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“The Persians takes us back to the very air that the Athenians breathed, we are made to feel what Athenians felt about Athens and Persia and war and peace and conquest and empire” G H Gellie G H Gellie believes that The Persians, an ancient Greek tragedy, gives us a unique understanding of how Athenians felt about some important issues in their lives. This play, written by Aeschylus in the 5th Century B.C., deals with historical subjects, the Persian Wars, and provides evidence of contemporary life in Athens. The Persians celebrates the Athenian victory over the Persians in the navel battle at Salamis in 480 B.C. Surprisingly Aeschylus presents the Athenian’s enemies in a sympathetic and noble way. When reading Aeschylus’s The Persians, we become a voyeur of the Ancient World. We learn about the function of tragic drama in Athenian life, the strength and importance of Athenian patriotism, the differences between the forms of government such as democracy and oligarchy, the role of religion and the importance of the gods. We also learn about the reasons behind the Persian defeat and the resources of the Athenians. Greek drama developed from the Dionysian festivals. The festivals featured plays that were held in honour of the ancient Greece gods and were seen as an act of homage towards them. Prior to Aeschylus the plays only had one primary actor, this role usually taken by the poet with a chorus hired and costumed by the choragus . When Aeschylus added a second actor, the tragedy was converted from a lyrical to a dramatic form of art. Dramatic tragedy was created for the gods but also for the people of Athens as a form entertainment. The play The Persians seems to lack dramatic action, there are no battles or confrontations, just the arrival of a messenger, the raising of a ghost and the return of a defeated king. However, what makes this play entertaining and compelling for the Athenian audiences, and audiences today, is the dramatic tension. Against glorious hopes stand the Chorus’s fears, the Queen Atossa’s unnerving dream and the Messenger’s eyewitness tale of disaster. There is also Darius’ prophecy of further sufferings; “therefore those hopes are vain with which Xerxes now leaves behind the choicest of his men” , implying the pending doom that Xerxes and his army will face if they do not rest during the winter for the coming battles in the new season. Irony is used throughout this drama as a form of entertainment. An example of this is when the Chorus chants “Himself the peer of gods, whose race was sown in gold” .
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