Not as good as other plays by sophocles and euripedies

Seven Against Thebes: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

mai citește cineva piesele lui eschil? mai ales că atunci, mii de ani înainte, mai toată piesa era cântată (autorii dramatici erau și compozitori) - și ce ar însemna textele oratoriului de bach fără partitura muzicală?
să mai amintim, de asemenea, și desfășurarea piesei, cu corul său mulțime, pe care eschil l-a făcut „actor“, implicându-l în tragedie și nu comentator de pe margine, cum fusese până atunci.

rugătoarele
cincizeci de muieri egiptene, fiicele lui danaos, sunt „ursite“ să se mărite cu verii lor tuciurii. lor le e scârbă, așa c-o rup pe mare până ajung pe țărmul helladei, mai precis în argolida, unde șef este pelasgos. tot văitându-se în cor, că vai! că oh!, ele ajung la templu și solicită în numele lui zeus, protecție ca suplicante (rugătoare). ceea ce și primesc. iar când tuciuriii vin disperați după ele, pavăză le stă rezistența băștinașilor argolizi (nimeni nu refuză o femeie, darmite cinciezeci!).

genial este că aproape nu există acțiune, parcă e o piesă de beckett, scena e formată dintr-un gorgan, pe care actorii ba urcă, ba coboară (asta când nu ies din scenă).

uimitoare este religiozitatea piesei, în care sunt adunați sodom de zei, ceea ce dă piesei caracter sacru. la mijloc, stă mitul lui io, tipa sedusă de zeus, transformată apoi în vacă fugară în egipt. de unde „rudenia“ dintre greci și egipteni.

tonul rugătoarelor este unul negativist, plângăreț, contestatar, ele se opun bunului mers al lumii (căsătoria), sunt un fel de feministe avant la lettre, și așa ele atrag hybrisul, și nenorocirea, așa cum se va întâmpla în celelalte piese pierdute ale trilogiei.

Să scape urmașele
mamei slăvite
de-a împărți cu bărbații culcușul,
scutite să fie de nuntă
și de-mblânzire! (p.36)
Privește spre noi, rugătoarele,
fugare gonind pretutindeni, așa cum aleargă juninca vânată de lup,
sărind sub perete de stânci să-și afle scăpare,
și-i spune, mugind,
păstorului caznele sale. (p.48)

nu încape nici o dezlegare fără suferință (p.53) este mesajul piesei (dar și cel tragic, al lui eschil), iar cele cincizeci vor atrage suferința multora.
femeia, singură, este nimic. (p.67)
a cinsti, mai tare decât însăși viața, cumpătarea.(p.79)

perșii
deși considerată cea mai bună dintre tragedii (în afară de tragedia orestia), nu mi-a plăcut din cale afară. poate tocmai pentru că e etalon al tragediei grecești și-i excită pe clasiciști).

în urma victoriei navale a grecilor de la salamina, învingătorul xerxes (îl știți, ăla chelu' din 300), conducătorul imperiului persan, și perșii (adunarea bătrânilor) se tânguie împreună. nu doar pentru pierderea tinerimii războinice - aici eschil înșiră de două ori pomelnicul vitejilor - dar tânguirea reprezintă de fapt șocul psihologic al oamenilor pricinuit de eșec.
și aici stă măreția lui eschil, în reprezentarea perșilor nu doar ca învinși cretini, ci ca neam viteaz și glorios.
de asemenea, mi-a plăcut introducerea fantomei (umbrei) unui mort, a marelui rege dareios, tatăl lui xerxes, care iese din infern: De-acolo nu se pleacă prea ușor, pentru că zeii din adâncuri știu mai bine să apuce, decât să sloboadă. / Eu totuși am venit, având destulă trecere la ei. (p.113)
am mai aflat ce anume puneau în ofrande zeilor cei antici: laptele alb și dulce la băut al unei vaci neprihănite-n jug, atotscânteietoarea miere stoarsă de lucrătoarea florilor, albina, prinos de apă curgător din șipot feciorelnic, și-această băutură neamestecată, luminoasă, din mumă câmpenească, dintr-o viță veche, și rodul cu mireasmă bună al măslinului bălai, care-și întinde viața frunzelor tot anul, și împletite flori, vlăstare ale gliei roditoare. (p.109-110)
cum am mai spus, e multă religie în piesă, deși este una istorică, de fapt documentar-patriotică (încă un plus pentru eschil).

piesa are de toate: vise premonitorii, fast vs. umilință, slavă vs. nenorocire, știre documentară vs. aolire, multe dualisme izvorâte - de ce nu, se întreabă traducătorul alexandru miran în prefață - din religia dualistă iraniană, zoroastrismul.


