic analysis on the internet-- with occasional doses of fiery, old-school literary criticism. Listen to the original podcast for free at versecraft.buzzsprout.com

By Elijah Perseus Blumov

Order a Copy

Watch Exiting the Cave

Dr. Quan Le comes to us from his portal on the other side of the Cave to break down the subtleties and psychological profiles of the cast of characters inhabiting the Cave(s). We discussed the host of characters that populate the cave world, both on the inside and outside. Among other things, we paid particular attention to those who usually fly under the radar: the shadow casters themselves.

Who creates the shadows and who runs the cave(s) in 2026? How much has really changed since Plato’s time? And are there perhaps many kinds of shadows, perhaps some nobler than others?

Dr. Quan helps us break it all down in this latest episode of Exiting the Cave.

Subscribe now

If you’re enjoying our content and would like to support our productions, please take out a premium subscription.

Read the latest edition of our journal

Watch: Exiting the Cave

Yeats’s Sages

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
as in the gold mosaic of a wall,
— Sailing to Byzantium

Come out and let me bathe, for I have wounds
that merit this redemption in the flame
and you have come here first like Isaac’s son
and stolen that which Esau had by right.

There is no more, you are wet to the bone
and bone itself must soon dissolve away
unless you come forth, back to us on earth
who wait your revelations. End your stay
and I will take your place and take as long
a turn as all the rest of you have done,
deaf to the voices of my ministry,
hard to the soft entreaties of my sons.

Do you not see how shadows creep to you?
The straight hot shaft of noon leans to the west;
your teachers are already lost in night
your children stand in waiting for the dawn.

You are stately, you are rooted trees
and cannot move beyond this time you live,
although the truth is passing from your grip.

The Nihilist

Down the roaring avalanche of light
I flashed and dwindled,
fled beyond the utmost range of sight
and into caverns under shadowed stones
that hid me from the leering face of God.

Far from any place, I take my place,
and by unmaking, make:

The night is dark because I will it so.
I have crowded all the light to stars
and one by one I squeeze them shut
until the night is perfect.

The darkness shall be smooth and bottomless.
This is not blindness,
this is undistracted watchfulness:
when perfect eyes see nothing, that is beauty;
when perfect ears hear nothing,
that is music.

Featured in New Lyre - Spring/Summer 2026

Subscribe now

Stuart Anderson teaches physics, mathematics, and engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. After many years with science as his focus, he is now switching poetry to the front burner to see how that feels. His poetry tends towards the philosophical or mythic and is often written through a persona. He was awarded the 2010 Thomas Merton Prize for poetry of the sacred and has two poems forthcoming in Blue Unicorn.

Read the full issue

Become a member

Watch

Discover the latest

Over 2300 years ago, Plato challenged the poets of the ancient world: would those who excelled in the art of image-making become capable of leading their audiences out of the cave? Or would they choose to simply remain inside the cave and make themselves useful — by making the shadows more delightful?

In Plato’s time, the poets had the most popular and influential platform by which to spread their message: the Classical Greek stage. They were quoted by philosophers, statesmen and rhetoricians alike in order to give their arguments and speeches a semi-divine authority, much like one might try to “scripture proof” his argument in order to appear superior in his discourse.

So Plato knew that the songs and images of the poets shaped the emotional and spiritual matrix of Ancient Greece, much like mass media and film have shaped the images of the twentieth and twenty-first century. He recognized that any serious statesmen who ignored the role of art and image-making in his society was doomed to watch his Republic get swallowed by the sands of time.

For those reasons, it became clear to Plato after his short-lived political ambitions that the absence of Lady Philosophy from the stage would inevitably lead to great danger. For what good could come from depictions of passion, war, vengeance and other spectacles if Lady Philosophy wasn’t give her own rightful voice and stage-time? How would the majority of audiences even know how to feel about the others in the absence of Her discerning light?

As Plato recognized, the political turmoil, disastrous wars and corruption of Classical Greece were simply downstream consequences of having neglected Lady Philosophy in the first place.

Today, we can observe that our own twentieth century is also a perfect dramatization of precisely the kind of tragedy described by Plato.

Plato had asked a very fair question: could the power of the poets’ charms perhaps be used to entice or invite audiences to seek reality outside the cave? Or were these image-makers ultimately no different than mere rhetoricians or sophists? That is, if rhetoricians were judged on how eloquently they spoke and sophists on how erudite they sounded, then poets could simply be judged based on how well they crafted images and how strongly those images made people feel.

