AHASUERUS: You mean that Time, which corrodes everything, did not want these chains?

PROMETHEUS: They were the work of divine hands: Vulcan forged them. Two messengers from heaven came and chained me to the rock, and an eagle, like that one over there flying across the horizon, pecked at my liver, without ever consuming it entirely. This I endured for countless ages. You cannot imagine the agony.

AHASUERUS: Is this a trick? You really are Prometheus? So it was not some dream concocted by the ancient imagination?

PROMETHEUS: Look at me; touch these hands. See if I exist.

AHASUERUS: So Moses lied to me. You, Prometheus, you created the first men?

PROMETHEUS: That was my crime.

AHASUERUS: Yes, it was your crime, you artificer of hell; it was a crime for which there is no possible atonement. Here you should have remained for all time, chained and being endlessly devoured; you who are the source of all the evils that afflict me. I lacked pity, it is true, but you, who brought me into existence, you, perverse divinity, were the original cause of everything.

PROMETHEUS: Your impending death clouds your reason.

AHASUERUS: Yes, it really is you; you have the Olympian forehead of a strong and handsome Titan: it really is you . . . Are these your chains? I see no sign of your tears.

PROMETHEUS: I shed them for your race.

AHASUERUS: It shed many more on account of you.

PROMETHEUS: Listen to me, O last of your ungrateful line!

AHASUERUS: What do I want with your words? I want to hear your groans, you perverse divinity. Here are your chains. See how I lift them up? Hear the clanking of the irons? Who unchained you?

PROMETHEUS: Hercules.

AHASUERUS: Hercules . . . Let us see if he performs the same service now that you will once again be chained.

PROMETHEUS: You must be mad.

AHASUERUS: Heaven gave you your first punishment; now earth will give you your second and last. Not even Hercules will be able to break these irons again. See how I shake them about in the air like feathers; for I represent the strength of millennia of despair. All of humanity is within me. Before I fall into the abyss, I will write the world’s epitaph on this rock. I will summon the eagle and it will come; I will tell it that, on departing this life, the very last man is leaving it a gift from the gods.

PROMETHEUS: Poor ignorant man; you are refusing a throne! No, you cannot refuse it.

AHASUERUS: Now you are the madman. Come on, kneel. Let me bind your arms. Yes, like that, don’t resist. Breathe, breathe deeply. Now your legs . . .