cei șapte contra thebei
spre deosebire de celelalte piese, aceasta nu are aproape deloc acțiune, deși mersul soldaților de pe meterezele cetății sau zgomotul bătăliei însoțesc cântările corului pe o bună parte din spinarea piesei.
cetatea theba, condusă de fiul blestematului oedip, eteocles, este atacată la cele șapte porți de către dușmanii argieni conduși de fratele lui, polyneikes. intriga este dată de văicărelile corului de femei, căruia regele le închide gura, ca să nu slăbească moralul războinicilor cetății: Când biruie, femeia nu-i decât neobrăzare, și nu te poți apropia de ea cu vorba. / Când o cuprinde teama, pacostea e și mai mare, pentru casă, pentru obște. / Bărbatul e răspunzător de cele ce se pun la cale în afara casei, aici femeia nu are nici un cuvânt. (p. 145)
un spion vestește despre cei șapte războinici contra thebei, cărora regele le pregătește câte un apărător theban. avem aici un duel al descrierilor aprigelor vitejii ale fiecăruia în parte, în opoziție. practic, așa creează eschil „lupta“, prin dialog.
theba scapă de atacatori, dar cei doi frați mor amândoi în luptă, ca efect al hybrisului părintelui incestuos și bunicului lor pederast. de asemenea, nici cei doi nu sunt chiar „inocenți“ - de pildă, eteocles parcă chiar își dorește să-și ucidă fratele (are o mâncărime a fratricidului), în ciuda rugăminților corului femeilor thebane.
piesa se termină cu petrecania celor doi frați, împreună cu cele două surori, ismena și antigona (se spune că fragmentul e adăugită)
se spune că dintr-o cetate cucerită zeii pleacă. (p. 146)
e în câștig acel ce moare mai devreme decât mai târziu. (p. 165)



prometeu înlănțuit - cel mai mișto personaj al lui eschil

prometeu este, fără îndoială, personajul care mi-a plăcut cel mai mult dintre personajele celor patru piese ale volumului. nu pentru că este personaj civilizator al oamenilor - care nu doar că le-a adus focul, dar le-a dat scrierea, ingineria, meșteșugurile, calendarul, domesticirea animalelor - cu alte cuvinte, oameni i-a făcut.

dar prometeu e dat dracului. face ce vrea, are limba lungă, ce-i în gușă și-n căpușă, și-i pedepsit de noul șef al zeilor, zeus, care se dovedește cam tiranic și-l osândește să stea legat în lanțuri și un vultur să-i mănânce ficații: De-aceea vei fi pedepsit să stai de veghe pe stânca dușmănoasă, în picioare, veșnic fără somn, și fără să-ți îndoi genunchii. / Vei înălța potop de plângeri și zadarnici suspine. (p. 192) .

iar prometeu acceptă, acceptând firea de rahat a ingratului de zeus: acesta, după ce bine mersi a primit ajutorul lui zeus pentru a-l detrona pe tat-su, cronos, s-a ofticat brusc pe mila lui prometeu față de oameni. care oameni:
la început vedeau fără să vadă și ascultau fără să audă, aidoma cu plăsmuirile stârnite în vise, se petreceau de-a lungul vieții fără sens și în amestec. (p. 211)

se plânge el, dar își acceptă soarta. știe că va fi eliberat, mai târziu, de hercule. și că are un secret, care e atuul lui în fața lui zeus.

și fiicele lui okeanos, zânele apelor, se tot învârt cu corul lor, și-i cântă soarta, în fâlfâit de valuri.

Să cadă asupră-mi mănunchiul de foc împletit, tresară eterul în zgomot de trăsnete, sub vifor de vânturi sălbatice; suflările lor, zguduind pământul, să-l smulgă din rădăcini și străfunduri; talazul mării, cu vuiet năprasnic și aspru, umflat pân' la cer, să șteargă cărările stelelor, nemernicu-mi trup să-l azvârle adânc în bezna din Tartaros, în vârtejirile unei neîndurate ursite!
Dar nu voi putea fi atins niciodată de moarte. (p. 238)

I came for Prometheus Bound and stayed for The Persians and The Seven Against Thebes--but The Suppliant Maidens is the most sophisticated text here.

