This is a great collection of plays, beautifully translated and helpfully annotated in this Penguin edition. The story of Prometheus is one of the most powerful and poignant in Greek mythology, and Aeschylus tells it with real feeling. The other plays in this collection are great as well. Seven Against Thebes continues the story of the aftermath of the whole Oedipus debacle, and in the process captures the horror of living in an ancient walled city under siege. The Suppliants, with its story about refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East and searching for asylum in Europe felt surprisingly timely. We've been having the same immigration debate for well over 2,000 years now apparently. The last play in the collection is the Persians, and it's an interesting work for several reasons. Aeschylus was a veteran of the wars against the Persians, and when he wrote this it wasn't ancient myth, but very recent history. It's actually an important historical source for what happened at the battle of Salamis. It's funny because the play is presented as a tragedy, but what was tragedy for the Persians was glory for the Greeks, and it's fun to imagine those Greek audiences positively glowing with schadenfreude as they watched it. All these plays are interesting glimpses into ancient Greek culture with passages of great beauty and power. Still well worth reading after so many centuries.

3 ⭐

”Grief is man’s lot, and men must bear it.
Sorrows come from sea and land;
And mortal ills will multiply with mortal years”
- The Ghost of Darius

n  n
Aeschylus’ final moments – Tragedy of the Tragedian


Next time you’re feeling hard done by, as if the Fates look upon you unfavourably, or Eutychia has treated you frugally in her distribution of good fortune, remember, it could be worse! Aeschylus was killed by an eagle that dropped a turtle on his head!

This is Aeschylus, the earliest Greek playwright from whom we still possess surviving material. He wrote anywhere between 70-90 plays of which 7 remain including The Oresteia Trilogy (the only extant trilogy of its kind) and the 4 plays included in this collection: Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes and The Persians.

I’m confident that the works in this collection are not Aeschylus’ best.

Prometheus Bound is the first. I found it an interesting choice to make it the dominant/titular play of the collection given that many scholars believe it wasn’t actually written by Aeschylus’ at all but perhaps by his eldest Grandson (in keeping with tradition, also named Aeschylus). Probably just comes down to good marketing, being the most popular of the 4 plays. It’s well-known; I found nothing remarkable about it.

The Suppliants is very dull. Being the first, and only extant, play of a trilogy it’s pretty evident that it’s intended to set up the second and third plays for which reason, very little actually happens. The 50 Suppliant Maidens (the Danaids) are fleeing their 50 cousins (the sons of Aegyptus) who wish to marry them against their will. With the help of their Father, Danaus, they come to the city of Argos where they promptly proceed to emotionally manipulate Argos’ King, Pelasgus, into taking them in and protecting them; poor bugger. For sure you’d help them if they came to you and respectfully put forth their woes and lamentations but these women immediately attempt to put the fear of the Gods’ retribution in Pelasgus’ heart and threaten to off themselves if he doesn’t protect them. Not cool, girls!

Seven against Thebes is the third, and only surviving, play from Aeschylus’ Oedipus trilogy. The first 2 being Lauis and Oedipus. Polyneices, son of Oedipus, has brought an army of foreigners to the Walls of Thebes (his own home from which he was exiled) to take control of the city from his brother, Eteocles. This play is, essentially, a long lamentation from a chorus of Theban women regarding the unfortunate situation they find themselves and their city in, followed by a live draw of which 7 Achaen Champions will do mortal combat with the 7 Thebian Champions, including a prayer, by the chorus, for each Thebian champion announced. Let me tell you... It’s mind-numbing! The melodramatic lamentation and frantic prayers to the Gods from the Theban women is almost comical. I actually questioned whether this was a tragedy when I found myself smiling at the back-and-forth between Eteocles and the Theban women as he frustratedly tried to calm them. Aeschylus portrays them as the generic frightened and inconsolable maidens in distress and, as it goes on for more than a couple of pages too many, it grates on the nerves. Antigone and Ismene are much the same towards the end of the play when there’s another comical display of mourning but Antigone, at least, is a character with some grit and fortitude. When the choice between family and state is forced upon her, she chooses family; Confucius would be proud. I’m looking forward to Sophocles Theban plays!

The Persians is the best of the bunch, in my opinion. It is a standalone, the earliest extant tragedy and the only one concerned with recent history rather than myth. The tale of King Xerxes who leads the entire Persian army to its death at the hands of the Athenians who they outnumbered 3 to 1. Professor Elizabeth Vandiver of the University of Maryland says that the plays of antiquity that survive, most likely survive because they were highly treasured in the byzantine era for their rhetorical, grammatical and linguistic features and were, therefore, used for educational purposes. Persians was the only play of the 4 which I personally felt this would apply to. To me, it shares little of the banalities of the other plays and the syntax is just a step above the others. A couple of examples:

”Smooth delusion’s flattering smile
Leads but where her trap is set;
There man pays his mortal debt:
Doom has caught what death will keep”

By replacing a single word, many passages become timeless truths:

”Such was the flower of manhood,
The pride of Persian youth’s valour,
That we saw march away;
For whom the land that nursed them
Now grieves with ardent longing
And counts each empty day
That quakes our hearts, and lengthens long delay.”

