Greek Drama · Part 2 · Aeschylus · B2
Aeschylus: The Persians
Part 2 of Greek Drama: the oldest play in the world that still survives, and one of the most surprising. Eight years after the Greeks defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis, Aeschylus, who had fought against the Persians himself, put the battle on stage, not as a celebration, but through the eyes of the Persian queen, waiting at home for news. Reported speech for messengers’ reports, reporting verbs, and the language of sympathy and grief, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight’s play is the oldest one we still have, performed in Athens in 472 BCE. It’s about a battle the Athenians had won only eight years before, against the Persian Empire. Many people in the audience had fought in it.
So it’s a victory celebration! Lots of cheering!
That’s what everyone expected, Marcos. But Aeschylus set the play in the Persian capital, among the enemy, and showed their mothers and old men waiting for news, and their grief when it came. The playwright had fought the Persians at Marathon. And he made the Athenians weep for them.
Susa, the Persian capital, 480 BCE, as imagined in Athens in 472 BCE
Aeschylus (about 525–456 BCE) is the first of the three great tragedians. He fought against the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, where his brother was killed, and probably at Salamis in 480. His epitaph, which he may have written himself, mentions only that he fought at Marathon, not that he wrote plays. He wrote perhaps ninety plays; seven survive.
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