The Suppliant Maidens - a bizarre thing, with a choral protagonist, concerning an asylum claim of the Danaids: Greek drama was part of a self-flattering political dream wherein aliens always already desire to immigrate to Hellas against the wishes of nativists, which self-flattery continues in 2019 to be an abiding ideology in the United States and is accordingly one of the key foundational and self-defining mythologies of so-called western civilization. It gets to a weird start when the Egyptian speaker invokes Greek religion in the first line—is it masterful cosmopolitanism, or is it not rather a rigid xenophobia that can’t even imagine that strangers have their own ways? After the initial invocation of Zeus, the chorus seeks asylum whereupon the further invocation is made: “Who not in hell, Where another Zeus among the dead (they say) Works out their final punishment, can flee Their guilt of lust” (ll. 229-31). The imputation of Hellenic religion to xenos continues in “by race we claim Argos, the offspring of a fruitful cow” (l. 273-74), a reference to Io’s long journey.

Their petition: “to be no household-slave to Egyptus’ sons” (334). This, to the royal judge, is a “demand to wage / A new war” (341). The judge wants to avoid that “strife for us arise in unexpected and unpremeditated ways” (359). He regards it as outside his executive or judicial authority to decide, and considers it a legislative question: “But I make no promises until I share with all the citizens” (368-9), who at least have a consultative role, if not truly deliberative. The petitioners argue that “the land, the hearth [polis and oikos, NB] you rule / With the single vote and scepter” (372-3). In this dilemma, he fears “to act or not to act” (379), a moment of indecision. A concern for humanitarian intervention into the oikos of another in “a watchdog of men / Distressed who sit at neighboring hearths, / But obtain no lawful justice” (382-4). It is proposed that “Egytpus’ sons rule you by customs / Native to your city” (387-88), and they wish to escape it as a “heartless marriage” (394). The royal judge has difficulty with the issue, but insists on self-preservation: “So never may people say, if evil comes, / ‘Respecting aliens the city you destroyed’” (400-1).

The king is “run aground” (439) on the impasse of xenos v. polis, a matter of either course “necessity is strained” (440), hanged on ananke: “if consanguine / Blood is to stay unshed, we must sacrifice / To slaughter many kind to many gods” (448-49), he is “spent by this dispute” (450). “If I leave / This debt unpaid, you’ve warned of pollution / That shall strike unerringly” (471-3). He enjoins the father to place wreaths at “Altars of the native gods” so that “no one of the native people, who delight / In blame” might blame him (480 ff).

The chorus for its part thinks “mad is the race Egyptian, cursed, / In war unsated” (741-2); they are “wanton men, monstrous and profane” (763). The choral asylum claim runs through Io (524 ff.), who is construed at times as “bacchant of Hera” (565), “woman in turn, a monster marveled at” (570). The Egyptian advocate refers to the chorus as “you without city, I cannot respect” (852)—“willing, unwilling, you shall go” (861). The Egyptian position is standard imperialist: “I do not fear these gods before me” (893)—though the local royalty is not exactly enlightened: “You are / Barbarians, and you trifle insolently / With Greeks” (913-5): “you know not how to be a stranger” (918) as against “you speak unkindly to strangers” (927). The monarch adheres to the legislative will: “thus unanimous the vote / Decreed, never to surrender them to force” (941-2)—the city’s “voted will / Is now fulfilled” (963-4). Likely a trilogy focusing on the polis + demos > polis – demos; part II as themis – demos > polis + demos; part III is themis + demos > themis – demos? Dreadful, that they are lost.

The Persians

The introduction notes that “Aeschylus removes the Persian War to the realm of myth” here (45). The immediate concern is how “all Asia is gone: / To the city of Persians / Neither a herald not horseman returns” (13-5). The intention had been to “yoke / in servitude Hellas” (49-50)—a “destroyer of cities” (64) who is “yoking the neck of the sea” (71), the Persian monarch, from Herodotus VII, traces “his descent from Perseus” (79). The problem: “For divine fate has prevailed since / It enjoined Persians to wage wars” (102-3). It hangs in suspense until, foil to Marathon, “a Persian runner comes” (246) to report “all the barbarian host is gone” (254): “the sea-dyed corpses whirl / Vagrant on cragged shores” (277-8), “all aliens in a savage / Country, perished” (318-9). Even though the Persians allegedly outnumbered the Greeks, “some deity destroyed / Our host” (345-6): “she could not sate her appetite with those / Whom Marathon had made the Persians lose” (476-7). The result: “Now all Asia / Desolate, void” (548). “They throughout the Asian land / No longer Persian laws obey, / No longer lordly tribute yield, / Exacted by necessity; / Nor suffer rule as suppliants, / To earth obeisance never make: / Lost is the kingly power” (584-90). What’s left but to “lavish on the nether gods” libations for the dead (621)?

