Customer Reviews

The Persians (American Theatre in Literature Program)

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"Persians" deals with a people trying to exceed mortal limits. The king of persia blinds his people into believing they can accomplish deeds that exceed the laws of the divine and it's natural order. The king invades Greece despite bad omens. The people in Persia are told they are defeated by a messenger and mourn in mad disbelief. Searching for answers they summon the spirit of a once great king who cannot undo what has now been done. Persia's once proud army, security, and young sons are perished. This translation is excellent. The ending of the play through subject matter is sad enough, but the helpless lines delivered by King Xerxes and the chorus through dialogue toward each other at the end of the play is devastating.

"The Persians" is a minor work in the extant plays of Aeschylus, but has considerable historical if not dramatic significance. The play is the second and only remaining tragedy from a lost tetralogy that is based on the historical events of the Persians Wars. The play was performed in 472 B.C., eight years after the defeat of the invaders at the Battle of Salamis. The speech by the Messenger is assumed to be a fairly accurate description of the battle, but the focus of the play is on the downfall of the Persian Empire because of the folly of Xerxes. After the ghost of Darius, father of Xerxes and the leader of the first Persian invasion that was defeated at the Battle of Marathon laments the ruin of the great empire he had ruled, Xerxes offers similar histrionics concerning the destruction of his fleet.

The play is interesting because Aeschylus presents Xerxes, a foreign invader, as exhibiting the same sort of hubris that afflicts the greatest of mythological heroes in these Greek tragedies. Laud and honor is given the Athenians for defeating the Persians in battle, but Aeschylus surprisingly provides a look at the Persian king's culpability in the downfall of his empire. There is a reference in the play to the tradition that Xerxes was descended from Perseus (for whom the Persian race was therefore named), but even so it seems quite odd to turn him into a traditional Greek tragic hero. Aeschylus had fought the Persians at the Battles of Marathon and Salamis, which certainly lends authenticity to his description of events.

Aeschylus won the festival of Dionysus in 472 B.C. with the tetralogy of "Phineus," "The Persians," "Glaucus of Potniae," and the satyr play "Prometheus the Fire-Kindler." Phineas was the king who became the victim of the Harpies, while this particular Glaucus was the son of Sisyphus and the father of Bellerophon who was torn to pieces by his own mares. Consequently, this particular tetralogy clearly has the theme of kings brought down by their own folly. But even within that context, the fact that Aeschylus would write of a historical rather than legendary figure, not to mention a Persian rather than a Greek, remains more than a minor historical curiosity.

This is generally not considered one of the better plays of Aeschylus; yet, I did enjoy it, even though there is very little action. Perhaps it is because it dealt with a subject of contemporary interest to its original audience. In fact, it is the oldest surviving play based on an event of recent history. The play was first produced in 472 B. C., only eight years after the Battle of Salamis. The speech by the Messenger in the play is the earliest known historical account of that battle. The play takes place in the Persian court and simply presents the arrival of a messenger carrying the news of Persia's defeat and is followed by the entry of a disgraced Xerxes. This play also contains the earliest known appearance by a ghost in a drama.

This was the first of the ancient Greek plays reviewed by Professor Meineck in his "Modern Scholar" lecture. It has the unique distinction of being the earliest surviving play we have from anywhere in the world. Aeschylus wrote this play about a real historical event: the Battle of Salamis, which he was a veteran of and during which the Persian army was soundly defeated. The play seems to me to have 3 themes which played off of each other: the folly of exceeding mortal limits, which the Persians did in attempting "to throw slavery's yoke firm on the Greeks"; the courage and resoluteness of the "Sons of Greece" to "fight for all [they] have!"; the tragedy of war as far as loss of human life, which in this battle meant that "Persia's flower is gone, cut down".

Although I am far from being anything near a classicist, I did find much to enjoy about this particular play. It could be that it was based on a real historical event and I enjoy history a lot, although how it was told in the play is nothing like what would be acceptable as "real history" by modern scholars. Parts of it were boring and dragged on, this is a very different and long-dead culture one must remember so some of the context is lost to me. This particular translation certainly helped as some of the prose seemed to be charged with emotion that brought the events to life in my mind. Here's an example, with a messenger sorrowfully telling the news of the near-total loss of the Persian invasion fleet:

"Then the Greek ships, seizing their chance,
swept in circling and struck and overturned
our hulls,
and saltwater vanished before our eyes -
shipwrecks filled it, and drifting corpses.

Shores and reefs filled up with our dead
and every able ship under Persia's command
broke order,
scrambling to escape.

We might have been tuna or netted fish,
for they kept on, spearing and gutting us
with splintered oars and bits of wreckage,
while moaning and screams drowned out
the sea noise till
Night's black face closed it all in."
(Lines 682-697)

I'm not usually one who enjoys poetry much, but the raw emotion conveyed in these words was palpable. It rather surprised me when I read this to have such a reaction. I felt like I could actually see the wrecked hulks of the Persian ships with the bodies of their dead floating in the sea, at least as if I was watching a movie about the battle instead of just reading a play. Look, I am by no means an expert at this but this is a play that even a novice such as myself was able to find meaning to. Yes, some of it bored me to no end and I have no desire to see the play performed live (the chorus still looks hokey even in this translation), but there is still something there to enjoy and take from this play. I know nothing about all the different translations of this play, but I can tell you that this particular one was excellent and however "authentic" it may or may not be it certainly made this ancient play accessible to an amateur like me. I cannot say the same about any other translation, so if you are looking to read this give this one a try. I highly recommend it.

After volunteering to look at this play for my Classics degree, I started out with high hopes. But after opening it and dicovering how boring it was, my hopes faltered. I still gave it a go though and a couple of hours later when I finally got ready to start writing whether it was actually good enough as a play, my problems started. Bearing in mind that it was written 2500 years ago, i was intrigued that a play could last for so long. But honestly, thats where my interest stopped. It's lenghthy and dull, and although I know that it is a very historical and precise play, I just couldn't follow it. If you want bedtime reading that will send you to sleep, this is the one, sorry.