Kratos (mythology)

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox deity

In Greek mythology, Kratos (Template:Langx<ref>For the former translation, see Template:Harvnb and Template:Harvnb. For the latter translation, see Template:Harvnb and LSJ, s.v. κράτος.</ref>) also known as Cratus or Cratos, is the divine personification of strength. He is the son of Pallas and Styx. Kratos and his siblings Nike ('Victory'), Bia ('Force'), and Zelus ('Glory') are all the personification of a specific trait.<ref>Gantz, pp. 25–26 (the translations given here are Gantz's); Hesiod, Theogony 383–385; Apollodorus 1.2.4</ref> Kratos is first mentioned alongside his siblings in Hesiod's Theogony. According to Hesiod, Kratos and his siblings dwell with Zeus because their mother Styx came to him first to request a position in his regime, so he honored her and her children with exalted positions. Kratos and his sister Bia are best known for their appearance in the opening scene of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound. Acting as agents of Zeus, they lead the captive Titan Prometheus on stage. Kratos compels the mild-mannered blacksmith god Hephaestus to chain Prometheus to a rock as punishment for his theft of fire.<ref>Gantz, p. 158; Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound, 1 ff.</ref>

Kratos is characterized as brutal and merciless, repeatedly mocking both Hephaestus and Prometheus and advocating for the use of unnecessary violence. He defends Zeus' oppressive rule and predicts that Prometheus will never escape his bonds. In Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Electra calls upon Kratos, Dike ("Justice"), and Zeus to aid her brother Orestes in avenging the murder of their father Agamemnon. Kratos and Bia appear in a late fifth-century BC red-figure Attic skyphos of the punishment of Ixion, possibly based on a scene from a lost tragedy by Euripides. They also appear in late eighteenth and nineteenth-century Romantic depictions and adaptations of the binding of Prometheus.

Ancient Greek literature and art

Theogony

Kratos and his siblings are first mentioned in the Theogony, which was composed by the Boeotian poet Hesiod in the late eighth or early seventh century BC.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Hesiod states: "And Styx the daughter of Ocean was joined to Pallas and bore Zelus (Emulation) and trim-ankled Nike (Victory) in the house. Also she brought forth Cratos (Strength) and Bia (Force), wonderful children. These have no house apart from Zeus, nor any dwelling nor path except that wherein God leads them, but they dwell always with Zeus the loud-thunderer."<ref name="Hesiod383–387">Hesiod, Theogony lines 383–387, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White</ref> Here Kratos is merely listed as a deified abstraction with little development or explanation.Template:Sfn Hesiod goes on to explain that the reason why the children of Styx were allowed to dwell with Zeus was because Zeus had decreed after the Titanomachy that all those who had not held offices under Kronos would be given positions in his regime.<ref name="Hesiod383–387"/>Template:Sfn Because Styx came to Zeus first, along with her children, Zeus honored them as among the highest members of his new regime.<ref name="Hesiod383–387"/>Template:Sfn According to Diana Burton, Styx, Zelos, Nike, Kratos, and Bia's voluntary change in allegiance represents the certainty of Zeus' victory over the Titans.Template:Sfn While the goddesses Dike ("Justice"), Eunomia ("Good Law"), and Eirene ("Peace") represent the benefits of Zeus' reign, Kratos and his siblings represent the work needed to build that regime.Template:Sfn

Prometheus Bound

File:Prometheus door Vulcanus geketend, SK-A-1606.jpg

Prometheus Being Chained by Vulcan (1623) by Dirck van Baburen. In Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, Kratos (not shown in this painting) is the one who orders Hephaestus to chain Prometheus.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

In the opening scene of the tragedy Prometheus Bound, which is traditionally attributed to Aeschylus, Kratos and his sister Bia are taking Prometheus to a remote location in the Scythian wilderness, where he will be chained to a rocky outcropping.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The order to do this was given by Zeus himselfTemplate:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn and Kratos and Bia are portrayed as the embodiment of Zeus' new regime.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The presence of Kratos and Bia but absence of Nike and Zelos indicates the play's tyrannical portrayal of Zeus, since Kratos and Bia represent the more tyrannical aspects of authority.Template:Sfn Kratos in particular represents what Ian Ruffell calls "the kind of uncomplicated thug for whom despotic regimes offer countless job opportunities."Template:Sfn He enforces the power of Zeus through physical brutality and pitilessness.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Bia, though present in the scene, does not have any lines; only Kratos speaks.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Kratos coerces the mild-mannered blacksmith god Hephaestus into chaining Prometheus to the rocky crag, despite Hephaestus' objections to this.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Hephaestus laments over Prometheus' future suffering, leading Kratos to ridicule him.Template:Sfn Kratos equates the rule of law with rule by fear Template:Sfn and condemns pity as a pointless waste of time.Template:Sfn Hephaestus and Kratos agree that Zeus is "oppressive" (barys; literally "heavy").Template:Sfn Kratos regards justice (δίκη; dikê) as a system of cosmic hierarchy in which the monarch, Zeus, decides who receives which privileges and who does not.Template:Sfn Anyone who breaches this social divide is a transgressor who must be punished.Template:Sfn Kratos states that, under the rule of a monarch such as Zeus, no one but Zeus himself is truly free.Template:Sfn Hephaestus agrees with this assessment.Template:Sfn