In Plato’s ideal Republic, however, poetry wasn’t simply a matter of how well-crafted your poetical images were; poetry was not above Truth or morality. Further, he argued that Wisdom, Sophia, should not only be loved by Philosophers proper, or by poets and a few other initiates, but by everyone. And poetry, the realm of music and image-making, was arguably one of the most powerful means by which to expose larger audiences to the higher questions of Truth, Justice, Beauty and Goodness. For poets had the power to make said Truth more delightful and memorable, to give the highest virtues both a mesmerizing sound and form.

Thus, the theatre was where Greeks could go to not only to be entertained by such poetry and drama, but to be cultivated, to learn of their history, their gods, their own psyches, and their civilization — and how they should actually feel about all these things.

Answering Plato’s Challenge

Recognizing Plato’s insights, Friedrich Schiller in his ninth letter on The Aesthetic Education of Man wrote about Beauty’s role in fully cultivating both the heart and mind through fine art:

“The seriousness of your principles will frighten them away from you, but they will accept them in play; their taste is more chaste than their heart, and that is where you must take hold of the shy one who is fleeing you. You will besiege their maxims in vain, to no avail will you condemn their deeds, but you can try your formative hand with their indolence. Chase away what is arbitrary, the frivolity, the crudeness from their pleasures, and in that way you shall banish these, unnoticed, from their deeds and finally their beliefs. Wherever you find them, surround them with noble, with grand, with brilliant forms, surround them with symbols of what is excellent, until the appearance vanquishes reality, and art vanquishes nature.”

Schiller and Shelley would answer to Plato’s challenge in the 18th and 19th century, arguing that when wrapped in poetry’s magical garbs, Truth could be softened and beautified, such that it might welcome rather than frighten larger audiences.

So today we ask the same question: can and should poets be tasked with creating more than just well-crafted images and temporary cathartic states, which was the essential standard proffered in The Poetics by Plato’s most famous detractor, Aristotle?

In a word: should poets simply content themselves with making the images on the cave wall more delightful, or has the time once again come for poets to heed the famous maxim, sapere aude (dare to be wise) and answer Plato’s challenge?

Today, we offer our own answer to Plato’s challenge with our ninth issue of New Lyre Magazine.

We’re proud to feature a new and very formidable roster of visionary image-makers who have not shied away from Plato’s exacting challenge, but have each done so in their own distinct and original style.

We therefore invite you all gently to read, and kindly to judge, our journal.

Order from Amazon

Read Now

Details

• 174 pages pages

• 16 contributors

• Three original short stories

• Over 100 original poems and 12 new translations

  ---

Download Spring-Summer 2026 Below

Read more

What were the real lessons of the Woodstock generation? I was joined by poet Daniel Leach, one of the attendees of the original Woodstock festival and a member of the generation whose sound was shaped by the events of 1969. The author of the original narrative verse poem “The Devil at Woodstock” helps us unravel the hope and tragedy of the 1960s generation, shedding a new perspective on what both the hippie conspiracy theorists and official historians usually get wrong.

Join us as we revisit one of the most formative moments of the twentieth-century and its continuing legacy.

Subscribe now

Daniel Leach is a poet living in Houston, Texas. He has spent much of his life fighting for the ideals of classical culture and poetry. His volumes of poetry, compiling over 20 years of composition are “Voices on the Wind” and “Places the Soul Goes.”

Listen to Daniel’s Poem

Read Daniel’s complete poem

Watch the full documentary film

Read more of Daniel’s poetry

The Chained Muse

Hymn to the Noosphere

Featured in Issue One of New Lyre Magazine…

Read more

3 years ago · David Gosselin

The Chained Muse

Windows, The Vale of Soul-Making & Other Poetry

Featured in New Lyre - Winter 2021…

Read more

3 years ago · David Gosselin

Hero and Leander relates the Greek legend of Hero and Leander, young lovers living in cities on opposite sides of the Hellespont, a narrow stretch of the sea in what is now northwestern Turkey, and which separates Europe and Asia. Hero is a priestess or devotee of Venus (goddess of love and beauty) in Sestos, who lives in chastity despite being devoted to the goddess of love. At a festival in honour of her deity, Venus and Adonis, she is seen by Leander, a youth from Abydos on the opposite side of the Hellespont. Leander falls in love with her, and she reciprocates, although cautiously, as she has made a vow of chastity to Venus.

