Prometheus bound was great, I wish the rest of the trilogy hadn't been lost. Of the few Greek dramas I've read so far, either this or Oedipus Rex is my favorite.

I know The Suppliants was written decades before Oedipus at Colonus, but having read the latter first, and feeling it was much better, this play didn't have much to offer me.

Seven Against Thebes was better than the introduction let on, only it's a shame the true ending has been lost and we're left with nothing but a fanfiction as this great play's capstone.

The Persians felt a bit weak, probably because nothing happened in it; everything was told in retrospect. Perhaps the spectacle of costumes, stage setting, and music would improve it, but this isn't a great piece to be read. On the upside, it's slightly shorter than the prior three, and Darius' ghost was cool.

Four plays by Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound in which Prometheus, while bound to a rock as punishment by Zeus for helping humans and giving them fire, is visited by Io, who has been turned into a cow by a jealous Hera and tortured by a biting gadfly; Prometheus tells Io the route she must take to get to the delta of the Nile where she will found a nation.
The Suppliants in which the descendants of Io and Zeus (I won’t tell you what happens when he catches her,) fifty sisters fleeing their fifty males cousins, the sons of Aegyptus, who want to force them into marriage, arrive in Argos and seek refuge from King Pelasgus, appealing to their heritage as Argos through Io and Zeus.
Seven Against Thebes which is the end of the story of the cursed family of Oedipus and his father Laius, when sons of Oedipus meet in battle over the kingdom.
And to end on a different note, The Persians in which a messenger returns from the Battle of Salamis to report on the carnage to the court and the mother of King Xerxes.

Again, theses are classics for good reason and are an excellent way to spend an evening. Highly recommended.

Seven Against Thebes: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

Prometheus Bound was incredible, the other three plays dragged on with minimal payoff. In contrast, I think any of the plays would have been fantastic to see in person.

These four plays, along with the Oresteia tetralogy, constitute all of the surviving tragedies by the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus. I enjoyed all of them greatly but by far my favorite is Prometheus Bound and my least The Suppliant Maidens. All are great and are must reads for any ancient history enthusiast.

Before moving onto the plays I will comment a bit on this edition. The translations are very readable. I'm not qualified to comment on their accuracy, but the poetry of them seems good. The introduction is ho hum and I could have used a bit more information here. It is also written in microscopic type. That's not unusual in a Penguin Classic, but when the volume is so slight I wish they could have avoided eye strain.

Aeschylus is the worst of the surviving Greek playwrights. He's not a bad playwright, and Prometheus Bound is a great play, but he's almost most interesting as the birthing of Drama rather than for the drama itself. He's a good, perhaps great poet, but the plays here are not as good as the Oresteia and the Oresteia is consistently worse than anything else by Greek playwrights that I have read. The great exception to that is Prometheus Bound which is absolutely awesome. Prometheus Bound may not be by Aeschylus, but is conventionally ascribed to him. It's truly a great play with a compelling hero and it feels very modern and directly relevant to now as all great plays do. It is simply in a different class than the rest. I thought of rating this volume as five stars because of Prometheus Bound alone. Which is one of the great plays, but the rest of it, while very pretty and interesting historically, lacks many of the basics of good drama, like plot and character which were still in development at this time. I suppose everyone should read this for the birth of drama, but both Sophocles and Euripides reached greater heights (again with the exception of Prometheus Bound which is a great work).

34. Aeschylus, 2 : The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Penn Greek Drama Series edited by David R. Slavitt & Palmer Bovie
published: 1999
format: 205 page paperback
acquired: May 30
read: Jun 6-9
rating: 4 stars

Each play had a different translator:

The Persians (472 bce) - translated by David R. Slavitt
Seven Against Thebes (467 bce) - translated by Stephen Sandy
The Suppliants (463 bce) - translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft
Prometheus Bound: (date unknown, authorship contested) - translated by William Matthews

When I originally sat down to read some Greek tragedies, I started with this book, because Aeschylus's are the oldest surviving. At first I was struck by how curious the beginning of [The Persians] was. A prologue character opens the play and narrates the setting, talking directly to the audience. He opens, "The chorus of elders files in, the enemy we despise." Then goes on to describe these elders of the chorus and how we, the audience, will respond to them. When he called me a "New Yorker or Californian", I finally figured out something wasn't right. At this point I should have been terribly annoyed and hated the book.

These are "original literary translations". Slavitt was most free and creative in [The Persians]. There are no prologue characters in the Greek tragedies. Slavitt has essentially written his own play, one that tries to modernize the ancient one while maintaining the general theme. The other three plays are closer to simply translations. They translate freely, mixing, excising and adding parts, but they don't do anything as radical as add or subtract characters.

