Persians, by Aeschylus (472 BCE)

Aeschylus is the world's first playwright. There are seven surviving plays by him, the oldest of which is The Persians. When we read this play, we are really at the beginning of literary history. It is not only the oldest play text in the world, but also the only extant Greek tragedy based on contemporary events - the Greco-Persian wars (490-479 BCE). The play recounts the Persian reaction to the news of their military defeat under their emperor Xerxes at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, one of the decisive episodes in that war - and one that turned the tide for the Greeks.

Greek drama originated in the 6th century B.C. and flourished in the 5th century B.C. with three great playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Greek drama has the following characteristics:

• Originated in religious rituals performed in the worship of Dionysus
• Performed in open-air theaters. Tent behind the stage where actors could change masks and costumes.
• Plots mainly from Greek mythology. The main character of a tragedy commits a crime without realizing how foolish and arrogant he has been. Then, as he slowly realizes his error, the world crumbles around him. Aristotle argued that tragedy cleansed the heart through pity and terror, purging us of our petty concerns and worries by making us aware that there can be nobility in suffering. He called this experience "catharsis."
• Due to the religious character of the theater, violence was not permitted on stage and the death of a character had to occur offstage. Political statements were also forbidden.
• Chorus consisted of 15 actors who sang and danced but did not speak. The chorus generally comments on the action.
• Chorus was joined by one, later two and finally three actors (since Sophocles) who took on multiple roles and used masks and costumes.
• Players (and spectators) were all male. 
• Music was provided by an aulos (a sort of double flute) player.
• Plays performed in competitions; the most famous one was held during the spring festival of Dionysos in Athens. Each playwright contributed a set of three plays and a satyr play. The main prize was a bronze cauldron.

The Persians also formed part of such a trilogy, which won the first prize at the dramatic competitions in Athens' Dionysius festival in 472 BC, with Pericles serving as financial sponsor. However, the other plays of the trilogy have been lost.

 

[Theater of Dionysus in Athens where Aeschylus' plays were performed]

 
Here is the background to the play:

The First Persian or Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BCE) was set on expansion. It had been founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE and in quick succession conquered territories from the Indus valley in the east to what is now Turkey in the West (Turkey was of course without any Turks, as these only later emigrated there from Central Asia), including also present-day Iraq and Syria all the way to Egypt an Libya. In its time, the First Persian Empire was the largest empire in the world (China was not an empire yet, but a collection of "warring states," although culturally unified). It was a multicultural state known for its effective administration. There was also cultural exchange with Greece.

Darius I (550–486 BCE) led the first invasion of Greece in 490 BCE. This was in response to Greek support for Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey) that had revolted against Persian domination. In the Battle of Marathon the Greeks (led by the city state of Athens) decisively defeated a much larger Persian army. Darius I died in 486 BCE, and his son, Xerxes I (r. 485–465 BCE), who ruled the empire at its territorial apex, again invaded Greece in 480 BCE. His army temporarily overran northern Greece and even plundered Athens, until being defeated at the sea battle of Salamis. The land army Xerxes left in Greece was destroyed the next year at the Battle of Plataea, thus decisively ending the second invasion. The defeat of the Persians encouraged the Greek cities of Asia Minor to revolt, and the Persians lost all their territories in Europe; Athens would enter its Golden Age, in which for the rest of the 5th century BCE it would be the leader among the Greek city states.

In The Persians, Xerxes invites the gods' enmity for his arrogant expedition against Greece in 480/79 BCE; the focus of the drama is the defeat of Xerxes' navy at Salamis. Aeschylus himself had fought the Persians at Marathon (490 BCE). He may even have fought at Salamis, just eight years before the play was performed.

Despite that Aeschylus had been a participant in the war, and the drama was part of a Greek festival, this is not a piece in which the Greeks gloated over the defeat of their rival. The Persians focuses on the popular Greek theme of hubris and blames Persia's loss on the pride and arrogance of its king. It is a lesson for the Greeks not to fall into the same trap. At the same time, Aeschylus shows empathy with the defeated enemy.

[Ruins of Darius' palace in Susa]

The play is set in the then Persian capital of Susa (located in the lower Zagros Mountains about 250 km east of the Tigris). It opens with the arrival of a messenger bearing news of the catastrophic Persian defeat at Salamis. The messenger reports the tragedy to Atossa, the mother of the Persian King Xerxes. The line he speaks here has become famous: "You can be sure that so great a multitude of men never perished in a single day", with later echoes in Dante's Inferno and in The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot ("I had not thought Death had undone so many"). Atossa then travels to the tomb of Darius, her deceased husband, where his ghost appears. The ghost explains the cause of the defeat: it is the result of Xerxes' hubris in building a bridge across the Hellespont, an action which angered the gods. The defeated Xerxes himself appears at the end of the play, not realizing the true reason why he has been defeated. The play closes to lamentations by Xerxes and the chorus.

To conclude, a few words about Aeschylus. Born into a prominent aristocratic family in c. 510 BCE, just around the time that a full democracy was implemented in Athens, Aeschylus began his career as a dramatist in the 490s. That same year, he fought at Marathon against the first Persian invasion led by king Darius; he also fought (or was present) at the battle of Salamis during the second Persian invasion led by king Xerxes. In the 470s he visited Sicily for the first time. In that period, Athens becomes head of an anti-Persian alliance of Greek city-states. In 472 he is victorious with Persians, part of a trilogy of which the other (now lost) plays have unconnected mythological plots (tragedies were offered in sets of three at the Dionysus festival, plus a satyr-play). The dramatic competition of 468 BCE is however won by a new star: Sophocles. In 467 BCE Aeschylus wins the contest with Seven Against Thebe, part of a connected trilogy on the Oedipus story (the other plays have been lost). In 463 he is again victorious with Suppliants, part of a connected trilogy on the Danaid myth (the other plays have again been lost). And in 458 BCE he is victorious with the Oresteia, consisting of Agamemnon, Libation Bearers and Eumenides, the only trilogy from ancient Greece that has been preserved intact (but the satyr play has been lost). In 456 Aeschylus dies in Sicily. The next year, the dramatic career of Euripides begins.

Of the more than 80 plays Aeschylus wrote, only seven survive in complete form, and of these Prometheus Bound is of questionable authenticity.

Online Translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D., Ed. (1926).

I have read the translation by Christopher Collard in Oxford World's Classics.

Photos from Wikipedia.

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