30 PHY Frye 
were not quite clear in his own mind. While he refrains from 
justifying Prometheus, it is equally significant that he does not 
exert himself to justify Zeus either. Rather he represents him 
as himself obnoxious to justice—wherein, to be sure, he seems 
to have followed his traditions. For his own part, however, he 
is by no means sure that the law of Zeus is a moral law; while as 
for his act itself he evidently regards it as abhorrent in its ex- 
tremity and depicts it as an act of violence—a zafos in the tech- 
nically Aristotelian sense. Hence his reserves. He will not 
gainsay the offense, but his heart is divided. If both are liable— 
for does not fate impend upon Zeus also?—then he seems to feel 
as though the fault of the god excused or minimized that of the 
Titan. There is something wrong somewhere—with the institu- 
tion of Zeus, perhaps. Of one thing alone he is perfectly certain 
—that order is better than chaos. The rule of Zeus may be 
arbitrary, it may rest on force; and yet it is a rule. It may not 
be thoroughly equitable as yet, as an institution it may need 
rectification; but it is better than confusion, it is the one means 
to security and stability. He who resists and defies it, is guilty 
of an attempt to subvert the provisional moral government in the 
interests of anarchy. There is no help for it: he is an agitator, 
a disturber of the peace; he must be quelled. 
Prometheus, then, is the revolutionary. He is the first of 
mutineers, and to this fact he owes his fortune as the great 
romantic and humanitarian symbol. He belongs to the race of 
dissidents, nonconformists, insurgents, or whatever name they 
may be called, who revolt against a necessary discipline, tradi- 
tional or established, in the name of a lawless and indeterminate 
ideal. No wonder that he received an apotheosis in the age 
which promoted revolution to the rank of a political institution. 
He is one of that dangerous class of reformers who refuse to 
proceed by due process of law, who are impatient of its restraints 
and delays and would suddenly take the execution of justice into 
their own hasty hands. Like them he obeys no higher principle 
than his own sympathies; he will justify the means by the end 
and shelter in the day of judgment under the fairness of his 
intentions. He is the classical embodiment of individual justice ; 
328 