Anyway, the reason I didn't hate this book is that I actually enjoyed Slavitt's creation. Yes, it left me feeling I still needed to read more standard translations, and for a few plays I did this. But I gained something here too. This book was, for me, worth the detour.

I reviewed The Persians and The Seven Against Thebes on their pages. Some notes on the other two:

The Suppliants

50 brides, the Danaids, flee their Egyptian grooms. They travel oversea and land in Argos in Greece, where they camp on holy ground. They beg for protection from the gods and from the king of Argos, hence the supplication.

It's the first of a lost trilogy. Here the king of Argos agrees to protect them, just as the 50 rejected grooms arrive. In the next plays the king is killed and the sisters are married to the men. The first night of marriage, 49 sisters kill their new husbands. One holds out—Hypermnestra refuses to kill Lynceus. Lynceus eventually becomes king of Argos.

The Suppliants is odd in several ways. It's uneventful and kind of boring and yet also curious and interesting as the woman plead for protection by reasoning. They first argue they are in the right, then they threaten mass suicide on sacred ground of Argos, and act that would pollute this ground.

The translator, in her preface, thinks over the question of why this play was preserved when so many were lost. She calls it "a remote and haunting text, whose august stance is hard to comprehend".

Prometheus Bound

Easily the best of these four plays. There is a lot going on here. Prometheus is interesting. The basic story line is that he is chained to cliff by Zeus forever as punishment for giving man fire. Here he claims he gave man not only fire, but everything needed for civilization, including how to think, and how to use math and study the stars. He is visited by Oceanus who wishes to help him, and Io (as in Ionic) who is rushing through her own troubles. Hera turned her into a cow and has a fly endlessly harass her across the known world. Finally Hermes comes to press Prometheus on a secret he has about the fate of Zeus. The discussions are interesting and varied, touching on personal fate and on how much to sacrifice and what it all means.

This is another survivor of a lost trilogy. In Prometheus Unbound, Zeus would free Prometheus, who, in return, would warn Zeus not to marry Thetis. In Prometheus the Fire-Bringer Prometheus would finally convince Zeus not to marry Thetis. She is married to a human, and gives birth to the hero Achilles. I'll note that there is some debate on the author of Prometheus Bound, but I'll leave it there. (I'm not sure what "author" really meant to Greeks in this context anyway.)

n  Prometheus Boundn: I really enjoyed being thrown back to high school and remembering Io the cow and all the crazy stories of the Greek gods. In this short play, Prometheus, who gave humans the gift of fire, is condemned to being chained to a mountain for having done so because Zeus doesn't approve. Io shows up and her reveals to her that she still has a long way before she will eventually conceive a child from Zeus.

n  The Suppliantsn: In this one the fifty daughters of Danaus (some descendant of Zeus and Io) are running away from their fifty cousins who want to bed them.

"Let them die before they ever lay hands
On us their cousins, to enter our unwilling beds,
Which Right forbids them!"

At least they understand how it works and know that bedding cousins is probably a BAD idea. This is putting Oedipus to serious shame. ;)
The whole play is pretty much about the ladies moaning and imploring the gods and the King of Argos, whom they chance upon and implore to help them. It was pretty crazy, but what would you expect from descendants of Zeus and a cow?

"The child pastured amid flowers,
The Calf whom Zeus begot
Of the Cow, mother of our race,
Made pregnant by the breathing and caress of Zeus"

n  Seven Against Thebesn: This one was my favourite and a sort of prologue to Antigone, it tells the story of how the two brothers came to kill each other. For some reason the end made me laugh.

"Antigone: For you who died.
Ismene: For you who killed.
Antigone: My heart is wild with sobs.
Ismene: My soul groans in my body.
Antigone: Brother, whom I weep for -
Ismene: Brother, most pitiable -
Antigone: You were killed by your brother.
Ismene: You killed your brother.
Antigone: Twofold sorry to tell of -
Ismene: Twofold sorrow to see -
Antigone: Sorrow at the side of sorrow!
Ismene: Sorrow brother to sorrow!"

It's not even funny, but late at night it was.

n  The Persiansn: My least favourite, about the account of the battle of Salamis and the victory of the Athenians over Xerxes' army, and the latter's curse. It was good but less engaging than the rest.

