In Greek mythology, Kratos () 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. 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.

Kratos is characterized as brutal and merciless, repeatedly mocking both Hephaestus and Prometheus' advocacy against 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. 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." Here Kratos is merely listed as a deified abstraction with little development or explanation. 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. 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" (, ) were too frightening. The identity of these "guards" is unknown and disputed.

Depictions of Kratos and Bia in ancient Greek art are extremely rare. 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. 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. One of Bia's hands is visible on the wheel that Ixion is bound to, steadying it. 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. Kratos is listed as one of the sons of Pallas and Styx in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.

In the preface to his Fabulae, the Roman author Gaius Julius Hyginus describes Potestas (Power) as being among the offspring of Pallas and Styx.

In modern culture

<!---

NOTE: This section is not a repository for random tidbits of pop culture trivia. While such tidbits are interesting and fine on their own, they are not suitable for an encyclopedia article. This section is devoted to how popular culture has shaped contemporary perception of Kratos. If something has not significantly impacted how he is perceived, it does not belong here.

All information in this article, including this section, must be cited to reliable sources. Please consult WP:RS for further explanation of what Wikipedia's standards are for reliable sources.

Thank you.

-->

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. Four years afterwards, the abolitionist Richard Potter published a complete English translation of all Aeschylus' tragedies. 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 and became a lens through which they analyzed questions of the relationships between revolution and tyranny, slavery and freedom, and war and peace.

Richard Porson's 1795 translation of Prometheus Bound was illustrated with drawings by John Flaxman showing the famous binding scene. 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. In both Flaxman and Romney's illustrations, Kratos and Bia are shown together in symmetry. In 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley adapted the myth of Prometheus for his own play Prometheus Unbound.

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. Hephaestus' dialogue with Kratos is set to music containing "impressionist allusions to the whole-tone scale". Fauré was known for his soft, genteel chamber music and the "hateful fury" of the music behind Kratos and Bia's dialogue stunned audiences.

A character named Kratos appears in the God of War video game franchise, the first seven games of which are based on Greek mythology. 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." 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. 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. Stig Asmussen, the director of 2010's God of War III, called the naming coincidence a "happy mistake", noting that the Kratos in the game and the one in Prometheus Bound are both "pawns". 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. Chmielewski states that the video game character Kratos draws extensively on other figures from Greek mythology, including the heroes Perseus, Theseus, and Achilles, but his strongest influence is the hero Heracles. The Greek-based games portray Kratos as brutal and violent towards innocents. 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.

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound in Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. Vol 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. 1926. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
  • Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: (Vol. 1), (Vol. 2).
  • Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, Massachusetts., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.