Midlife Book

What's done, I know, is done; yet I will sacrifice
In hope that time may bring about some better fate.

the mother of Xerxes

3 1/2




Bust of Aeschylus. From the Capitoline Museums, Rome


Aeschylus (c. 525/524 - c. 456/455 BC) is the earliest of the four great Greek playwrights, parts of whose oeuvre have survived to the present day. (The others are, of course, Sophocles (c. 497/6 - winter 406/5 BC) and Euripides (c. 480 - c. 406 BC) [these three tragedians] and the comic playwright Aristophanes (c. 446 - c. 386 BC).



Seven of Aeschylus' plays have survived, with about 75 other plays known only through fragments or references to their titles. The Persians is now thought to be the earliest of the seven. The play was produced in 472 BC. Other than comedies, it is the only Greek play of the Classical era whose subject matter is taken from actual history, rather than from legend.

The subject of the play is the battle of Salamis, which occurred in 480 BC.





Wilhelm von Kaulbach - Die Seeschlacht bei Salamis - 1868


As the painting makes clear, Salamis was a naval engagement, one in which the Greeks (vastly outnumbered) defeated the invading Persian forces led by King Xerxes.

The play does not, however, take place near Salamis, nor at the time of the battle - rather, it is set in the Persian royal court at Susa, a few months after the battle. At the beginning of the play the court has not heard from Xerxes' army for some time, and rumors and dread are rife. Then a messenger arrives, who tells the horrible news of what has transpired. King Xerxes himself is a survivor, and arrives later in the play - his mother, Atossa, and the ghost of Darius, king prior to Xerxes, make up the only three named characters. The messenger and the chorus complete the cast.

In telling of the Persian calamity, Aeschylus (who is believed to have seen the battle, perhaps even fought in it) obviously plays to the home crowd. One can almost hear the audience hooting, hollering, applauding as the deaths of various Persian generals are announced.

But, though this "tragedy" (more a triumph from the Greek point of view) seems of little interest to the modern reader as drama, I found myself curiously affected by it. First, even as perhaps fictionalized history, it did appeal to the historian in me. And the last part of the play, in which the glost of Darius laments the foolishness of Xerxes in falling into the trap set for him by the Greeks, certainly has traditional elements of the tragic, even though being presented from a point of view quite different from that of the audience.

The play is short, easily read in an hour or so. The translation by Philip Vellacott appealed to me, as indicated by the great number of underlinings I made. Recommended.