The Persians

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The Persians
Written by	Aeschylus
Chorus	Persian Elders
Characters	Atossa Messenger Ghost of Darius Xerxes
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The Persians (Greek: Πέρσαι, Persai) is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. It is the oldest surviving play in the history of theater. It is also notable for being the only extant Greek tragedy based on contemporary events.

1 Background
2 Summary
3 Discussion
4 Reception & legacy
5 Footnotes
6 References
7 Translations

[edit] Background

The Persians was part of a trilogy produced in 472 BC that won the first prize at the dramatic competition in Athens’ City Dionysia festival. According to a hypothesis appended to a manuscript in the dffs of the play, the first play in the trilogy was called Phineus, and it presumably dealt with Jason and the Argonauts’ rescue of King Phineus from the torture of the monstrous Harpies. The subject of the third play, Glaucus, was either a mythical Corinthian king who was eaten by his own horses, or else a Boeotian farmer who ate a magical herb that transformed him into a sea deity with the gift of prophecy.^[1] Given Aeschylus’ propensity for writing connected trilogies, it has been argued by some that these two plays would have indirectly forecast events of the Persian invasion. Based on their presumed content, Xerxes’ march through Thrace and his defeat at the Battle of Plataea in 479, respectively, seem likely candidates.^[2] Also, if Glaucus was based around the myth of the Corinthian king, who was devoured by his horses because he angered the goddess Aphrodite, and along with Phineus, who was subjected to torture because he angered Zeus. Because the point of The Persians is that Xerxes was defeated because he angered the gods in building a bridge across the Hellespont, the trilogy could be connected based on the theme of divine retribution. The satyr play following the trilogy, Prometheus the Fire-lighter, comically portrayed the Titan’s theft of fire.

[edit] Summary

The Persians takes place in Susa, one of the capitals of Persia, and opens with the chorus of Persian nobles and Queen Mother Atossa awaiting news of King Xerxes' expedition against the Greeks. This is an unusual beginning for a tragedy by Aeschylus; normally the chorus would not appear until slightly later, after a speech by a minor character. A messenger then arrives, delivering news of the defeat, the names of the Persian leaders who have been killed, and the relieving news that King Xerxes had escaped and is returning. Then he leaps into a graphic description of the Battle of Salamis and its gory outcome. The climax of the messenger's soliloquy is his rendition of the battle cry of the Greeks as they charged: "Forward, sons of the Greeks, liberate the fatherland, liberate your children, your women, the temples of your ancestral gods, the graves of your forebears: this is the battle for everything" (401-405).

Atossa then goes to the tomb of her dead husband Darius, and summons his ghost. Upon learning of the Persian defeat, Darius condemns the hubris behind his son’s decision to invade Greece. He particularly rebukes as impious Xerxes’ decision to build a bridge over the Hellespont to expedite the Persian army’s advance. Before departing, the ghost of Darius prophesies another Persian defeat at Plataea. Xerxes finally appears, reeling from his crushing defeat. The rest of the drama (908-1076) consists of the king and chorus lamenting the enormity of Persia’s defeat.

[edit] Discussion

Aeschylus was not the first to write a play about the Persians. His older contemporary Phrynichus wrote two plays (neither extant) about the Persians. The first, The Sack of Miletus (493 BC), treated the failed revolt of a Greek city against Persia in Asia Minor; for his portrayal of this brutal defeat, Phrynichus was fined and his play was forbidden from ever being performed again.^[3] The second, Phoenician Women (476 BC), actually treated the same historical event as Aeschylus’ Persians.

Critics of the Persians generally fall into one of two schools: one should either read the play through the lens of Aristotle’s Poetics and interpret the play as sympathetic toward the defeated Persians;^[4] or else read the drama through a historical lens and interpret it as celebrating Greek victory within the context of an ongoing war with Persia.^[5] The sympathetic school has the considerable weight of Aristotelian criticism behind it; indeed, every other extant Greek tragedy arguably invites an audience's sympathy for one or more characters on stage. The celebratory school, however, recognizes the difficulties of a xenophobic^[6] culture's sympathizing with its hated barbarian enemy in a time of war. In the Persians itself, Xerxes seems to endorse the celebratory school, as he calls his pains (1034), "a joy to my enemies." Almost seventy years later, the comic playwright Aristophanes appears to agree with this assessment. In his Frogs, he portrays Dionysus (at 1026-27) as having watched a production of the Persians and revelling in Xerxes' misfortunes.

[edit] Reception & legacy

As noted above, the Persians won the first prize in 472. It would be reproduced in Sicily in 467 BC (one of the few times a play was reproduced during the lifetime of the author). As was also noted above, even some seventy years later the play would be praised by the comic playwright Aristophanes. The version produced in 467 probably forms the basis of the surviving version, and may have been slightly different from the original. It was also later a popular play in the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire, who also fought wars with the Persians. The Persians' popularity has endured in modern Greece. According to Anthony Podlecki, during a production at Athens in 1965 the audience "rose to its feet en masse and interrupted the actors' dialogue with cheers."^[7]

[edit] Footnotes

^ A catalogue of Aeschylean plays contains the two titles Glaucus Potnieus and Glaucus Pontius – hence the uncertainty. To add to the confusion, one title could easily be a garbled duplicate of the other. The consensus seems to favor Glaucus Potnieus (thus, e.g., Lesky 1996, 244). See, however Muller/Lewis 1858, 322.
^ See (e.g.) Munn 2000, 30.
^ Herodotus 6.21.2.
^ See, e.g., Segal 1993, 165; Pelling 1997, 1-19.
^ See, e.g., Hall 1996; Harrison 2000. While there is some disagreement, the consensus is that the Persian Wars did not come to a formal conclusion until 449 BC with the Peace of Callias.
^ See Hall 1991.
^ Podlecki 1986, 78.

[edit] References

Hall, Edith. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy. Oxford 1991.
-- Aeschylus Persians: Text and Commentary. Warminster, 1996.
Harrison, Thomas. The Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus' Persians and the History of the Fifth Century. London, 2000
Lesky, Albin et al. A History of Greek Literature. Indianapolis, 1996.
Muller, K.O. History of the Literature of Ancient Greece: To the Period of Isocrates. Trans. George C. Lewis. Longmans, Green & Co., 1858.
Munn, Mark H. The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates. Berkeley, 2000.
Podlecki, A.J. "Polis and Monarchy in Early Greek Tragedy." Greek Tragedy and Political Theory. Peter Euben, ed. Berkeley, 1986.
Segal, Charles. Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow. Durham, 1993.