Aeschylus is the father of tragedy. Of his estimated 92 plays, only six confirmed works have survived to the present day (with another possible, Prometheus Bound, whose authorship is now uncertain, but once was credited to Aeschylus). Of these six, the earliest is The Persians, a notable play in that it is the only extant Greek tragedy based on contemporary events, though he was not the first to do so.

In 480 BCE the Battle of Salamis ripped through the strait between Piraeus and Salamis Island. The Greek city states and Persia battling over territory came finally to this decisive battle – an event that shaped not only the futures of Greece and Persia, but some historians argue the rest of Western Civilisation as it allowed for the preservation of Athenian democracy. Aeschylus was recalled to military service in 480 BCE became a part of the Greek force at Salamis, and fought the Persians. Eight years later, with memories of this battle still on his mind, he dramatised this now famous conflict in his play, The Persians. It is unique not only for being the only extant Greek tragedy based on contemporary events, but that Aeschylus took the opposing view. The Persians is seen from King Xerxes’s point of view.

The Persians was the second part of a trilogy (the first part had been called Phineus and can be presumed to detail Jason and the Argonauts rescue of King Phineus; the second part was Glaucus, and concerned itself either with a mythical Corinthian king or a Boeotian farmer) and won the first prize at the City Dionysia festival in 472BCE at Athens. The Persians cast Xerxes’s defeat as divine retribution for attempting to build a bridge across the Hellespont, and given Aeschylus’s apparent love of connected trilogies, one can also assume that the two missing plays concern themselves in some fashion with that theme.

The Persians is set in Susa, and a chorus of old men are joined by the Queen Mother Atossa, awaiting news of her son King Xerxes campaign against the Greeks. The chorus tell us of Xerxes’s ambitious plans.

However, the arrival of a messenger, and his detailed and gory description of the Battle of Salamis:

“But since the multitude of our ships was crowded in the narrows, and they could give no assistance the one to the other but [on the contrary] were rammed by the brazen-pointed beaks of their friends, they splintered their whole equipment of oars, the Greek ships, too, all around them noting their opportunity, kept charging them on every side, and the hulls of our vessels began to be capsized nor was the sea any longer visible, so choked was it with wrecks and slaughtered men ; and the shores and the reefs were full of them.” (p.53)

The Persians have been defeated, and Aeschylus, not missing a trick, allows a brief flurry of Greek patriotism, with the now famous cry:

“Sons of the Greeks, advance! Deliver your country, deliver your children and your wives, the temples of your fathers’ gods, the tombs of your ancestors. Now is the contest which decides all!” (p.52 – 3)

At the tomb of her dead husband Darius, Atossa summons his ghost, and Darius condemns the hubris of his son. Before departing Darius foretells of another Persian defeat at the Battle of Plataea (479BCE).

Xerxes’s arrives home, crushed by the defeat, and laments the future of his once great nation, and the failures that are to come. This final section of the play has led some to read it as being sympathetic to the Persians loss, revealing a deeper humanity within Aeschylus, whilst others have read it as a deeper celebration of one Greek victory in a brutal ongoing war. This second reading could bring in claims of xenophobia on Aeschylus’s part – but in a time of conflict, hatred of one’s enemy is natural.

The Persians became an important play, often having revivals in Greek culture, and seventy years after its premiere, it is still being referenced in Greek theatre. It is a play that also became popular in the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire. Aeschylus’s form of tragedy transcended its national boundaries, to become a true work of art. In 1993, Robert Auletta wrote and Peter Sellars directed a new version of The Persians, which articulated the play as a response to the Gulf War of 1990-1991, proving again the versatility of Aeschylus’s work.

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The Suppliants is the first part of a lost trilogy that would have included the works The Egyptians and The Daughters of Danaus. As such, The Suppliants reads as an introduction to a larger work, and ends openly, with very few of its narrative threads resolved.

The Danaids are the fifty daughters of Danaus, and they serve as the chorus and the protagonists of The Suppliants. The Danaids are to be wed to their Egyptian cousins, but flee, and when they reach Argos plead for King Pelasgus to protect them.