Very quick, very light to read. Of course, Greek mythology often is.
I'm studying this book as a part of my university course in English, called "The Tragedy of Knowledge". And what is there to be derived from the tale of Prometheus? Perhaps, the very cliche conclusion that "knowledge is might". However, some would say, Prometheus is far from mighty strapped with chains on a rock, doomed to be tortured in the worst way possible for eons to come. God of knowledge, the benefactor of man kind, sharing his knowledge with creatures that "live for a day" has caused him to lose his standing. What, are we to make then?
Like a teacher, Prometheus did his best to teach his pupils how to advance. But, as it is evident even in our times, no party in power wants the people beneath them to be educated. Because then they would rebel. Against the gods, against authority in general. Therefore, Zeus acts like every other tyrant or king or person-in-power has acted over history and punishes the one who attempts to educate people and, thus, threaten his authority. Prometheus is a rebel. To him, mortals are not insignificant, but rather they are those who give the Olympian gods their power.
Therefore, my conclusion is that knowledge must be shared. Even if it will have dire consequences for the sharer.

Aeschylus formats these dramas less in terms of action but rather reverberation – a reverberation of the fates. Even in ‘Thebes’, in which battle comes centrally, his interests are all in the framework before the actual interaction of characters. The great rivalry between Oedipus’ spawn takes place in the abstract, a fulfilment of prophecy before a clash of actors. ‘The Persians’ is the clearest distillation of this effect, taking place entirely after its subject-events and concerned only with the grander image of inevitable imperial collapse. Perhaps a close-reading is a little less sprawling – let us forsake the close reading. Aeschylus provides us the folly of empire, of bonding continents with boat-bridges, of world-churning hubris. Xerxes literally empties Asia and casts her against the Doric spear, the fine constructs of his father (who also, though his court has forgotten it, fell upon Greek spears) all dashed upon brazen shields. We are not afforded the experience of defeat, but rather its aftershock. The state of having lost, of pointed-shadows leering over shredded mind. There is probably something of the later orientalist misanthropy to Xerxes’ insatiable wailing in the play’s close, though also an affect of hopelessness. Here ends ambition. The centrality of the boat-bridge as prime image is reflected in ‘Thebes’, which imagines the city a boat accosted by rushing waves – the crests of the invaders in forward position. ‘Prometheus Bound’ – the greatest by far of these plays – makes middle its Christlike god in chains. ‘The Suppliants’ – by far the least of them – finds some mirror in the transplants of Io. It is in reflection and in signal metaphor that Aeschylus creates his dramatic situations – it is a simple device. ‘Prometheus Bound’, quasi- or not, makes best effort to overcome whatever limitations exist consubstantial to this effect. His rage against power is wide-ranged and fascinating; in it is Milton, Wagner, Matthew/Mark/Luke/John. Perhaps the sequel soothes his rancour (think The Matrix versus where the trilogy finalizes – no, really), but we do not have that sequel. We have this godly martyr, he who saved mankind and prophecies the doom of Zeus. Liberty awaits, and this is its cost.

3.5 stars rounded down. A great start to western drama.

Persians - 4 stars
Otototoi, you are saying / that the dead bodies of our loved ones / are floating, soaked and constantly buffeted by salt water, / shrouded in mantles that drift in the waves! (274-277)

But Artembares, the commander of ten thousand horse, is being pounded against the rugged shores of Sileniae; and took an effortless leap out of his ship; and the excellent Tenagon, a noble of the Bactrians, now wanders around the wave-beaten island of Ajax. (305)

The hulls of our ships turned keel-up, and the sea surface was no longer visible, filled as it was with the wreckage of ships and the slaughter of men; the shores and reefs were also full of corpses. (415)

Terribly lacerated by the sea - pheu! - / they are being savaged by the voiceless children - ehhh-e! - / of the Undefiled - o-ahh! / Bereaved houses mourn their men, / and aged parents. (576-580)

Seven Against Thebes - 3 stars
For I speak of the transgression / born long ago, punished swiftly, but remaining to the third / generation, when Laius, defying / Apollo, who had told him thrice / at the central navel of earth, / the oracular sanctuary of Pytho, to die / without issue to save his city, / mastered by his own cherished, unwise counsels, / begot his own death, / Oedipus the father-slayer, / who sowed the sacrosanct soil / of his mother, where he had been nurtured, / and suffered a bloodstained progeny: / it was mindless madness / that brought that bridal couple together. (743-757)

Suppliants -3 stars

Prometheus Bound -3.5 stars
Now drive the remorseless bite of the adamantine wedge with all your power right through his chest. (64-65)

In the first place, the Father will tear this rugged ravine wall into fragments with his thunder and the fire of his lightning-bolt, and will bury you under it, gripped in the embrace of the rocks. After the completion of a vast length of time, you will come back again to the light; and then, I tell you, the winged hound of Zeus, the bloodthirsty eagle, will greedily butcher your body into great ragged shreds, coming uninvited for a banquet that lasts all day, and will feast on your liver, which will turn black with gnawing. (1015-1025)

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