Persians

First performed in 472 BC, Persians by Aeschylus is the oldest Greek play that survives. According to the ancient hypothesis, it was the second play of a group that won the first prize, but the other plays, Phineus and Glaucus (with the satyr play Prometheus), are lost apart from a few fragments. The play tells of the defeat of Xerxes by the Greeks at Salamis in 480 BC, as seen from the Persian side, at the royal palace in Susa. At first the Persian Elders are hopeful, but their mood changes when Queen Atossa, Xerxes’ mother, describes a frightening dream. Her fear proves true: a Messenger arrives and reports the destruction of the Persian fleet and army. In her despair Atossa calls up the ghost of her husband Darius, who explains that Xerxes’ defeat was brought about by his own presumption, and who warns the Persians never to invade Greece again. At the end Xerxes returns to Susa in torn clothes, to join the Chorus in lament.

Date and Historical Background

The ancient introduction (hypothesis) to the play tells us that Persians was produced in the archonship of Menon (472 BC) and won the first prize. It also gives the other plays of the group: Phineus first, then Persians, then Glaucus, and the satyr play Prometheus. An ancient Athenian inscription listing the victors at the Dionysia names the future statesman Pericles as the choregos, the citizen who paid for the production.

The hypothesis adds, citing Glaucus’ work on the plots of Aeschylus, that Aeschylus drew on the Phoenician Women of Phrynichus, an earlier play on the same subject, which began with a eunuch announcing the defeat of Xerxes. The subject of Persians is therefore not myth but recent history: the sea battle of Salamis had taken place eight years before. Herodotus, who describes the same battle (Herodotus 8.40–96), also records that the Athenians had been deeply moved earlier by a play on a contemporary disaster, Phrynichus’ Fall of Miletus (Herodotus 6.21).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Xerxes, king of Persia
• The Queen, Xerxes’ mother and the widow of Darius; the manuscripts call her Atossa, the name that Herodotus gives to a daughter of Cyrus who was Darius’ wife and the mother of Xerxes (Herodotus 3.88, 7.2)
• The Ghost of Darius, the previous Persian king
• A Messenger
• The Chorus of Persian Elders, the counsellors left in charge while the army is away

Setting

The scene is the council-house of the Persian kings at Susa, with the tomb of Darius the Great close by; the time is soon after the battle of Salamis in 480 BC.

Summary of Persians

Parodos (Entrance Song)

At the beginning of Persians, the Chorus of Elders enters and names themselves the “faithful” ones who remain at home while the Persian army has gone to Greece (lines 1–7). They describe the glory of that army and name its commanders (lines 8–58), and tell how Xerxes has yoked the Hellespont with a bridge of ships (lines 65–72). Their song of glory is full of dark foreboding: no Persian messenger has come back, and they fear that a god has deceived Persia (lines 8–11, 93–114, 115–139).

First Episode

The Elders are interrupted by the entrance of Xerxes’ mother, whom they greet as queen of the deep-girdled Persian women (lines 150–158). She is distressed by a dream and a sign she has seen (lines 159–176).

In the dream, she tells them, two women appeared, one dressed in Persian robes and the other in Dorian dress, sisters of the same family, and Xerxes yoked them to his chariot. The Persian one accepted the harness, but the other tore the reins and broke the yoke. Xerxes fell, and Darius stood by him in pity, and Xerxes tore his robes (lines 176–199). When she went to the altar to make offerings, she saw a hawk swooping on an eagle that had fled to the altar of Phoebus and plucking at its head, while the eagle did nothing but cower and give its body to the enemy (lines 200–211). The Chorus advises her to pray, to pour libations to the earth and the dead, and to ask Darius to send good things up from below (lines 215–225). The queen then asks where Athens lies and what sort of people they are: do they have many spearmen? The Chorus answers that they have a great army and a rich supply of silver, and that they are slaves and subjects of no man (lines 231–244).