King Pelasgus refuses them this request, pending the decision of the Argive people, but the people consent, and the Danaids praise the Greek gods. Then a herald of the Egyptians attempts to force the Danaids to return to their cousins for marriage, and so King Pelasgus threatens the herald and offers his protection to the women, who retreat behind Argive walls, and here the play ends.

Reconstructions of the remainder of this trilogy have it that following a war with the Egyptians, Pelasgus has been killed, and Danaus becomes tyrant of Argos. His daughters are forced into the marriage, but Danaus instructs his daughters to kill their husbands on their wedding night following a prophecy. All obey their father except Hypermnestra, whose husband Lynceus flees but later returns and murders Danaus and takes the throne with Hypermnestra. Lynceus must now decide how to punish the murderous Danaids – only with the last minute intervention of Aphrodite absolving the women of their crimes, does the play close with the Danaids marrying forty-nine local Argive men.

As an introduction to this story, The Suppliants works well. The poetry of Aeschylus’s language is more discernable here than it was in Seven against Thebes, and he uses the chorus in a much more innovative fashion than previously. The true extent of Aeschylus’s work here cannot be completed however, due to the bulk of it being missing. There is one speech from Aphrodite that is extant, and from it one can deduce that the third play at least would concern itself somewhat with the redemptive nature of love. Another of Aeschylus’s themes comes through somewhat unclearly in this first part, but would become evident in the third, and that is that society must be based upon reason. Finally there is his slight distorting of the myth for public consumption – one of the issues of the original myth was that the Danaids viewed the proposed union as incestuous, but as the Greeks thought nothing of marrying their cousins, Aeschylus downplays this issue in his retelling.

The Suppliants marks the beginning of what may have been a strong trilogy from Aeschylus – the anthropological interest of early Egyptian society being represented by a Greek alone would be fascinating – but we shall have to live with this fragment alone.

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Like The Persians, Seven against Thebes is part of a trilogy of which the other two parts are missing. In this instance, Seven against Thebes would have been paired with Laius and Oedipus, forming a connected Oedipus trilogy. Seven against Thebes marks the first known appearance of Aeschylus’s interest in the polis (the city) being a vital development of human civilisation.

Etreocles and Polynices are the sons of the King of Thebes, Oedipus. Oedipus is resigning the throne, and so decides that his sons will alternate the throne of the city, but after a year Etreocles refuses to step down, so Polynices wages war to claim the crown, with the help of the eponymous seven.

Seven against Thebes has very little plot, but is instead constructed around a series of monologues in which a scout describes each of the seven and the devices on their respective shields.

The brother go on to kill each other in combat, and Aeschylus’s original ending, was of lamentation for these fallen men.

“Brothers indeed, and now utterly destroyed by wounds unkind in frenzied strife as a termination to their feud. Their hatred is stilled, and their life-blood is mingled with the gory dust: thus are they united by blood indeed.” (p.104)

A sudden shift in tone and style at this point in the play reveals another ending attached, some fifty years later. Antigone and Ismeme mourn their dead brothers when a messenger enters announcing an edict prohibiting the burial of Polynices. Antigone declares her intention to defy this edict. This ending was attached to capitalise on the popularity of Sophocles’ Antigone.

Seven against Thebes is a play that has caused some consternation for historians. Archaeologists have been trying to reconcile the “seven-gated Thebes” with the actual city of Thebes which had fewer entrance points than that. Some postulate that the number seven may have been chosen for symmetry, or to refer to some other myth. Nobody is quite sure.

Of all Aeschylus’s work, I find Seven against Thebes the least well formed. Its construction is dramatically unconvincing, and although his language is as rich as before, the vital element of surprise is missing from this work. Seven against Thebes seems obvious and therefore duller than his other works. Nevertheless, we are lucky that it survives – for so little of Aeschylus’s work does – and to criticise so great a playwright seems a little disserving.

