Inventing a Life 33people bowing to the rule of Zeus. Prometheus wanted them to be free
like himself and proudly recalled having placed Zeus on the throne. The
young Nietzsche idolized the gods far less than those who make gods.
The drama closes with a chorus of people who proclaim to the world
that they will submit only to gods who are free of guilt—the culpable
gods must die like people and hence cannot offer any consolation:
"They sink down to Orcus like reeds buffeted by deadly tempests" (/
1,68). Even as a young author, Nietzsche reflected on what he had writ-
ten, and annotated his work on the spot. Why Prometheus? he asked.
"One would like to re-create the era of Aeschylus, or are there no
humans left: and we have to make the Titans appear once again!" {J 1,69).
The young Nietzsche could not tear himself away from the Titans.
Several weeks later, he portrayed two intrepid chamois hunters high up
on a Swiss mountain who get caught in a terrible storm but do not turn
back; "the awful danger gave them immense power" (/ 1,87). Like
Prometheus, they meet a dire end. The moral that pride goes before the
fall is still valid here, but it was becoming evident that the young author
valued pride over the consequences of morality. One evening in Pforta,
after he read Schiller's play The Robbers, his imagination went soaring.
Here, too, he saw a "battle of the Titans," but this time the battle was
being waged "against religion and virtue" (J 1,37). For the time being,
however, he felt a greater affinity with the founders of religions than
with their assailants. In an essay entided "The Childhood of Peoples"
the seventeen-year-old immersed himself in the genealogy of world reli-
gions and concluded that they were indebted to "profound men who,
carried away by the soaring of their unbridled fantasy, claimed to be
envoys of the highest gods" (/1,239).
After sketching out this history of religion and religious founders in
early 1861, Nietzsche drafted yet another version of his life story. Having
dealt with the "moral and intellectual development" of mankind, he now
returned to delineating his personal development. However, he was not
able to sustain the switch of inquiry from mankind to one specific indi-
vidual. After just a few sentences, the autobiography glided back into the