A Ballad.

See ye there the ancient graying
Castles, 'cross the straits surveying,
Sunny gilded citadels,
Where the Hellespont is rolling
Waves between the high patrolling
Portals of the Dardanelles?
Hear ye how the stormy billows
Break upon the cliffs above?
Asia they have torn from Europe,
Yet they do not frighten Love.

Hearts of Hero and Leander,
Made by Cupid’s arrow fonder,
Aching from his holy pow'r.
Hero, fine as Hebe blooming,
He, through mountains gladly roaming,
Hearty in the huntsman’s bow'r.
Yet the fathers’ opposition
Drove apart the couple’s bliss,
And the sweet fruit of affection
Hung upon the precipice.

There, on Sestos’ rocky towers,
Battered by the foaming powers
Of the Hellespont’s mad swells,
Sat the lonely maiden, gazing
Toward Anydos’ coast so pleasing,
Where the hot-belovéd dwells.
Ah, to that most distant shoreline
Doth no humble footbridge sway,
From the strand no craft emerges
And yet Love did find a way.

From the Labyrinth it guides you,
With the thread that it provides you,
Makes the fool a wise man now.
Savage beasts it bends to harness,
Yokes the bull, its breath a furnace,
To the diamond-sparkling plow.
Not the Styx’s nine-fold current
Can prevent all-daring Love;
Pluto forfeits the belovéd,
Stolen to the world above.

Also through the watery surges,
Love, with fiery yearning, urges
on Leander’s courage now.
When the day’s resplendent glimmer
Fades, then the audacious swimmer
Plunges in the flood below,
Parts the waves with arms untiring,
Striving toward that dearest strand,
Where, upon the lofty platform,
Flickers now the burning brand.

In the soft arms of his lover
May the happy one recover
From the journey’s heavy trial,
'Twas for this that Love should save him,
This reward the gods all gave him
In this blissful domicile,
'Til the bordering Aurora
Wakes him from his ecstacy,
Frights him from Love’s dreamy bosom
To the cold bed of the sea.

Thirty suns did take their measures
Swiftly, as the stolen pleasures
That the happy pair had seen,
Like the wedding night’s sweet blisses,
Envied by the gods, these kisses,
Ever young and evergreen.
He has never tasted rapture,
He who never, at the verge,
Plucked the pilfered fruit of heaven
From the hellish watery scourge.

Hesper and Aurora taking
Turns, as sundown and day breaking,
Yet the lovers saw it not,
Not the hues of fall appearing,
Not the angry winter nearing
That the icy North begot.
Happily they watched the days grow
Shorter, shorter; for the use
Made of longer, longer nights, they
Offered up their thanks to Zeus.

Soon enough the scales stood even,
Days and nights divided heaven.
Hero stood upon the heights,
Watching as Apollo’s horses
Fled along their solar courses
Where the ocean joins the nights.
And the sea lay still and placid,
Like a mirror, smooth and clean;
Not a breeze’s gentle weaving
Moved the crystal-perfect scene.

Merry dolphin-troops cavorted,
In the silver-clear they sported,
All along the placid coast,
And in grey processions wending,
From the ocean’s floor ascending,
Tethys’ multicolored host.
These and these alone had witnessed
Stolen trysts beside the sea;
Hecate, from out her darkness,
Sealed their lips eternally.

Hero, gladdened by the ocean,
Spoke with coaxing, mild emotion
To the lovely element:
“Beauteous god, couldst thou betray me?
No! They lie that do portray thee
Faithless, mean and fraudulent.
False is Man, and cruel a father’s
Heart, that could my love disdain;
Ah, but thou art mild and gracious,
And art moved by lovers’ pain.”

“In these barren walls of sorrows
I should spend my sad tomorrows
Withering amongst these stones;
Yet upon thy back thou bearest
With no bridge nor boat, a dearest
Friend that I may call mine own.
Fearsome are thy depths, thy frightful
Flood of churning waves and foam,
Ah, but Love compels thy mercy,
Thou'rt by courage overcome.”

“And to thee, the god of oceans,
Eros’ bow brought strong emotions,
As when golden Aries flew,
Helle, borne upon her brother,
Bloomed in beauty like no other,
High above thy sea below.
Captured by her charms, thou’st quickly
Snatched the prize that Aries bore,
To thy dark abyss thou’st swept her,
Down upon the ocean floor.”