The Suppliant Maidens

It’s difficult to read this one in a historical context, without retreating to modern sensibilities. I understand that it’s theorized that the entire trilogy is really about a justification for contemporary marriage laws, and like ‘The Orestia,’ things turn bloody and a deity ends up going to bat for their follower. But reading ‘The Suppliant Maidens’ by itself, without putting it in historical and literary perspective, but within the context of modern headlines, it’s easy to think it’s about women’s rights and immigrants’ rights.
I was perhaps most intrigued by some of the invocations of Zeus. On a few occasions, they referred to him as ‘Zeus Suppliant,’ and once even he’s referred to as ‘Zeus Stranger.’ I hadn’t come across people calling upon him for protection over those states.
I also enjoyed the occasional references to cows and calves. With the daughters’ lineage to Io being a central issue, recurring mentions of the image of a cow added weight to the plot and reinforced the theme.

‘I sing suffering, shrieking,
Shrill and sad am weeping,
My life is dirges
And rich in lamentations,
Mine honor is weeping,
tI invoke your Apian land,
tYou know my foreign tongue.
tOften I tear my Sidonian veils.
We grant gods oblations
Where all is splendid
And death is absent.
O toils undecipherable!
Where lead these billows?
tI invoke your Apian land.
tYou know my foreign tongue.
tOften I tear my Sidonian veils.’
—Lines 111-130

‘Yet subject to men would I never be!
I plot my course under the stars,
An escape from a heartless marriage.
Take as an ally justice.
Choose the side of the gods.’
—Lines 391-396

The Persians

It was difficult for me to incite much interest in this play, despite having more historical material to work through than the previous play. Part of it was, admittedly, a period of about two weeks spent not reading it. But my main issue was that even with some scholarly analysis to help, I never felt like I understood the message of the play. Was Aeschylus trying to invoke sympathy from his audience for their enemies who tried to enslave them? Why would he do that? Did the audience find some sense of pride in watching a play about their enemy’s defeat? I understand also that the play is supposed to be a part of a trilogy, and that much of the message is likely lost with its two other components.

Seven Against Thebes

I think my main issue with this story was a lack of sympathy for the characters. From what I understood of the plot and its background, Eteocles’ problem seemed to be entirely his own fault. If he and Polynices agreed to rule Thebes together, but Eteocles banished Polynices after the first year, then Polynices is entirely justified in returning in force. Family quarrels expanded to the level involving kingdoms and armies is a great premise, but it’s easy to have a conflict in that situation wherein no one is good or evil, and it’s just people’s own weaknesses and selfishness that bring the conflicts (which can still be interesting, in some cases). The grandiose language and ritual-esque structure of the play didn’t bother me, although it did indeed feel out of place compared to Aeschylus’ other works. Moreso than ‘The Persians,’ this play really felt like I was dropped in the middle of a larger story, and that there was action before the play that the reader is simply not privy to.

Prometheus Bound

Once again, this was my second time reading a work by Aeschylus, and once again it was significantly more enjoyable the second time around. My enjoyment came from two factors: 1) a deeper immersion into the ancient Greek mythological world, and 2) having already read Shelley’s ‘Prometheus Unbound.’ Knowing a bit more about Io, and the dynamic contrast between Hesiod’s and Aeschylus’ interpretation of Prometheus both helped me invest into the story a bit more. I appreciated the similarities that Io and Prometheus shared, definitely. When I originally read this, it was in preparation for reading ‘Unbound,’ and most of it was on a long train ride. I was only paying attention to what was physically going on, really. But reading it now, I can see why the Romantics were so drawn to the story, and why Shelley saw it as the perfect canvas to work Humanism into his sequel. Indeed, it’s easy to read this as Prometheus representing the human spirit or ingenuity, displaced by the new King spirituality and mysticism (or superstition, depending on your views). I was also fascinated by the legitimate importance of the role of fire, and Prometheus’ other contributions to the race of man. Scientifically, the use and control of fire is an evolutionary game-changer. Once humans were able to harness this power, their place in the world completely changed (for a fuller explanation of this, check out the documentary ‘The First Man’ on Curiosity Stream). But it was equally enlightening to read this play under the context of the author’s (maybe not Aeschylus?) intent, raising up the image of the noble underdog banished by the new tyrant. The poetry of this play really spoke to me as well, about to the level that the text of the Orestia did. I was particularly drawn to lines like

‘in helping man I brought my troubles on me;
but yet I did not think that with such tortures
I should be wasted on these airy cliffs,
this lonely mountain top, with no one near.’
—Lines 269-272

