Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Bia.
The gallery
Hephaestus, Bia and Kratos Securing Prometheus on Mount Caucasus
Henry Fuseli, c. 1800–1810
Fuseli's pencil drawing stages the opening of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, in which Zeus dispatches his enforcers Kratos (Strength) and Bia (Force) to pinion the rebel Titan to the Caucasus. Bia is one of the two female figures pressed against Prometheus: she appears at first glance to cradle the prisoner, but in truth she steadies the stake that Hephaestus will hammer through his chest, the personification of brute violence executing the punishment her brother Kratos can only command. Now in the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
The Binding of Prometheus (frontispiece to Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound)
John Flaxman, 1795
Flaxman's spare Neoclassical line engraving, made for Richard Porson's 1795 translation of Aeschylus, shows the chaining of Prometheus exactly as the tragedy's prologue describes it. The Titan is held at the centre while Hephaestus rivets him to the mountainside; flanking him are Kratos and Bia, the silent strong-arm daimones of Zeus, pinning his body so the fetters can be fixed. Bia, the wordless agent of Force in the play, leans her full weight into the captive, embodying the raw compulsion that makes the divine sentence inescapable.
Bia
John Flaxman, 1795
A single-figure study of Bia drawn from Flaxman's 1795 Prometheus Bound cycle, isolating the personification of Force from the larger binding scene. Stripped to clean Neoclassical outline, the taut, athletic female figure leans forward mid-effort, her muscular tension distilling the silent violence that Aeschylus gives to Zeus's enforcer. As the sister of Kratos, Nike and Zelus and child of Pallas and Styx, Bia is rarely portrayed alone; this isolated profile lets her stand as the pure image of compelling might rather than a bystander to Prometheus's torment.