Regarding this edition specifically; that is the Penguin Classics translation by Philip Vellacott with the assistance of advisory editor Betty Radice, I thought the notes were hit and miss. They begin poorly with many of the notes for Prometheus Bound seeming kind of redundant or self-explanatory (in other words, not worth flicking to the back of the book for) but improve in quality/relevance from Seven of Thebes onwards. The main issue is that there aren’t enough notes, at least for someone like myself who enjoys as much extra detail as I can get. You’re better off having some sort of Greek Mythology Encyclopedia for quick reference. I already owned Hamilton’s Mythology so I flicked through that for a little refresher but Vellacott, himself, states:

The following notes explain only a few of the references to characters, places and events in ancient mythology which occur on almost every page of these plays... in general the reader must be referred to works such as Robert Grave’s ‘The Greek Myths’ or Rose’s ‘Handbook of Greek Mythology....

You could also supplement with something in an audio format. I’ve been working my way through ‘The Great Courses – Greek Tragedy’ and it’s chock full of fascinating information. Enjoy! :)

”... let your soul taste each day’s pleasure, spite of griefs;
For all abundance holds no profit for the dead.”

Aeschylus I: Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus


I read Prometheus Bound as part of the Online Great Books program.

This is a fascinating story. it is, of course, a Greek play written in the 5th century BC. The story is written in a form of prose poetry with dialogue and monologues intercut with contributions from the chorus to provide background and move the story along. The translation in this edition is quite accessible to the lay reader. This edition has a nice glossary that briefly explains references to persons and places in the text.

The story involves the "nailing" of the titan Prometheus to a mountain for offending Zeus by giving fire to man. The text is very clear that all of man's arts come from Prometheus and that Zeus's great ambition for man was to destroy mankind and start again.

The story moves in dialogue format. Prometheus talks to Io - a woman who has been horribly mistreated by the gods - and Hermes - who interrogates Prometheus about a prophecy that Zeus will be overthrown by a son (and who assigns the eagle to tear out Prometheus's liver for his refusal to share his knowledge.)

Reading this text at this point in my life makes me regret my misspent youth. This text raises questions about theodicy and the role of the gods in paganism. The sense I got was that Greeks viewed the goes with ambivalence. There is a lot of talk about Zeus being great and the first cause, but Zeus does awful things to individuals for petty and venal reasons. Likewise, Prometheus comes across as a kind of proto-savior, but one who denies a resurrection.

Again, this is a fruitful book for discussion and contemplation.

My second Aeschylus book, this one containing all of his remaining surviving works. Sadly, those which were part of trilogies are now orphaned, so like A Song of Ice and Fire and The Kingkiller Chronicles, we'll probably never get to experience the works in their completeness. I joke, but it does drive home just how much of human literature we have lost - how what survives is only a small fraction of what once existed.

This book was considerably slimmer, thanks to the comparatively brief 15-page introduction, although Philip Vellacot is still the editor/translator. Looks like this may have been the earlier publication, so maybe he just hadn't worked up all that steam yet?

As to the plays, I liked Prometheus Bound, it had a similar intensity of emotion to the Orestia. The Supplicants I felt was the weakest. I felt the chorus of women was very effective in Seven Against Thebes, their mounting terror at the sounds of the besieging army really hightened the tension and the perspective - that of the helpless women who cannot act to defend their city, but must trust that they will be saved and can only fear what will happen if their menfolk fail - provides a different angle from the standard point of view of the brave defending warrior or war-leader, which even today I feel is too often the only focus of war stories. I did agree the conclusion dragged on, and apparently this part might be a post-Aeschylus add-on. I did quite like the idea of the divided chorus exiting in different directions though.

The Persians was simple propaganda. Here we lose the complex motivations and perspectives that I praised in Aeschylus's other works - although we take the "perspective" of the defeated Persians, the whole play is them lamenting how much they suck and talking about how awesome the Greeks are. The conclusion to this one reeeeally dragged. Yes yes, tears and beating your breasts, I get it. For Athenians of the time, however, this would have been more meaningful - a celebration of their victory.

And with that, I have finished all of Aeshylus's surviving works, probably about 10% of what he actually wrote. Pretty impressed overall, let's see what future playwrights do with the material.