‘When a match has equal partners
then I fear not: may the eye
inescapable of the mighty
Gods not look on me.
That is a fight that none can fight: a fruitful
source of fruitlessness: I would not
know what I could do: I cannot
see the hope when Zeus is angry
of escaping him.’
—Lines 901-909

The Great Conversation: What does it say?--I think Aeschylus understood that life, faith, and politics are significantly more complicated than any straightforward moralist would like to think. Many of his characters--including the people in 'The Oresteia'--are multi-dimensional, and have made choices that impact other people in ways they hadn't anticipated. An interesting observation on the books I've read so far: while the technical aspects of the writing seem primitive to me, the characters definitely do not. There is no lack of understanding of human nature here; these plays were created thousands of years ago, for contemporary audiences, and so much of what was true about humans then is true now.

Soundtrack:
(The Suppliant Maidens) Lowercase Noises, ‘I Want to Live Again’

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.

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

Aeschylus was the first Greek tragedian. Only 10% of his 70 plays remain, and the only complete ancient Greek trilogy in the Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides). Of the remaining plays, this collection includes Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes, The Persians.

As I had previously read Prometheus Bound I did not reread it here. However, the introduction had good coverage of how the Prometheia would have continued if the second and third plays of the trilogy remained. The Oresteia demonstrates the pattern of violence, counter-violence, and the subjugation of violence to reason and justice. Thus, Prometheus Bound is believed to be followed by Prometheus Unbound and ending with Prometheus the Fire-Bringer. How regrettable not to have the entire trilogy.

Next up, and thematically linked to Prometheus Bound is the first play of the Danaid trilogy (The Suppliants, The Egytians, The Daniads). This series focuses on the progeny of Io, an Argive Queen sent to wander the ancient world as a cow, a disguise bestowed by Zeus with a torment accursed by Hera. The story of 50 daughters of Danius pursued by 50 male cousins of Aegyptius to the seat of Argos, is a beautiful setup of the violence against the fleeing women and protection by Argos. We can imagine what will come in the second and third from some remaining fragments, but alas, these are really only conjecture.

The Seven Against Thebes is structurally a marvelous idea; it would have been the final play of the trilogy begun with Laius and Oedipus, thus is a play rebalancing violations of the world. The seven gates attacked and defended by the great warriors of each army. However the slow progression of conversation away from any action recalls the beginning of The Iliad and the parade of heroes. The end is as was fated by Apollo’s curse on Laius to the destruction of his family line. Oepidus could not escape his fate, nor can his warring sons, Eteocles and Polyneices. With their mutual deaths at the end, we hear their two sisters arrive, Antigone and Ismene. Enter Antigone, I cannot wait to begin the plays of Sophocles, whose plays concerning the Theban Cycle purportedly outshine Aeschylus’. Apparently the ending was rewritten to add Antigone and Ismene to the end of The Seven Against Thebes, in which Antigone declares her decision to bury the brother who threatened the city, against the cities wishes. I think, however, the sequence of Laius, Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes would be rather compelling. The doubling of sibling brothers and sisters at the end, makes for a trilogy finale whereby justice becomes ambiguous.

Aeschylus’ first play, The Persians was written in 472 BC, which is what makes these works so profound, and that they remain a miracle. Also remarkable, is it is the only play that covers a recent history to whom the audience would actually know the facts surrounding the Battle of Salamis. This play is set in Susu, the capital of the Persians. Most of the play constitutes a messenger relaying the defeat of the Persian navy and the total loses but that Xerxes has survived. At court, his mother, Atossa, hears and leads an investigation into the war’s outcome, whereby she visits her late husband’s tomb and his ghost, that of Darius, enters the play. Ending with Xerxes and a mourning chorus, this is such a brilliant way to have an enemy relays the “facts” of such a politically significant event.