Kratos repeatedly orders Hephaestus to use more violence than necessary to inflict as much pain as possible against Prometheus.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn First he orders Hephaestus to nail Prometheus' hands to the rock.Template:Sfn Then he orders him to drive a steel wedge through his chest.Template:Sfn Finally, he orders him to tie Prometheus' legs to immobilize him.Template:Sfn Hephaestus criticizes Kratos, telling him that his speech is as ugly as his physical appearance.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Kratos responds by telling him, "Be soft. Do not throw in my face my 'willfulness' and 'roughness of temper'."Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Once Prometheus has been bound, Hephaestus, Bia, and Kratos exit offstage, with Kratos being the last one to leave.Template:Sfn Just before his exeunt, Kratos mocks Prometheus, saying that he will never escape from his shacklesTemplate:Sfn (which he later does, aided by Heracles) and that he does not deserve his name.Template:Sfn (Prometheus means "forethought" in Greek.Template:Sfn) According to Robert Holmes Beck, Aeschylus' depiction of the harsh punishment of Prometheus was intended as an example of how wrongdoers must be punished to deter others from transgressing.Template:Sfn In this interpretation, Kratos' cruelty is not intended to be viewed as excessive, but rather as the proper enforcement of justice.Template:Sfn

Other references

In Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Electra invokes Kratos, Dike, and Zeus to support her and her brother Orestes' quest to avenge the murder of their father Agamemnon by their mother Clytemnestra.<ref>Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, lines 244–245.</ref>Template:Sfn Plato's dialogue Protagoras, written in the fourth century BC, includes an account of the legend of Prometheus in which Prometheus stole fire from the temple of Athena and Hephaestus rather than the citadel of Zeus because the "guards of Zeus" (Διὸς φυλακαί; Dios phylakai) were too frightening.<ref>Plato, Protagoras 321a</ref>Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The identity of these "guards" is unknown and disputed.Template:Sfn

Depictions of Kratos and Bia in ancient Greek art are extremely rare.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The only known surviving depiction of Kratos and Bia in ancient Greek pottery is on a fragmentary red-figure skyphos by the Meidias Painter, or a member of his circle, that is dated to the end of the fifth century BC and depicts the punishment of Ixion.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The vase is in the private collection of Herbert Cahn in Basel, Switzerland, and only a bit of hair belonging to Kratos is still visible on the remaining fragments.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> One of Bia's hands is visible on the wheel that Ixion is bound to, steadying it.Template:Sfn H. A. Shapiro conjectures that this is probably a representation of a scene from the lost tragedy Ixion by Euripides, who likely borrowed the figures of Kratos and Bia from Prometheus Bound.Template:Sfn Kratos is listed as one of the sons of Pallas and Styx in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.<ref>Pseudo-Apollodorus, The Library 1.2</ref>

In the preface to his Fabulae, the Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus describes Potestas (Power) as being among the offspring of Pallas and Styx.<ref>Hyginus, Fabulae Preface (Rose's Greek text; Grant's translation).</ref>

In modern culture

Template:Multiple image

In 1772, Thomas Morell published his English translation of Prometheus Bound as Prometheus in Chains, making the work widely available to the British public for the first time.Template:Sfn Four years afterwards, the abolitionist Richard Potter published a complete English translation of all Aeschylus' tragedies.Template:Sfn The scene from Prometheus Bound in which Hephaestus chains Prometheus to a mountainside with the aid of Kratos and Bia captured the imagination of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Romantics Template:Sfn and became a lens through which they analyzed questions of the relationships between revolution and tyranny, slavery and freedom, and war and peace.Template:Sfn

Richard Porson's 1795 translation of Prometheus Bound was illustrated with drawings by John Flaxman showing the famous binding scene.Template:Sfn Between 1798 and 1799, George Romney produced a series of chalk drawings of scenes from Prometheus Bound, including the binding scene with Kratos and Bia.Template:Sfn In both Flaxman and Romney's illustrations, Kratos and Bia are shown together in symmetry.Template:Sfn In 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley adapted the myth of Prometheus for his own play Prometheus Unbound.Template:Sfn

In Gabriel Fauré's three-act opera Prométhée, first performed in 1900 with a French libretto written by the poets Jean Lorrain and André-Ferdinand Hérold, the scene from the beginning of Prometheus Bound in which Kratos coerces Hephaestus into binding Prometheus is closely paraphrased.Template:Sfn Hephaestus' dialogue with Kratos is set to music containing "impressionist allusions to the whole-tone scale".Template:Sfn Fauré was known for his soft, genteel chamber music and the "hateful fury" of the music behind Kratos and Bia's dialogue stunned audiences.Template:Sfn

A character named Kratos appears in the God of War video game franchise, the first seven games of which are based on Greek mythology.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The character is portrayed as what classical scholar Sylwia Chmielewski calls "a deeply tragic, Herculean anti-hero who, after murdering his family, has to wash away the miasma to regain his peace of mind."Template:Sfn The video game character Kratos was given his name at a late stage in the development of the original 2005 game, after the character had already been fleshed out.Template:Sfn Unaware of the actual mythological god named Kratos appearing in Prometheus Bound, the creators coincidentally chose the name Kratos, the same Greek word meaning "Strength", of which the mythological figure Kratos is the personification.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Stig Asmussen, the director of 2010's God of War III, called the naming coincidence a "happy mistake",Template:Sfn noting that the Kratos in the game and the one in Prometheus Bound are both "pawns".Template:Sfn Zoran Iovanovici of California State University, Long Beach observed with irony that, while the mythological Kratos is best known for chaining Prometheus, in 2007's God of War II, the video game character releases him.Template:Sfn Chmielewski states that the video game character Kratos draws extensively on other figures from Greek mythology, including the heroes Perseus, Theseus, and Achilles,Template:Sfn Template:Sfn but his strongest influence is the hero Heracles.Template:Sfn The Greek-based games portray Kratos as brutal and violent towards innocents.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In God of War III, he kills the vast majority of the Greek gods, who are portrayed as "corrupted and vengeful", and restores the original state of primordial chaos to Greece.Template:Sfn