Aeschylus'
Persians
Translation
by Robert Potter
A
scholarly translation by Niall McCloskey and John Porter
The Persians
- Is the oldest extant Greek tragedy (it was produced in 472BCE)
- Is the only extant Greek tragedy that does not have a
mythological plot
- Note that myth and history are not clearly two different things
for ancient Greeks: they believed that much of what we consider myths
reflect things that actually happened (the Trojan war, for example).
- We know of only one
tragedy, the Antheus by
Agathon, whose plot was made up.
- Won first prize at the Panathenaia
- Had only two actors
- Compare this to the fluent use of three actors in Aeschylus' Oresteia, which was staged only 14
years after the Persians
- Is the only eyewitness account of any part of the Persian war
that we have
- Had Pericles as its choregos
(producer): this is the first public role we know about for Pericles
- Was part of a trilogy of tragedies which included a Glaucus and Phineas and a satyr play
called Prometheus. Of these
other plays we have only fragments.
Themes worth considering for discussion about the Persians:
- Memory/history: what is the difference and how does it play out
in the Persians?
- Mnemosyne and the Muses
- Clio, prose, and historia
- see notes on lines 579-594 on P. 104 of Lembke/Herington's
translation
- Documentary: metatheatrical elements ('I was there, no hearsay')
- Propaganda/empathy/tragic
- Hero?
- Character vs. suffering vs. spectacle
Nameless characters:
- The "chorus"
- they danced and sang
- when the chorus has a block of lines, it is called an 'ode'
or 'song'
- the parodos is
their entrance ode
- a stasimon is a
choral ode which the chorus performs in the orchestra
- an exodos is their exit ode
- choral odes often have very complex meters
- their odes are often arranged in strophes and antistrophes
- in the Persians, they
are the Persian king's counsellors: in Phrynichus' Persians, they were women
- at times, a chorus has a leader, or it may split
- The "messenger"
- a stock character in tragedies
- messengers report action to which they were eyewitnesses
- their facts are correct
- but they are often clearly partisan
Historical Background
- There are few sources for this period of history
- Aeschylus' Persians
is the only eyewitness account we have of this battle
- And yet, Aeschylus cannot possibly have witnessed much of what
he depicts in the play, for it is set on the Persian side, and
Aeschylus was on the Athenian side
- Herodotus' Persian Wars
is the single most important source for this period of Athenian history.
- The battles
- Salamis: 480 BCE
- Plataea: in the next season after Salamis, the Greeks defeated
the Persians on land at Plataea
- The Persian empire: beckground provided in the play itself (line
1255 ff.)
- Maps