CHORUS: Sad favour, sad request.
XERXES: Join my mournful hymn.
CHORUS: Ototototoi!
O grievous hand of Fate!
O king, we weep for you.
XERXES: Beat your breast,
Groan aloud for me.
CHORUS: O king, behold my tears.
XERXES: Cry aloud, beat your breast for me.
CHORUS: With good will, my master.
XERXES: Cry aloud and groan.
CHORUS: Ototototoi!
Bruising blows mingle with wails of grief.
XERXES: Come, beat your breast, intone a Mysian dirge.
CHORUS: O pain, O pain!
XERXES: Pluck for my sake the white hair from your beard.
CHORUS: With fingers clenched, and bitter cries,
We pluck the white hair from our beards.
XERXES: Weep and howl.
CHORUS: We weep and howl.
XERXES: Tear your gowns, tear them through.
CHORUS: O pain, O pain!
XERXES: And tear your hair in grief for all our army dead.
CHORUS: With fingers clenched, with bitter cries, We tear the white hair from our heads.
XERXES: Fill your eyes with tears.
CHORUS: Our eyes are filled with tears.
XERXES: Beat your breast, groan aloud for me.
CHORUS: Alas, alas!

This play would have been the second play in a trilogy, begun with Phineus about Jason and the Argonauts, and ended with one called Glaucus, concerning either the son of Sisyphus or a Boetian farmer who eats a magical herb. In either case, what a great loss.

First, an outline of each play:

- The Persians: Performed a few years after the failed attack of the Persians, led by King Xerxes, against Athens, this play of lamentation starts with a chorus of old men of Susa and Queen Atossa, mother of Xerxes and wife of the deceased King Darius, discussing their ill premonitions about the war. A messenger then reveals that the army was defeated. Darius' ghost appears and denounces his son, before Xerxes appears and, together with the old men, concludes with a song of lamentation. This play is less of a tragedy and more of a lamentation, and may have been a patriotic play through which the Athenian audience celebrated their victory by watching the sorrow of the Persians.

- Seven Against Thebes: Eteocles, king of Thebes, is preparing to defend the city against Polynices, his twin brother, who is bringing an army to fight for the throne that the brothers were supposed to share. A curse lies on them – Oedipus, their father, had previously cursed them to divide their inheritance by the sword. Seven men are assigned to defend Thebes' seven gates from the seven men of the enemy who will be attacking them. The battle itself is not shown. Eteocles and Polynices kill each other, and the play ends with their sisters, Antigone and Ismenes, mourning them. This play won first prize, and was the third in a quartet of plays, the first two titled Laius and Oedipus, and the fourth a satyr-play titled Sphinx. Much of the end of the play is suspected to have been altered from the original, and the ending with Antigone and Immense may have been re-written 50 years after its original performance due to the popularity of Sophocles' Theban plays.

- Suppliants: Danaus and his fifty daughters arrive in Argos, fleeing from Danaus' brother Aegyptus and his fifty sons who want to forcefully marry Danaus' daughters. In Argos, they plead to the Greek gods and then to Argos' king. The people of Argos agree to protect the Danaids, and when the captain of Aegyptus' son arrives, the king protects them and the women of Argos invite them into their city. This was the first play in a trilogy, the subsequent of which would probably have portrayed the rest of the Danaids' story. As such it ends on a note of suspense.

- Prometheus Bound: Prometheus, a titan (the original rulers of the world before the gods dethroned them) who helped Zeus, has been punished by Zeus for giving intelligence and fire to human beings. The play starts with Prometheus being shackled by Hephaestus, the gods' blacksmith, on Zeus' instructions. He laments to Ocean's daughters. Io, who is being tormented by a gadfly sent by Hera, appears, and Prometheus, with his powers of foresight, tells her her fate. Hermes arrives, demanding that Prometheus tell him the secret that only Prometheus knows, which Prometheus says will lead to Zeus' downfall. Prometheus refuses to reveal the secret, and Hermes tells him his sentence, which is that Zeus' eagle will eat his liver every day for eternity. The authorship of this play is questioned, as is whether it was accompanied by other plays or not.

This book is prefaced by an introduction by the editor J. Michael Walton and the translators Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish. The introduction is excellent. It explains the background to the plays, considerations to take note of regarding the performance of the plays in Ancient Greece compared to our reading of the plays, notes on Aeschylus' style, controversies regarding the authenticity of certain parts of the plays, and their own takes on the controversies.

I like these translations. They are verse translations, and the translators keep things pithy, expressing concepts and images in just a few words. I suspect that some details have been lost, but every word is carefully chosen and important.

