Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Cratos.
The gallery
Hephaestus, Bia and Crato Securing Prometheus on Mount Caucasus
Henry Fuseli, c. 1800–1810
Henry Fuseli stages the opening tableau of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, the only scene in which Cratos (here named 'Crato') ever speaks. As the relentless agents of Zeus's will, Cratos and his sister Bia drag the captive Titan to Mount Caucasus and stand over him while a reluctant Hephaestus rivets his chains. Fuseli renders the personification of Strength exactly as the myth demands: a hard-muscled, immovable enforcer who shows no pity, embodying the cold compulsion of sovereign power that the Titan defies.
Drawing of the Binding of Prometheus
George Romney, c. 1798–1799
In this black-chalk study from his Prometheus Bound series, George Romney pins the action at the rebel Titan's feet: Cratos and Bia hold Prometheus down against the rock while Hephaestus binds his arms. The broad-shouldered Cratos is all leverage and clenched force, the muscle that makes Zeus's sentence physical — the silent, brutal counterpart to the smith's reluctance, fixing the personification of raw Strength to the act of chaining a god.
Kratos
John Flaxman, 1795
John Flaxman's neoclassical line illustration for Aeschylus isolates Cratos himself, the divine personification of Strength who in the drama commands Hephaestus to fetter Prometheus. Stripped to pure contour in Flaxman's signature outline style, the figure is conceived as sheer enforcing power — stern, unyielding muscle in the service of Zeus — the very emblem of the daimon whom the Titan curses as the cruel hand of tyranny.