An anti-katabasis, of course, wherein the queen summons spectral Darius “up from the dead” (631). He duly reports: “Ascent is not easy. The chthonic deities more readily / Receive than give” (688-9). Though he fears famine or “civil strife within the city” (715) (Agamben’s stasis), the complaint is that Xerxes “drained the plain manless” (718), a fantasy of demographics, then. She is concerned that “to the joyous bridge / They came, the yoke of continents” (735); his point is rather that “my son in ignorance / Discovered it, by youthful pride; who hoped / To check the sacred waters of the Hellespont / by chains, just as if it were a slave” (742-5). He recalls a lovely precession of Persian history (765 ff) before noting that “Grecian soil is their own ally” (791) insofar as “it starves to death excessive numbers” (793). Persia is punished: “so great will be / The sacrificial cake of clotted gore / Made at Plataea by Dorian spear” (816-17).

Seven Against Thebes

Part of the Oedipus story, this text focuses plainly on the stasis that occurs in the power vacuum after Oedipus is cast out: there is “disaster” throughout the polis (5), and the present archon orders his soldiers “fear not that mighty mob of foreigners” (34), a nexus of rightwing anxiety. His reconnaissance reports that the seven enemy divisions seek to “lay your city level / with the ground, sacked, or by their deaths to make /a bloody paste of this same soil of yours” (47-48). Thereafter, signs of the enemy are seen in a “cloud of dust” that their movements raise (60, 81), as well as in sounds thereof heard from outside (83, 100, 150)—though it gets borderline surreal with proclamations such as “I see the sound” (103); this is a similar pre-heralding, as in the Agamemnon. Archon repeats the order to participate in the defense of the polis: “Now if there is anyone that will not hear / my orders, be he man or woman or in between, / sentence of death shall be decreed against him / and public stoning he shall not escape” (196-9 emphasis added): never mind the perverse incentives generated by this injunction, what is going on with the gender politics there? Archon is the normal authoritarian in advocating that “obedience is the mother of success” (223). The choral position is that “thanks to the Gods that we have our city / unconquered” (233), but the archon produces, perhaps, a tragic dilemma in “I do not grudge your honoring the Gods. / But lest you make our citizens cowards, / be quiet and not overfearful” (236-8).

None of it matters insofar as the polis is genuinely subject to solicitation: “Our city groans from its foundation” (245)—is the dilemma aforesaid shaking the constitutional order, rooted in theological fear, which runs contrary to the orders of the polis executive? For his part, the executive despairs, “Alas, the luck which among human beings / conjoins an honest man with impious wretches” (597-8), which founders on the same dilemma, interpreted in a self-serving manner. He believes that “our race, the race of Oedipus, / by the gods maddened, by them greatly hated” (653-4), which is a reasonable point, considering that this is all the fallout of divine revenge against Oedipus for his ancestors’ defeat of ancient chthonian monsters. He appeals to a different dilemma: “I do not think that now he comes to outrage / this fatherland of his she will stand his ally/ or else she is called falsely Justice, joining with a man whose mind conceives no limit in villainy. / In this I trust and to the conflict with him / I’ll go myself. What other has more right? / King against king, and brother against brother” (669-675). The chorus recognizes the problem: “Forth from your house the black-robed Fury / shall go” (700); “Old is the tale of sin I tell / but swift in retribution: to the third generation it abides. / Thrice in Pythian prophecies / given at Navel-of-Earth / Apollo had directed / King Laius all issueless to die” (742 ff.). For Oedipus, the problem was not the patricide or the incest, but rather when “he knew the meaning of his dreadful marriage” (778-9). But “the decisions of Laius, / wanting in faith” (841) as the crime? Otherwise, a fantasy of demographics insofar as “emptied the city walls” (330) is plausible; Capaneus particularly desires to “burn the city” (434), as part of the slick catalog of enemies (375 et seq.); the descriptions of the Seven are lovely otherwise.

Prometheus Bound

Set at “the world’s limit” (1), an “untrodden desolation” (2), agents of the gods “nail this malefactor” (id.) to the cliff so that he might “pay the gods the penalty” for his “man-loving disposition” (3-4). The “command of Zeus” finds its “perfect fulfilment” in “Might and Violence” (12). The torture will proceed until Heracles liberates Prometheus, though during the play he “has yet to be born” (26). Hephaestus feels guilt, but is assured that “your craft is in no way the author of his present troubles” (47).

