Les Perses

by Aeschylus, Leconte de Lisle (Translation)

Cette tragedie fut ecrite apres les victoires grecques de Salamine et de Platee (Eschyle ayant participe a la premiere).
Si ces echecs militaires n'atteignaient pas reellement l'Empire perse, l'annee 480 av. J.-C. fut vecue par les Grecs comme la victoire d'un peuple moins nombreux, mais libre, contre un grand empire; de l' Occident hellenique contre le barbare oriental.
Il s'agit de la seule tragedie grecque a sujet historique qui ait subsiste.

Genres: Plays

38 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2014

About the author

Greek Αισχύλος , Esquilo in Spanish, Eschyle in French, Èsquil in Catalan, Eschilo in Italian, Эсхил in Russian.

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC – c. 456 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.
Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.

Reviews

[Phillip]

The idea here is interesting. Auletta has updated and modernized Aeschylus' play The Persians in the context of the Gulf War, with extensive descriptions of modern military battles--explosives, guns, bombing from airplanes, missile strikes, and specific machines like the Stealth Bomber or B-52s. There is also an interesting theme here of war being televised, which I believe was first done live during the Gulf War, and how it is both a source of horror and potentially a deterrent to future wars if the horror generated could be great enough (though simultaneously Auletta's version recognizes that the images of war in the Gulf were similar enough to what Americans were used to seeing in action movies that it was not necessarily as horrifying as one would think).

The problem with trying to modernize the story and set the Persians as Iraqis and the Greeks as the US is that it requires some contradictions that undermine the logic of the play as well as being in stark contrast to the historical events Aeschylus depicted. The biggest contradiction is who the aggressor in the war is. Obviously, in the Gulf War, the US attacked Iraq. And there are portions of this version that put that idea forward, especially about the US quest for oil. However, the play also maintains several of the sections from Aeschylus where the Persians talk about being the aggressors going to invade Greece--which is what happened historically in the events Aeschylus depicts. So on the one hand, there are Persians talking about raising a massive army to invade Greece, while those same Persians elsewhere talk about the US/Athens as the attacker who invaded their territory. It's also potentially interesting--though possibly not that important--that the descendants of the Persians would become the Iranians, who were fierce enemies of the Iraqis, so it's a bit ironic that Auletta revises the play so the Persians become the Iraqis.
https://youtu.be/pjz_J2-VBQI