I absolutely loved Seven Against Thebes. There is so much going on - curses, justice, war, brother against brother, honor, fear, death.

Prometheus Bound is the story of Prometheus blessing mankind with fire and hope. He pays a dear price for doing so.

The Suppliants asks the question of what will win in the end - Ares (force) or the Aeropagus (words, law, justice).

The Persians was an interesting play knowing that Aeschylus took part in the Persian Wars. This imagining of what took place at the Persian court upon the epic loss in the war must have made for some self-righteous feel good for the Greek audience.

I continue on with my quest to read all of the Greek plays in roughly chronological order. I've chosen to read, when possible, the editios published by the University of Chicago. I like the translations, and very much enjoy the brief introduction to each play included.

Aeschylus is not my favorite, but I especially found The Persians and The Suppliant Miadens interesting. i cannot imagine what it msut have been like to have a chorus of 50 women in Suppliant. I also truly wish that others plays in the various trilogies had not been lost.

Prometheus Bound is the jewel of this collection.

Below each play review is a link to my Youtube video about that play. You can also view my overview video about Aeschylus here: https://youtu.be/b7IoIEzMTPU

Persians: This is a unique play in the canon of surviving Greek tragedy because it is the only one set entirely outside Greece/the Greek speaking world, and because it is the only play overtly about current events, all of the other plays mask their commentary about current events in a mythical structure. Premiering just eight years after the Battle of Salamis--in which Aeschylus probably fought against the Persians--this play imagines the utter despair that would have resulted in the Persian heartland and royal palace at the news of the army and navy's utter annihilation by the Greeks. This can be read as a kind of radical empathy, imagining the experience of the defeated enemy. However, the play also has Persians emphasizing the value of Greek democracy as a source of their military strength, and it has Persians--especially the ghost of Darius the Great--critiquing king Xerxes for his hubris in invading Greece, which doesn't seem like the kind of critiques people would be publicly making in an absolute monarchy with a ruler who was seen as (at least semi-)divine.
https://youtu.be/G5M1HOkVjr4

Seven Against Thebes: The editors of this edition (the Oxford version) claim that scholars have generally been either indifferent or hostile to this play. I think it's big disadvantage is that there are so many other surviving plays about the Theban conflict/House of Laius, and this is one of the least dramatically interesting--but it does have some interesting elements. I find the gender politics extremely problematic, especially because Eteokles has an excessively misogynistic speech the first time he interacts with the chorus of Theban women. Slightly less problematic but still disturbing is the rhetoric of Thebes as mother(land) and the sexualized imagery of each brother--Eteokles and Polineikes--trying to possess the city. This obviously replicates the Oedipus storyline with it's attendant problems, so it works, but it is a disturbing blending of incestuous sexuality with violence.
One bit I do think is interesting is the scene where the Scout reports who the Argive captains are and what devices are on their shields, and Eteokles analyzes them and assigns a champion of his own whose characteristics and shield device counters the opponent's. It's a long, long scene, and it probably isn't dramatically interesting. But it tells us a good deal about Greek mythology and how the Greeks thought about the relationship between themselves and the gods.
https://youtu.be/RFmC07CMxLA

The Suppliants: This might be my favorite Greek tragedy. It's a fascinating play that brings up some crucial cultural issues for the Greeks, including democracy, gender issues, and the position of foreigners in Greek city-states. The story is of a group of fifty women called the Danaids--after their father Danaos--who flee Egypt to their ancestral homeland of Argos because they are being forced to marry their cousins, the sons of Aegyptos. In Argos, they occupy a grove sacred to the gods and beg King Pelasgos for protection, which he agrees to grant only after the Argive council has democratically voted for it. This is interesting for a few reasons. One is that Argos in the mythologized eighth century--roughly where the story is set-- would not have had a democracy, but the fifth century Athens of Aeschylus' time would have. The other thing that's interesting here is that this play contains the earliest recognized version of the word that would become "democracy," though interestingly this translation largely excises the word. However, there are clear descriptions of the Greek voting process, which involved raising right hands to vote. The other thing I would argue is pro-democratic about the play is that the chorus of Danaids is the primary character. Whereas in most Greek tragedies the chorus is a secondary character that comments on action driven by individual characters, here the collective character of the chorus is the primary driver of the action.
https://youtu.be/SQ68NBQusJA

Prometheus Bound: The first time I read this play I didn't really care for it. Not much actually happens, and so it's not the most dramatically interesting play. However, as the introduction to this version suggests, Prometheus Bound is a play that moves through ideas. It's concerned with questions about fate, justice, resistance to tyranny, the nature of power, violence, and will. One really interesting aspect of the play is that Prometheus and Zeus, who are presented as implacable enemies, are actually mirror images of one another, which raises especially interesting questions about the nature of power and liberation--especially in the context of the multitude of ideologies that have seen Prometheus as a liberatory symbol of resistance to tyranny. Both Prometheus and Zeus are stubborn. Both are opportunistic. Both are relatively fickle. Both believe strongly in their own positions. And both are willing to use power to their advantage (remember that Prometheus several times takes a big part of the credit for setting up Zeus' reign, both by foreseeing the outcome of the Olympians' revolt against the Titans, and for his wisdom in organizing the new government). In this sense, they are a great example of what Rene Girard calls the monstrous double in tragedy: the two characters at the center of the agon increasingly come to resemble one another as they struggle to assign blame for whatever the central problem is. Zeus and Prometheus share multiple character traits, and because of this it's difficult to genuinely assign blame to one party (Zeus) and assert that the other is innocent (Prometheus).
https://youtu.be/LbkylIJBbH8