INTRODUCTION
although he had had a part in all the enterprise (l. 331). The whole point of the character of Okeanos was that he never had a part in anything. "Be still," Prometheus counsels him, "and keep thy safe remove" (l. 344).
Hermes, the herald of Zeus, appears at the end of the play as a sort of foil to Hephaistos at the beginning. In his tone of insolent triumph the spirit of the new rule finds voice. Where Hephaistos is sympathetic and sorrowful, Hermes preaches and exults. In one way this scene would appeal to an ancient spectator as it does no longer to a modern reader. Hermes was the patron and typical rep esentative of a class with which he was familiar—the class of heralds. And the qualities shown by Hermes on this occasion are just those for which heralds were unpopular: they had the insolence of flunkeys; their office was considered one unworthy of a free man, while the haughtiness and brutality, with which they exercised it, made them detested. (Compare the Egyptian herald in the Supplices, and Euripides, Troades, 423 f.; Herakleidai, 293 f.)
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