Hephaestus commiserates with Prometheus while he’s binding him to the rock.
Proposed translation:
Zeus is unappeasable.
Every newcomer to power is a hardass.
I’m not sure who H. is referring to. Does he mean all the gods like Zeus who are newcomers to power relative to the titans they conquered, like Prometheus (meaning “all these these upstarts/this new generation of Olympian gods”). That would make sense in a way but it would be be strange because Hephaestus is a son of Zeus and Hera, I think, rather than a titan himself. Or maybe there’s some alternative myth according to which Hephaestus is a titan, too, because he says in lines 14-15:
Zeus and Hephaestus are both Olympians rather than Titans; the Titans are no longer on the scene. But 34-35 applies not to the Olympians collectively but specifically to Zeus, the new boss-god, while Heph is depicted as a softie who has no choice but to obey orders despite his sympathy for Prometheus who is after all a fellow-god (συγγενῆ θεὸν).
It’s a tremendously powerful opening scene, which explains itself as it goes along. We can only visualize it on the stage.
(I like your translation. But of course it’s the P. Bound, not Unbound! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
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About referring to Zeus alone, I interpreted “ἅπας… ὅστις” to mean “everyone who…”, hence the plural, but I’m not sure.
About the “fellow god” part, Hephaestus is an Olympian whereas Prometheus is a Titan, of course, so I guess a Titan qualfies as a θεός? In fact for the Greeks any immortal falls into the θεός category, right? Except for the occasional “immortal mortal” like Tiresias? Can even the nymphs be called “gods”?
About Hephaestus being a softie, he has every reason to hate Zeus, who threw him down from Mount Olympus, but it’s funny he sympathizes with a Titan like Prometheus.
Yes, ἅπας δὲ τραχὺς ὅστις ἂν νέον κρατῇ is generalizing from the particular case of Zeus in the previous line. And Athens had experience of tyrants.
And yes, the Titans were certainly gods. Nymphs are lesser divinities. Humans:gods is the fundamental binary, and everything else has to be made to fit in one way or another.
Prometheus and Hephaestus are closely associated. They have much in common culturally, not least in their both being benefactors of mankind.