?It may at once be said that Chonacher?s book should be extremely profitable to any serious student of the ?Prometheus?, at any level. He is unwarrantably modest in speaking of it as an ?introductory study? (X). What he presents is an evenhanded, almost Solonian, survey both of the primary evidence and of recent academic opinions about that evidence neither dictating solutions to the reader nor prejudicing him by allowing any rancour intro his accounts of those opinions with which he happens to disagree. (Among other things, this book is a model of scholarly good manners.) The result, for this reviewer, was w really valuable clearing of the undergrowth, and a cutting of some vistas, at least, through a wildly tangled forest. (? ) Students who have already some acquaintance with the ?Prometheus? and its problems will perhaps be interested above all in Chapters 4 and 6. In Chapter 4 (?) Conacher provides an extremely useful comparative examination of the other ancient passages that relate to the development of human culture (?). So elegant is the book?s construction (like a conscientious reviewer of whodunits) one almost hesitated to reveal the contents of if last chapter (?). Here Conacher surveys with his customary balance and fairness most of the major theories that have been put forward since World War I, culminating in those of Lloyd-Jones and Reinhardt. From these last two in particular (?) he progresses to his own view. (?) The overriding purpose of this book is no doubt to send the student back to the ?Prometheus Bound? and the fragments of the other Prometheus plays with a less clouded vision and a clearer head. That is a noble purpose, and, if this reviewer?s experience is anything to go by, Conacher has achieved it.? (C.J. HERINGTON in Phoenix, 1982, pp.77-83).