Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics)
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Authors: Aeschylus
The Complete Works of
AESCHYLUS
(525/524-456/455 BC)
Contents
INTRODUCTION
TO AESCHYLUS by E. D. A. Morshead
© Delphi Classics 2013
Version 1
The Complete Works of
AESCHYLUS
By Delphi
Classics, 2013
Aeschylus is believed to have been born in Eleusis, a
small town northwest of Athens, which is nestled in the fertile valleys of
western Attica.
Translated by E. D. A. Morshead
The earliest
play by Aeschylus to survive was first performed in 472 BC, being based on
experiences from the playwright’s own life, specifically drawing on his
involvement in the Battle of Salamis.
The
Persians
is unique among surviving Greek tragedies in describing a
contemporary historical event, rather than a mythological story. The tragedy
focuses on the popular Greek theme of hubris, exploring Persia’s loss of Empire through the
pride of its Emperor.
The drama
opens with the arrival of a messenger in Susa,
the Persian capital, bearing news of the catastrophic Persian defeat at Salamis to Atossa, the
mother of the Persian King Xerxes. Atossa then travels to the tomb of Darius,
her husband, where his ghost appears to explain the cause of the defeat. It is,
he says, the result of Xerxes’ hubris in building a bridge across the Hellespont, an action which angered the gods. Xerxes
appears at the end of the play, not realising the cause of his defeat, and the
play closes to lamentations by Xerxes and the chorus.
A depiction of Xerxes the Great (519–465 BC) from a
palace at Persepolis
A bust of Aeschylus from the Capitoline Museum, Rome
In 480, Aeschylus was called into military service
against Xerxes’ invading forces at the Battle of
Salamis.
This important battle holds a prominent place
in ‘The Persians’, Aeschylus’ oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472
BC and won first prize at the Dionysia, the principal dramatic competition in
Athens.
Xerxes, son of
Darius and of his wife Atossa, daughter of Cyrus, went forth against Hellas, to
take vengeance upon those who had defeated his father at Marathon.
But ill fortune befell the king and his army both by land and sea; neither did
it avail him that he cast a bridge over the Hellespont and made a canal across
the promontory of Mount Athos, and brought
myriads of men, by land and sea, to subdue the Greeks. For in the strait
between Athens and the island of Salamis the Persian ships were shattered and
sunk or put to flight by those of Athens and Lacedaemon and Aegina and Corinth,
and Xerxes went homewards on the way by which he had come, leaving his general
Mardonius with three hundred thousand men to strive with the Greeks by land:
but in the next year they were destroyed near Plataea in Boeotia, by the
Lacedaemonians and Athenians and Tegeans. Such was the end of the army which
Xerxes left behind him. But the king himself had reached the bridge over the
Hellespont, and late and hardly and in sorry plight and with few companions
came home unto the Palace
of Susa.