Fairly brutal: “drive the obstinate jaw of the adamantine wedge right through his breast” (64). The prosopopeia for Might intones, after nailing, that “the Gods named you wrongly when they called you Forethought” (88). Prometheus himself envisions “ten thousand years of time” of torment (95). He also sees a “limit to my sufferings” because “I have known all before, all that shall be” (99-100). His resume is slick: “It was mortal man / to whom I gave great privileges and / for that was yoked to this unyielding harness. / I hunted out the secret spring of fire, / that filled the narthex stem, which then revealed / became the teacher of each craft to men, / a great resource. This is the sin committed / for which I stand accountant” (106-13). At “earth’s end” (117), he finds that he is “enemy of Zeus, hated of all” (121)—aesthetics determined by power—arising out of his “excessive love for man” (123)—even his self-assessment is uncritical in accepting the distortions of power. He wishes instead that he had been thrown “underneath / the earth and underneath the House of Hades, host of the dead-- / yes, down to limitless Tartarus” (152-54), which would have been the more standard punishment for this sort of transgression.

What then accounts for the deviation from precedent? The chorus construes Zeus as he malignantly, / always cherishing a mind /that bends not, has subdued the breed of Uranos, not shall he cease / until he satisfies his heart” (163-5). Prometheus for his part predicts that “he shall need me” (168), at which time he will demand “recompense” (179). Zeus is savage and “his justice / a thing he keeps by his own standard” (188-9), which enables Russell’s critique of the moral argument for the existence of god—that the standard of justice is idiosyncratic to power, rather than derived from any particular set of axioms.

An apocalyptic prediction in that Zeus “shall melt to softness yet / when he is broken in the way I know” (190-1). Zeus is more concerned with how “he assigned / to the several gods their several privileges / and portioned out their power, but to the unhappy / breed of mankind he gave no heed, intending / to blot the race out and create a new” (231-5). Prometheus by contrast “rescued men from shattering destruction” (236) and acted in representative capacity: “I gave to mortal man a precedence over myself in pity” (240). He caused “mortals to cease foreseeing doom” (250) and “placed in them blind hopes” (252) and “gave them fire” (254); he also “first yoked beasts for them” so that “they might be man’s substitute” (462-4). He also taught them medicine, divination, religious practice, oneiromancy, augury, and so on (475 ff.): “all arts that mortals have came from Prometheus” (505). And yet: “craft [techne?] is far weaker than necessity [ananke?]” (513). This acting in representative capacity is also an intentional internalization of an externality: “I knew when I transgressed nor will I deny it. / in helping man I brought my troubles on me” (267-8). An apocalypse is foretold (368-74). A repeated refrain is how Zeus is a tyrant—and that general term of opprobrium is given some substance in the notion of a “tyrant’s private laws” (403).

Here is perhaps a dilemma: “Who then is the steersman of necessity?” “The triple-formed Fates and the remembering Furies.” “Is Zeus weaker than these?” “Yes, for he, too, cannot escape what is fated” “What is fated for Zeus besides eternal sovereignty?” “Inquire of this no further” (515-20). This must be compared to Roman Jupiter, who is perhaps superior to fate. Prometheus declines to let out the secret that he knows, the fate of Zeus, as “it is only by keeping it that I will escape my despiteful bondage and my agony” (524). Io shows up to “the limits of the world” (666), with tales of Zeus wanting to “blot out the whole race” (669), again construing humans as a writing. Prometheus tells Io that her suffering thus far is but a “prelude” (739). Io asks if Zeus will fall from power and he answers: “know that this shall be” (760) because of “a son mightier than his father” (768)—unless Prometheus is freed—and there is a recitation of the liberatory agent, a descendent of Io, “a man renowned / for archery” (870-1), anti-chthonian Heracles.

It's a shame three of these four plays are all part one of separate trilogies of which the other parts have been lost. This makes the plays seem somewhat dull and incomplete, but are certainly not terrible. They are simply lacking in when it comes to plot. If you compare them to the first play in the one trilogy of Aeschylus which is still intact (Oresteia), it is similarly slow-moving and would be fairly dull if taken by itself. The other two plays in Oresteia develop the story gradually and the final play finishes quite brilliantly.

What is known of the Prometheus series seems like it ends in a similar fashion to Oresteia, reconciling the polarized perspectives of deities at odds with each other via the intriguing actions of a mediating third-party. Less is known of The Suppliants and Seven Against Thebes, but like the Orestes trilogy they also deal with strife and violent crime between family members. Each of the three stories with this theme construct a scenario where the violent clash between family members cannot be escaped and the ability to willingly step away from tragedy is of minimal importance against the greater theme of their bitterly inevitable fate.

Because these trilogies remain only in their opening fragments and due to the playwright's style of gradually developing plots, it's difficult to give the same high praise as to the Oresteia, which remains to us in full.

