Over the past fifty or more years study of Prometheus has been virtually dominated by a single topic: its disputed authenticity. The possibility of the play being spurious either in part or in whole, first raised by R. Westphal in 1869, has received its most detailed and telling expression this century first from W. Schmid in 1929, more recently from M. Griffith in 1977. The aim of both was to demonstrate that on almost every level of composition – structure, staging, style, language, and metre – Prometheus deviates significantly from Aeschylean technique as revealed in the other six plays. In Schmid’s case the arbitrary nature of much of his argumentation proved the greatest weakness of his thesis, allowing later defenders of authenticity – the majority of Aeschylean scholars in fact – to dismiss his findings rather than refute them. Griffith in contrast has been more cautious and thus more effective, willing to recognize the lesson of Supplices: ‘the discovery tomorrow of a scrap of papyrus, confirming Aeschylus as author, would in no way astonish me.’ At the same time, however, his own claim to greater objectivity in the choice of criteria has not been without its critics, and it is the essential subjectivity of any approach to the question of authenticity that proves the major stumbling-block to consensus.

Though scholars may disagree over the interpretation of Prometheus, no one can deny the existence of serious problems in the play. Individually each is open to explanation either by extension of what is seen in the undisputed plays, or by reference to the exigencies of the action portrayed or the circumstances of staging. Cumulatively, however, recourse to special pleading becomes embarrassingly obtrusive.