One thing that keeps coming up is how much has been lost through the millennia. The plays were each part of a collection of plays that were performed together, and because the accompanying plays have been lost, none of the stories, except for The Persians, are complete. This is particularly obvious in Suppliants and Prometheus Bound, which were both the first in a trilogy (or suspected trilogy, in the case of Prometheus Bound), and hence end unresolved. Alterations to the plays, in particular Seven Against Thebes, have also been debated and give the translators obvious trouble, while affecting our understanding and interpretation of the plays.

Taking each play as presented, it is clear that the modern readers' experience of the plays is very different from the original Athenian audience's experience. The only other classical Greek plays I have read are a few of Euripides'. Compared to Euripides' plays, Aeschylus' plays feature the chorus more prominently. There's more song and dance. In this version, the translators try to translate the phonetic sounds of songs literally, and there's plenty of "O-ee", "Toto-ee", "E! E!" and so on. The plots and character development don't move much and some of the dialogue is a little wooden, which is why I have given this three stars only, but I am aware that my enjoyment is tempered by being unable to experience the frenzy of noise and colours and physical movement that must have characterised portions of the plays, like in the women of Thebes' panicky pleas to the gods in Seven Against Thebes, or in the Danaids' fearful confusion in Prometheus Bound.

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.

4 Stars for Smyth's translation of Seven Against Thebes.

really enjoyed prometheus bound and i’ve always liked the suppliants. this reminds me to finish reading the first two works in the oresteia + prometheus unbound by percy shelley

An excellent collection of Ancient Greek plays which have stood the test of time. The four plays herein - translated ably by Philip Vellacott - are, along with the three plays of the Oresteia, all that remains of Aeschylus' work.

'Prometheus Bound' is the best, and the reason I picked up this book in the first place. Prometheus' struggle has always been, to my mind, the most compelling of all the Greek myths, but even so I was surprised at just how much depth Aeschylus discovered in the tale. 'Prometheus Bound' is a commentary on tyranny, rationalism, faith, mortality, justice and hubris all rolled into one (in a total of about thirty pages, no less!), with intriguing little suggestions that the story - benevolent Prometheus against the tyrannical Zeus - may not be as clear-cut as is often supposed. I am now even more fascinated by the story of Prometheus than I was going in, and am disappointed that the play's follow-ups, 'Prometheus Unbound' and 'Prometheus the Fire-Bringer', have not survived into modern times.

Having wanted to read just 'Prometheus Bound', the other three plays in the collection turned out to be a nice bonus. All four plays had plenty of poetic turns of phrase and a lofty, yet very human, morality. 'The Suppliants' sees a kingdom take in a group of refugee women who have fled forced marriages, with the king resolving to defy their would-be husbands by force if necessary. 'Seven Against Thebes' tells the story of an assault on the seven-gated city of Thebes, with a brother-vs-brother tragedy that has no small amount of pathos. The final play, 'The Persians', wasn't in my opinion as stellar as the others, but still has enough about it to be worth a read.

All in all, the translated plays were surprisingly accessible (no matter how many ancient classics I read, like The Iliad and The Odyssey, I am somehow always still amazed at just how well they come across) and I feel much more confident about the prospect of reading more Ancient Greek classics going forward. I've always wanted to read Lysistrata by Aristophanes and the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes. Having enjoyed this book so much, I'm probably going to add Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy to my list too.

Four for Prometheus Bound, which was excellent and chill-inducing on a level not felt in a long while. I am not sure I love Seth G. Benardete's translation style - choppy and grand. Introductions in this volume were stellar and hugely enriched my enjoyment of the plays, particularly the forewords for Prometheus Bound and The Persians.

Aeschylus in the editorial hands of Grene and Lattimore is stunning. The language is some of the most gripping I have read. In its juxtaposition of the divine and earthly, both in terms of individuals and themes, Aeschylus brings the glory of Greek Mythology to full fruition. This attention to balance, between characters -- when they argue (and their rhetoric is always beautifully eloquent, with the ultimate aim being Modesty) -- and in plot -- brother against brother, war in general, brings about a wonderful sense of calm amid all the strife that is found within the plays' themes. To me, that is spiritual in itself.