Hephæstus proceeds to chain him, but with many protests, not only because Prometheus' act seems over-punished, but because he is Prometheus' kinsman. Would that some other hand (He cries) "Had drawn the lot To do this deed!" To which Might replies All things may be, but this: To dictate to the gods. There's one that's free, One only--Jove. And Hephæstus sullenly acquiesces, as he beats away at his task, "I know it, and am dumb." --Amid similar talk--of protest from Vulcan and pitiless menace from Might--the great blacksmith proceeds to force an adamantine bolt through the breast of Prometheus, then to nail his feet to the rock, and so at last cries, in relief, Let us away, He's fettered, limb and thew. But Might must have his last pitiless speech. "There lie, he exults,-- And feed thy pride on this bare rock, Filching god's gifts for mortal men. What man Shall free thee from these woes? Thou hast been called In vain the Provident: (_pro-vident_, same as pro-metheus, he who looks ahead, who provides, the provident.) had thy soul possessed The virtue of thy name, thou had'st foreseen These cunning toils, and had'st unwound thee from them. Here all depart but Prometheus. Up to this time the Titan has maintained a proud silence. He now breaks into that large invocation which seems still to assault our physical ears across the twenty odd centuries. O divine Æther, and swift-winged Winds, And Fountains of the rivers and multitudinous Laughter of ocean, and thou Earth, Born mother of us all, and thou bright round Of the all-seeing Sun, you I invoke! Behold what ignominy of causeless wrongs I suffer from the gods, myself a god! (This, by the way, is one of those passages which our elder poets seem to have regarded as somehow lying outside the pale of moral law--like umbrellas--and which they have therefore appropriated without a thought of blushing. Byron, in _Manfred_, and Shelley, in his _Prometheus Unbound_, have quite fairly translated parts of it.) Enter now a chorus of Oceanides, and these continue throughout the play to perform the functions of exciting sympathy for the Protagonist, and of calling upon him for information when it becomes necessary that the audience should know this and that fact essential to the intelligibility of the action. For example, after the Oceanides have alighted from their wind-borne car, and have condoled with the sufferer, Æschylus makes them the medium of drawing from Prometheus the recital of his wrongs, and thus of freshly placing that whole tremendous story before the minds of his audience. Speak now, say the chorus, "And let us know the whole offence Jove charges thee withal." And Prometheus relates