How does one approach reviewing Aeschylus or any of the classics? One is dealing with a work which is thousands of years old and in and of itself a piece of history. Add to that problem that for most of us, there is no choice but to read translations of the work, rather than the original. In addition, there are only a few works remaining from only three sources (unless the authorship has been incorrectly given), so one is left to compare Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, and given that Aeschylus was writing much earlier than the others the comparison would be rather difficult given the changes that Aeschylus made to Greek Theatre. What one can discuss is how readable the translations are, and the supporting material.

Aeschylus I, number 145 in the Loeb Classical Library contains four of Aeschylus’ plays: “Persians”, “Seven Against Thebes”, “Suppliants”, and “Prometheus Bound”. The edition I have read is the 2008 publication which was edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. In the preface, Mr. Sommerstein discusses the state of the Aeschylus volumes prior to this publication and what he attempts to accomplish with this new translation and publication of the plays. This is followed by a superb introduction which discusses Aeschylus, his life, his works, Greek Theatre, and what happened to the plays in history to bring them to the point they are now at. This is followed by the standard Bibliography, Sigla, and Abbreviations which one expects from a Loeb edition, and that brings us to the plays themselves.

Each of the plays is preceded by a section detailing the specifics of the play. When it was believed to be first performed, whether it won the Dionysia competition, what parts of the play may be suspect, what is believed to be the other plays in the production and what is known about those plays. The footnotes in the translations of the plays themselves are also quite extensive, as information about the decisions made in the translation are covered as well as more information to better help understand any unspoken meanings that Aeschylus may have been trying to convey. The translations themselves are excellent. I have read a few translations of some of these plays, and Mr. Sommerstein has done an outstanding job of helping the reader understand the play.

“Persians” opens with the council of Susa (i.e. the chorus) unsure of the fate of their army and concerned because so many men went to war so far away. They are joined by the Queen Mother, Atossa who is also concerned, because of a dream she had. News of the disaster arrives by messenger, and all are distraught. Atossa asks the chorus to summon the ghost of Darius, who at first is completely unaware of what has occurred, and then curses the hubris of his son Xerxes who led his vast army to this disaster, and then prophesizes the defeat at Plataea. Eventually Xerxes himself arrives in rags and laments the defeat and what it means to Persia.

“Seven Against Thebes” begins after Thebes has been under siege for a time, and on a day when it has been prophesized (by Teiresias) that the city will be assaulted on that very day. A scout arrives and gives Eteocles a description of what has happened outside the city and then leaves to gather more information. Eteocles comments on what he has been told and leaves to oversee the defenses. The Theben maidens arrive (i.e. The Chorus) and describe the fear and terror felt inside the city. Eteocles returns and tries to shame the women into being silent and thus not spread any more fear, they agree and Eteocles once again leaves to inspect the defenses. The Chorus continues to comment until the scout returns and Eteocles rushes back to talk to him. The scout describes each of the seven captains who are assaulting the seven gates, finishing with Polyneices Eteocles discusses how each will be dealt with, and when he learns that is brother is at the seventh gate, he decides to go there to face his brother himself. The Chorus is left alone as both the scout and Eteocles have left the stage. The scout returns and we learn that Eteocles and Polyneices have killed each other. The ending is a bit uncertain as it appears that Atigone and Ismene were added to the play for a later production. However, there is a dispute over what to do with the bodies of the two brothers.

“Suppliants” is about the Danaids who are fleeing a forced marriage and make a plea to King Pelasgus of Argos to protect them. He lets the Argive people make the decision, which is to help the Danaids. An Egyptian herald arrives to try to force the Danaids to return for the marriage, but King Pelasgus threatens the herald and pushes the Danaids to go within the walls of Argos for protection. For me, this was the most difficult play to follow, there was not much in the way of action, and significant sections of it are missing or were added in which makes it all the more difficult.

“Prometheus Bound” is the last of the plays in this volume, and along with “Persians” is the most enjoyable one to read. Some question whether Aeschylus actually wrote the play, but regardless it is an interesting one. The play opens with Prometheus being escorted to the wrong to which he will be bound by Power (Kratos), Violence (Bia), and Hephaestus, the smith. Violence never utters a word, nor does Prometheus himself during this initial period, but Power mocks Prometheus and Hephaestus is empathetic to Prometheus’s position. Power pushes Hephaestus until the job is done, and then the three leave Prometheus alone. For the remainder of the play Prometheus is chained to the rock, lamenting his position, and talking to those who come to see him, such as the daughters of Oceanus (Chorus), Oceanus, Io, and at the end Hermes. The play pits the tyranny of Zeus against Prometheus and his (Prometheus’s) love for man.

