Prometheus' Last Words: Lucian and Parrhesia Beyond Literary Genres

Prometheus is a good experiment to test the conditions and applications of freedom of thought and speech. Lucian’s parrhesia is at work for Prometheus. At the beginning, in Hesiod, it is a different matter: Prometheus is the epic trickster on the cosmic stage of immortal gods and mortal men. Aeschylus’ tragedy is naturally the first model to stage Prometheus’ parrhesia. But Lucian is not satisfied. Beyond literary genres, through the ways of Platonic dialogue, on the model of Socrates’ Apology, he stages a trial, a useless logos dikanikos, which becomes a formidable logos epideiktikos of the Second Sophistic. A fictio with new effects. Prometheus, with the arts of speech, becomes a hero of a new tlemosyne, against the unjust dike of Zeus: he is a formidable satirical hero of Lucian.