by binding him to a wheel in Hades that revolved in perpetuity. In notable instances
in the English literary tradition the mode of Ixion's torture is reconceptualized
in psychological terms. Mary Shelley would surely have been familiar with King Lear's
portrayal of himself as "bound/ Upon a wheel of fire" (IV.vii.46-47). It could well
be that her own image influenced Percy Shelley's employment of the same figure in
Prometheus Unbound (see I.139-42).