Scholars of the Great Library of Alexandria considered Aeschylus to be the author of Prometheus Bound. Since the 19th century, however, doubts began to emerge, after Rudolf Westphal, in 1857 and again in 1869, challenged the idea that the text was the work of a single author.[6] In 1911, A. Gercke became the first scholar to reject the Aeschylean ascription, while dismissing the notion that a Prometheus trilogy itself existed.[19] Two years later his student F. Niedzballa likewise concluded the text was written by someone else, on the basis of lexical analysis of words in the play not recurrent elsewhere in Aeschylus.[20] Some have raised doubts focused on matters of linguistics, meter, vocabulary, and style, notably by Mark Griffith, though he remained open to idea that uncertainty persists and the traditional attribution might turn out to be correct.[c][d] Griffith's views were challenged in brief by Günther Zuntz[21] and in great detail by Maria Pia Pattoni in 1987.[22] M. L. West found the evidence against the ascription 'overwhelming'[23] and, after editing all seven plays, wrote an extended analysis and review of Griffith, Zuntz and Pattoni's work concluding that ascription to Aeschylus was untenable and contextualizing the play as the product of the 440s-430s era.[24]
Some scholars note that certain themes in the play appear to be foreign to Aeschylus, when compared to the themes in his other plays. The scholar Wilhelm Schmid argues that the playwright who demonstrated such piety toward Zeus in The Suppliants and Agamemnon could not have been the same playwright who in Prometheus Bound inveighs against Zeus for violent tyranny.[25][26] M. L. West argued that Prometheus Bound may be the work of Aeschylus' son, Euphorion, who was also a playwright.[27]
Responses to some of these questions have included the suggestion that the strongest characteristic of the play is in the humanity of their portrayal. The mythological and religious aspects are treated as secondary compared to the clash of wills that occurs between Zeus and Prometheus. The rebellion of Prometheus was not invented by Aeschylus, who only breathed the human spirit into older forms.[28] This play, Prometheus Bound, only contains a part of the story. In the sequel, Aeschylus would have had the chance to give to Zeus' character an arc, and show him learning and developing more admirable and generous aspects. Coming later in the trilogy, a benevolent Zeus would have a deeper impact. In this play Zeus does not appear — we learn of the tyranny of Zeus, only from those who suffer from it. Characters' views need not be identical with the author’s.[26]