At that moment a Messenger arrives and announces that the whole Persian host has been destroyed (lines 249–255). The Chorus laments (lines 256–289). The queen, after a silence, asks who has died, and the Messenger lists the commanders (lines 290–330). He tells how Xerxes, deceived by a Greek who came to him from the Athenian side at night and said the Greeks would flee, ordered his fleet to take up positions across the straits at Salamis (lines 353–373). At dawn the Greeks sang the paean and attacked, and in the narrow water the large Persian fleet fell into confusion, ships struck each other, and the sea was covered with wreckage and corpses (lines 374–432). A picked force of Persians on the island of Psyttaleia was cut down by the Greeks (lines 447–471). Xerxes himself, who watched the battle from a hill, fled with what was left of his army, and many died on the long march back, particularly at the river Strymon, where the ice broke under them (lines 465–514). The Messenger says that Xerxes himself is alive (line 299) and is returning (lines 517–531).

In the first stasimon (lines 532–597) the Chorus laments the defeat and sings of the cities of Asia that will no longer obey Persia.

Second Episode

In the short second episode (lines 598–680) the queen returns, no longer in royal state, with offerings for the dead: milk, honey, water, wine, olive oil and flowers (lines 598–622). She asks the Chorus to sing to Darius, and in the following song (the second stasimon, lines 623–680) the Elders call up the ghost of the dead king.

Third Episode

The ghost of Darius rises from his tomb and asks why his people are lamenting (lines 681–714). The Chorus, in awe, cannot speak, and the queen tells him of the disaster (lines 715–738). Darius sees in it the fulfilment of the oracles, which Zeus has brought on sooner than expected (lines 739–742). Xerxes, he says, acted from youthful folly when he thought he could chain the sacred Hellespont like a slave with fetters and so master the Bosporus and Poseidon himself (lines 744–752). A god must have touched his mind (lines 724–725). Darius recounts the earlier rulers of Persia, and says that he himself, for all his campaigns, never did the state such harm (lines 759–786). The Persians must never again march against the land of the Hellenes, even if their army is larger (lines 787–794).

The army that Xerxes left behind in Greece, Darius says, remains in Boeotia, where the Asopus waters the plain, and there the greatest of evils awaits it as the price of its pride and godless thoughts (lines 800–808). The Persians did not hesitate to plunder the images of the gods and burn their temples; altars are gone and the shrines of the gods have been overturned from their foundations (lines 809–812). At Plataea, he says, there will be a heap of dead under the Dorian spear, and the piles of corpses will tell mortal eyes, even to the third generation, that a man must not think too proudly (lines 816–820). “Hubris,” he declares, “when it has flowered, bears a crop of calamity” (lines 821–822). He tells the Elders to remember Athens and Greece, and to counsel the young Xerxes with sound advice (lines 823–831), and tells Atossa to meet her son with fresh clothes, for in his grief the embroidered robes he wore have been torn to shreds (lines 832–838). Then Darius returns to the earth (lines 839–842).

In the third stasimon (lines 852–907) the Chorus sings of the reign of Darius, when Persia took cities and was not defeated, and of how the empire has fallen.

Exodos (Exit Song)

Xerxes returns (line 909), his robes torn and with only an almost empty quiver left to show (lines 1017–1030), and from his entrance to the end of the play there is one continuous lament, in which the Chorus questions him on the dead and he answers with cries (lines 909–1076). The play ends as the Chorus leads him into the palace in lament.

A Brief Analysis

Since Persians is the earliest Greek play that has reached us, its construction is simple: no more than two actors speak together in any scene, and the Chorus has a prominent part throughout. The play takes its plot from a recent event, the battle of Salamis, which had taken place eight years before. Its Athenian audience would have noticed that it shows the Persians praising Athens as free (lines 241–242) and the Greek victory as the work of the gods (lines 345–347).

The play explains Persian defeat in two ways. The Messenger gives it a human cause: a deceptive message from a Greek, and the narrow water (lines 353–432). Darius gives it a divine cause: the folly and pride of Xerxes in bridging the Hellespont and in plundering the Greek temples (lines 744–752, 807–822). The crucial scene is the appearance of Darius in the third episode, when, asked by the Elders how Persia may fare better in future, he tells them not to take the field against the land of the Hellenes (lines 787–794).

Persians Sources

Aeschylus, Persians (lines 1–1076); the ancient hypothesis to the play, for the date, the other plays of the group and Phrynichus’ model; the Athenian victor list inscribed in stone, for the choregos; Herodotus 3.88, 6.21, 7.2 and 8.40–96. An English translation of the play can be read on Perseus (Persians).

See Also: Oresteia, Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound