"Prometheus Unbound". The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar
companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aeschylus
filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not
possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of
Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated
above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and
demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley.

We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that
interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of
Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we
returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated
the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were
composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di Lucca he
translated Plato's "Symposium". But, though he diversified his studies,
his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a
bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time to the
composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his
preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are
little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a
letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of description which
render his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and
interest.

At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several
months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a
sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with
regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.

The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human