This is an excellent edition of the Loeb library, and the new translations of Aeschylus are quite good. One could argue that any edition of classic works deserves five stars, but in this case it is really earned.

Primo approccio con i testi greci antichi, nello specifico qui, le tragedie o come dicono all'origine delle tragedie greche antiche, di Eschilo.
Parliamo di 2500 anni fa circa, dove le opere di Eschilo hanno avuto vita dura, dal 470 a.C. circa, cioè la data in cui sono state scritte, fino al I secolo d.C. sono state soggette a studio da parte dei filosofi dell'epoca, poi il buio fino al XVIII secolo d.C. dove han ripreso vita, ma purtroppo ad oggi ci sono pervenute circa il 7% delle sue opere, quelle qui proposte sono le più conosciute.
Quello che più mi piace e soprattutto mi ispira è la nota mitologica delle avventure di questi testi, quello che invece mi piace meno o che sento meno è la nota tragica, in alcuni troppo accentuata, ma sono delle tragedie, quindi non è che mi potevo aspettare risate a volontà :-D
Delle 4 tragedie, qui presenti, quelle che mi sono piaciute di più sono: Prometeo incatenato ­e Le supplici, soprattutto il primo, forse perchè è il racconto con più connotazione mitologica tra tutte.
Però nel complesso è stata un'ottima rivelazione, anche se la scrittura è molto difficile (non che sia un punto negativo, anzi) e a tratti ho dovuto lasciarlo lì e riprenderlo successivamente o rileggermi pagine intere.
Tutta la parte iniziale, di quest'edizione: l'introduzione, prefazione, spiegazione dei testi con tematiche quali stile letterario, contesto storico ecc..., l'ho trovato fondamentale e molto esaustivo, forse senza non so come sarebbe andata la lettura.
Devo approfondire con altri testi, sia di Eschilo che di altri scrittori greci antichi.

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.

Timeless themes and artful writing. I especially enjoyed the thoughts on justice presented by The Suppliant Maidens. I will be thinking about (and re-reading) Prometheus Bound for a long time... maybe one of these days I'll figure out its deeper meaning!

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).

Two excellent plays (Prometheus Bound & Seven Against Thebes), full of darkness and apocalyptic drama, and two pretty boring pageant masques.

Having recently read Caroline Alexander’s The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War, a wild hare came into my head to read Aeschylus’ Persians, which was mentioned in some connection with the book. My exposure to Greek playwrights is limited. In my infamous graduate-school days, my exposure to Greek authors comprised the historians and relatively obscure Byzantine chroniclers; I had done little reading – much less serious reading – of the literature.

As my ancient Greek has rusted almost beyond use, I am fortunate in this case for having an excellent translation by Carl Mueller, who quotes Dryden in illustrating his approach to the plays – “The translator that would write with any force or spirit of an original must never dwell on the words of the author.” (p. 117)

This volume contains four of the seven complete plays from Aeschylus’ work (somewhere between 70 and 90 plays, of which only fragments have survived the ages): Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Suppliants, and Prometheus Bound.

n  Persians:n None of these plays are “plays” in what most people expect from that word. There’s little action or plot, and much recitation between chorus and actor. Persians is unique in a couple of ways. It’s the only first-hand account of the battle of Salamis (the playwright was there) that has survived, and for a play presented to an audience of Athenians it presents the enemy in a surprisingly sympathetic light (remarkably so, considering that Salamis was only about a decade in the past when first performed and many in the audience would have been veterans of the war). It is – above all – a cautionary tale about the perils of hubris. In attempting to invade Hellas, Xerxes has overstepped the bounds of what is permitted to humans and he and all of Persia must pay the price – defeat, humiliation, ruin.

Even at this early period in the evolution of theater, Aeschylus shows a mastery of dramatic technique (pp. 26ff), and a genius for vivid imagery. Compare the images of the flower of Persia’s youth marching to war and the lament when they are slaughtered by the Athenians:

From Susa they went, / from Agbatana, / from Kissia’s ancient, towering ramparts, / by horse, by ship, by foot, / in close-ranked columns of war. / Men like Amistres and Artaphrenes, / Megabates and Astaspes, / each of them kings, / Persian commanders, / but each of them also the Great King’s servants, / marshals of Persia’s massive forces, / surging, surging, / seething for battle, / archers, horsemen, / a sight to see, / fearful in the fight, / stern in the harsh resolve of their spirit.