“Goddess and inamorato
In the deepest water grotto,
Now she lives eternally;
Helpful in her haunted fashion,
Now she tames thy savage passion,
Guides the sailor home from sea.
Lovely Helle, noble goddess,
Blesséd one, may I implore,
Bring my love across the channel,
Lead him safely to my door!”

And then soon the torrent darkened,
From her porch the maiden hearkened
As she lit the signal flare.
With the trusted sign providing
Light through empty realms, and guiding,
It should lead her lover there.
From afar it starts to rustle,
Foam appears upon the sea,
Stars begin to wink and vanish,
Storm approaches, dreadfully.

Night descends upon the surface
Of the vast and roiling Pontus,
Water plunges from the clouds;
From their ghastly, rocky niches
Storms emerge, and lightning twitches
Through the mist that all enshrouds.
Churning, now, the great abysses,
Each more monstrous than before,
Yawning, like a hellish vengeance,
Opens up the ocean’s floor.

“Woe is me!” the maid lamented,
“Mercy, Zeus!” and so repented,
“Ah, what have I dared to crave!
If the gods have heard my praying,
If my love the price is paying
In the travails of the waves!”
All the birds that know the ocean
Head for home in hasty flight,
All the tempest-tested vessels
Safer harbors seek tonight.

“Yes, he gave himself to daring,
For it is a proud, unsparing
God that spurs him on to swim.
When he last did stand before me,
Love’s most holy oath he swore me,
Only death releases him.
Now the angry sea surrounds him
With the ocean’s nemesis,
Ah! This very moment, it shall
Hurl him down to the abyss!”

“Pontus, thy deceitful silence
Hid thy treachery and violence,
Like a mirror before mine eyes;
Calm thy ripples, mild thy season,
'Til he’s captured by thy treason
In thy faithless realm of lies.
In the middle of thy torrent,
Now the pathway back is closed,
Now unto the poor betrayed one
All thy terrors are exposed!”

Furious, the storm is rending,
High as mountaintops ascending
Swells the sea, the billows break
Foaming in the awful suction;
Sturdy ships of oak construction
No such voyage undertake.
And the winds have quenched the beacon
That would guide the swimmer through;
Terror beckons in the waters,
Terror at the landing too.

And she prays to Aphrodite,
Begs her to appease the mighty
Waves, the ocean tempest-torn,
And, to calm the wind’s vexation,
Offers up for immolation
Now, a bull with golden horn.
All the goddesses below us!
All the gods that dwell on high!
Hero bids them, pour some soothing
Oil upon the storming sea.

“Listen to my cry resounding,
Rise up from thy green surroundings,
Blessed Leukothea, please!
When the sailor shakes with fear, then
Oftentimes dost thou appear, and
Save him from the angry seas.
Reach to him thy mystic garment,
Reach to him thy sacred veil,
Lift him, unafflicted, from a
Murky grave beneath the gale!”

And the savage winds are ending,
Eos’ flashing steed ascending
Up the heavens’ thoroughfare.
In its bed, with tranquil motion,
Mirror-smooth becomes the ocean,
Brightly smile the sea and air.
Now the waves are gently breaking
Up against the craggy land,
And the peaceful, playful ripples
Wash a corpse up on the sand.

Yes, 'tis he, though he be broken,
Honored is the vow last spoken!
Swiftly doth she recognize.
Such a silence is she keeping,
No lamenting and no weeping,
Stares with cold, despairing eyes.
Down into the barren depths she
Gazes, in the Aether’s glow,
And a lofty, noble fire
Reddens her pale visage now.

“Yes, I know ye, awful beings!
Stringently your rights decreeing,
Horrifying and malign.
Though my fate, I can't postpone it,
Happiness supreme, I've known it,
And the sweetest lot was mine.
While I lived I served thy temple,
Thine own priestess have I been,
Now I sacrifice me gladly,
Noble Venus, mighty Queen!”

And with all her garments flying,
Hero leaps the tower, hying
Down into the foaming waves.
There resides the ocean god, he
Tumbles high her holy body,
And the sea becomes her grave.
Satisfied with this, his plunder,
Smiling, gladly forth he goes,
Pouring from his endless urn the
Current, that forever flows.

Translation © Daniel Platt

Share

Subscribe now

No glass is pure
Or vacant of a scene.
My window shows
A robin’s red and knows
The sky, serene,
Blue, broad, and sure.

