INTRODUCTION
cow could not be a dramatis persona. Her change of shape was therefore reduced to her merely having horns. It is thus that she appears in the Prometheus, and thus also in the numerous works of art, which were influenced by the dramatic tradition.[1]
Why Io comes at all into the Prometheus is not easy to say. Her connections with the main story are of the slightest. They are simply that she, like Prometheus, is a monument of the tyranny of Zeus, and that she is the ancestress of Herakles, the destined deliverer. It is obvious, however, that in order to bring these points of contact into prominence, it was not necessary for Prometheus to narrate her wanderings, past and future, at elaborate length. No one can fail to see that these geographical descriptions are an object in themselves and the main purpose for which the poet introduced Io. The geographical parts of the play were perhaps considerably longer even than they now appear, in the original text. The motives, which led Aeschylus to amplify his drama in this
- ↑ See Engelmann. "De Ione dissertatio archæologica." Halle (1868).
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