Artembares, high in his chariot, / and Masistres, / and noble Imaios, / strong of arm with his archer’s bow, / unyielding Imaios, / and Pharandakes, / and Sosthenes, driver of stallions. / And others, still others / great Nile sent forth, / teeming Nile’s fertile flow: / Sousiskanes, / and Egypt-born, sun-dark Pegastagon, / and towering Arsames, / lord of temple-rich Memphis, and / Ariomardos, governor of age-old Thebes, / and marsh-dwelling oarsmen terrible in number… (pp. 122-23)

And from the Persian Chorus:

King! / My King! / I lament for your army, / your noble army, / for the greatness of Persia, / and her glorious men, / cut down now, / cut down, whom / god has destroyed!

The land, / the land cries, / cries aloud, / cries, / for her youth whom / Xerxes has / slain, / whom Xerxes had crammed into dismal / Hades, / Persia’s / youth from Agbatana, / great Persia’s flower, / many, many, / thousands, / ten thousands, / archers, / masters of the bow, / a forest of men, / gone, / destroyed, / no more!

Weep for them, / weep, / our noble defense! / All Asia brought to her / knees in / shame! (pp. 167-68)

n  Seven Against Thebes:n Before I learned the actual story behind the title, this play always brought to my mind a Greek version of “The Seven Samurai” (or at least “The Magnificent Seven”). The reality, for me, wasn’t quite as inspiring.

Eteokles and Polyneikes are the brother-sons of Oedipus. The original plan was for the brothers to alternate in the kingship of Thebes but after Eteokles’ first year, he refused to give up the throne and exiled his brother. Polyneikes goes to Argos, where he convinces King Adrastos to help him take the city. Adrastos recruits five other champions and they lead an army against Thebes. Everyone but Adrastos is fated to die in this war, the brothers as part of a curse on Oedipus’ house, as well as a fulfillment of the father-brother’s curse on them for mistreatment.

In its “raw” form, there’s really no side to prefer but in Aeschylus’ hands, you’re urged to root for Eteokles, who is presented here as the epitome of (martial) arête and good kingship – not only does he fulfill the demands of honor but he truly cares for the fate of Thebes and dies knowing that his defense of the city will save it from the horrors of a sack.

As with Persians, there’s some memorable poetry:

O god-hated house of Oedipus, / house cursed by the gods, / house maddened by the gods, / house of tears, / now the curse of Oedipus is fulfilled!

But no time for tears or wailing now, / giving birth to even worse suffering!

As for him, / Polyneikes, / so well-named, / strife-bringer, we will / see if his sign is fulfilled; whether golden / letters on a shield will do what they say; / or are they the babble of a demented mind?

If Justice, virgin daughter of / Zeus, had ever been with him in / thought or deed, his boasting might have come true.

But never, never once, never – not when he / fled the dark cavern of his mother’s / womb, not in childhood or adolescence, not when the hair of manhood grew on his chin, / did Justice ever, even once, / turn her eye on him or ever acknowledge him! / Nor does she now, / now as he rapes his city, his parent / land, in this violent, criminal assault! / For is she did, / if Justice looked / kindly on him, she would be justly misnamed / for championing one who brings death on his city! pp. (215-16)

n  Suppliants:n This play is the least satisfying from a self-contained-story point of view. It sets up a confrontation between the fifty daughters of Danaos, who do not want to marry against their will, and the demands of Greek culture, which says a girl must wed.

It must be remembered that all of these plays were part of dramatic trilogies and a satyr play (a comedy). Suppliants is the first in an arc that explored the myth of the Danaids. It’s as if we only had a copy of “The Empire Strikes Back” and maybe a frame or two of the other movies. We could comment favorably on the movies’ technical mastery and script but we wouldn’t know much about the characters or why Vader’s admission of paternity is so pivotal.

n  Prometheus Bound:n Prometheus Bound is the most play-like of these plays. The characters are strongly delineated (Hephaistos, Prometheus, Oceanus, the First Daughter, Io and Hermes) and, while no action takes place on stage, the monologues are harrowing enough in the tales they recount, and the finale when the Titan is hurled down into Tartarus is as violent as any an action-film lover could wish.

The story should be familiar to most readers: There is a war in heaven between Zeus’ faction and that of his father, Kronos. Prometheus & his mother Themis, though Titans and initially Kronos’ allies, defect to Zeus and allow his side to prevail. But Zeus, in this play, is a tyrant who can brook no competition. When Prometheus gives to Man not alone fire but all the arts of civilization, Zeus condemns him to perpetual torment, chained to a cliff in the Caucasus.

The play is a deconstruction of tyranny and the proper response of a free man. Hephaistos and Oceanus are the men who go along to get along (courtiers and sycophants), Io is a living victim of tyranny (raped by Zeus and driven mad by Hera’s jealousy), and Hermes is Zeus’ Gestapo (spying on the sky god’s subjects so that no rival can arise).