Glass is not still,
But dapples, sways our sight
Of lead limbed tree,
It’s panes not blank, nor free,
But quick with light;
Light’s note and trill.

So sacral glass
Admits the infinite
And moving blaze
Which burgeons in all days;
Becomes, in it,
The light, just as

The light becomes
The color, shaped and stained:
Bemattered spirit,
And we, in vision, near it.
Yet what is gained?
All light succumbs.

Light’s waves lapse still,
Its particles dispersed;
Or else it hides
Behind the titan sides
Of Earth, immersed
In night’s old chill.

Yet instant stands
Experience’s shape
Before the mind,
Truth’s body now divined;
Her breast and nape,
Her limbs and hands.

But memory
Keeps no perfected vision;
The blinds are drawn,
The photograph is gone
In time’s quick scission;
The faces flee.

The life of things
Is known, at least, and seen,
In fragments, pieced
Together. What has ceased
To be has been,
Yet memory rings.

I hope the seed
Of images abused,
Unworshipped, shattered,
Now pollinated, scattered,
Will bloom, re-fused,
Our rose of need;

That rose which blooms
— Despite the subtle wars
Of mind and world —
In fire that’s jeweled and pearled
From heaven’s corridors
And lighted rooms.

Featured in New Lyre - Spring/Summer 2026

Subscribe now

Michael Yost is a poet and essayist living in rural New Hampshire with his wife and children. He is earning his M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas in Houston Texas. His essays and poems have been published in places like The University Bookman, Dappled Things, Crisis Magazine, the St. Austin Review, The Brazen Head and Hearth and Field. Follow him at The Weight of Form on Substack.

The Weight of Form

Formalist Verse & Essays

By Michael Yost

Read the full issue

Forthcoming—New Lyre Spring/Summer 2026

Watch Exiting the Cave

What happens to those creatives who manage to make it out of the Cave? Is it worth it and what challenges await them along the way, or on the other side? What power or responsibility might such individuals have?

From the deeper meaning behind many of Hollywood’s most popular productions to the secret inspirations of some of the most beloved shadow-casters in the West, we take a survey of the many “Backrooms” of Western predictive programming.

Join us as we exit the cave and blast off into hyperspace with Matthew Ehret.

Subscribe now

Matthew Ehret is the editor-in-chief of The Canadian Patriot Review and Director of The Rising Tide Foundation. He has written the four volume Untold History of Canada series, four volume Clash of the Two Americas series, the Revenge of the Mystery Cult Trilogy and Science Unshackled: Restoring Causality to a World in Chaos. He is also co-host of the weekly Breaking History on Badlands Media and host of Pluralia Dialogos (which airs every second Sunday at 11am ET here).

Matt Ehret's Insights

Historical analysis, geopolitics, cultural warfare and other studies in Conspiracy Science

By Matthew Ehret

Watch Matt’s Latest Film

Matt Ehret's Insights

Our newest film is now available! "Black Sun Rising: The Esoteric Roots of Fascism Past and Present"

The new Canadian Patriot Review film will reveal the dark esoteric underpinnings of Blavatsky’s Luciferian society, how a ‘secret doctrine’ influenced a young Adolf when still a student run by a New Templar order of Cistercians, the creation of Zionism from the bowels of Anglo-German Freemasonic agencies, and the strange happenings in Wewelsburg Castle that saw occultists attempt to channel demons to assist in the invocation of a new thousand year reich…

Listen now

3 months ago · 107 likes · 21 comments · Matthew Ehret

Read Our Magazine

I.

One morning, I found lilacs in the rain:
The sun was mute, the birds had ceased their song,
The skies were dimmed by gaunt and graying clouds—
The lilacs shivered in the dawn.

Each one seemed too sweet to outlive the morn,
Thickening the air with its dying breath;
I thought of all the beauties May has borne—
How sweetly each one welcomes Death.

II.

How dreamy was the new spring day:
The streams like pristine angels sighed,
Winds swept the woods like Aeolian harps,
Only the lilacs seemed too shy.

Was mid-May’s sun not strong enough,
Or did the soft breeze come and whisper
Tidings of some approaching season—
Did she mention the coming of winter?

III.

I’ve once again wandered into the garden
Where I used to play as a little child
When a thousand flowery faces greeted me,
All of them lovely and wild.

