"Prometheus is best known to modern readers as the Greek god who stole fire from the other gods, gave it to human beings, and was cruelly punished for that theft, tortured daily by an eagle that ate his ever-regenerating liver. This story has made him doubly an emblem of resistance to power, since he embodies both wily subversion and stubborn endurance. It also associates him closely with human beings; the gift of fire, which in many accounts gives rise to and stands for technological achievement and creativity, makes him our benefactor, while his punishment makes him our fellow sufferer, subject as mortals are to the will of the ruling gods. Prometheus Bound dramatises a part of the myth of Prometheus that falls between the theft and the well-known punishment and looks backward and forward to other events. Immobilised by his chains, the god can see beyond them, and takes his hearers travelling through distant regions and into past and future as he tells his own story and the stories of others." -- from the Introduction