The dreamy lavender serenely swayed,
Sending its fragrant kisses through the air,
Until the gentle breeze chased them away,
Like children laughing, free of care.

The shining dew dripped from the rose’s calyx,
Staining its crown of verdant sepals,
'Til May arrived with her brilliant rains
And spring gleamed in a thousand petals.

But of all the flowery faces I saw there,
These stood out more than all the others:
The vernal lilacs—ready to relinquish
Their breath amid the early hours.

Their fragrance stirred something deep in my soul
As I made my way through their flowery fane—
I felt something I’d never felt before
From those Lilacs in the rain.

For the soft spring-time showers now distilled
To an understanding that left me cold:
How even the sweetest of things must die
As our youth fades and we grow old.

And so I smile on this beautiful morning,
My tears falling through the perfumed air
As floods of sweet new faces welcome me
And sprightful birds trill everywhere.

The beauties of May welcome me once more,
And they flood my soul with a precious pain—
May the briefness of their beauty haunt me
Like those Lilacs in the rain.

Appearing in New Lyre - Spring/Summer 2026

Subscribe now

David Gosselin is a writer, researcher, translator and filmmaker in Montreal, Canada. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Age of Muses and New Lyre Magazine.

Share Age of Muses

Days Away: New Lyre Spring-Summer 2026

Stay Tuned for our New Summer Mixtape 2026

What started with some legitimate skepticism about a supposedly gifted autistic savant turned into a strange story involving Cambridge scientists, Epstein funding and Transhumanist magic tricks in the “backrooms” of modern education.

Plato’s allegory of the cave famously describes a world where credulous cave dwellers believe the shadows they observe on a cave wall are reality, despite the fact that the shadows are orchestrated by unseen shadow casters. But what if there wasn’t only one cave, but in fact many different caves?

Mathew Crawford joins us as we navigate through the many entrances and exits of our modern brave new world cave system, formally known as “education.”

Join us as we venture behind the curtain.

Mathew Crawford won numerous national math championships as a student before attending Washington University in St. Louis on a Compton Fellowship where he studied mathematics and worked on the Human Genome Project at the Institute for Biomedical Computing.

Rounding the Earth Newsletter

Pandemic, Bitcoin, education, finance, science, health, economics, statistics, and other topics that need attention.

By Mathew Crawford

Subscribe now

If you’re enjoying our content and want to support our projects, the easiest way is to become a premium subscriber.

Read Mathew’s Latest Article

Rounding the Earth Newsletter

Epstein, Transhumanism, and the Boy With the Incredible Brain

Suppose there was a glitch in the Matrix that enough people could recognize all at once…

Read more

3 months ago · 147 likes · 5 comments · Mathew Crawford

Watch the latest from Age of Muses

Companions

Composing the flock I thought I heard
When wonder drew me out the door,
A solitary mockingbird,
Busily being more,

Absorbed in his little crowd of sounds,
A parody of me,
Was gathering in his singleness
Some songs for company.

Who Long Kept Hid

I prayed to stars, when I was young,
To lure love where I lay
Lone as a shore that calls a sea
The tide has turned away.

Love did not come, and oh they seemed
Indifferent to my cry,
Who long kept hid how love could be
A kindness to deny.

Then Pines

How spring’s first green is gold
the not yet weeping
willows show,
when in the sketch called April, they
like faint forsythias glow.

Then pines,
like men who must endure
though all their treasure pass,
mark summer’s end where fall’s first change
lies golden in the grass.

Featured in New Lyre - Spring/Summer 2025

Subscribe now

Tom Merrill is a poet, painter and photographer who prefers to let his words, paintings and photographs speak for themselves. His latest book, Time in Eternity, can be purchased from Ancient Cypress Press by clicking the hyperlinked book title. In the past he published as T. Merrill.

Coming Soon: New Lyre Spring-Summer 2026

Watch Our Shows and Films

In this first episode of our Exiting the Cave series, we’re joined by Adam Sedia for a deep-dive on the uncensored story of the Enlightenment. From the materialist dogmas of the Enlightenment era to the AI Armageddon, we revisit some of the convenient myths propagated in modern academia and mainstream discourse—myths that continue to misshape the thought, culture and ideas of the twenty-first century.

Subscribe now

To support our shows and content, please take out a premium subscription.

Coming Soon: New Lyre Spring-Summer 2026

Watch some old school episodes