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58-450: The first play in the trilogy, called Phineus , presumably dealt with Jason and the Argonauts ' rescue of King Phineus from the torture that the monstrous harpies inflicted at the behest of Zeus. The subject of the third play, Glaucus , was either a mythical Corinthian king who was devoured by his horses because he angered the goddess Aphrodite (see Glaucus (son of Sisyphus) ) or else

116-410: A Boeotian farmer who ate a magical herb that transformed him into a sea deity with the gift of prophecy (see Glaucus ). In The Persians , Xerxes invites the gods' enmity for his hubristic expedition against Greece in 480/79 BC; the focus of the drama is the defeat of Xerxes' navy at Salamis . Given Aeschylus' propensity for writing connected trilogies, the theme of divine retribution may connect

174-567: A bridge over the Hellespont to expedite the Persian army's advance. Before departing, the ghost of Darius prophesies another Persian defeat at the Battle of Plataea (479 BC): "Where the plain grows lush and green,/Where Asopus ' stream plumps rich Boeotia's soil,/The mother of disasters awaits them there,/Reward for insolence, for scorning God." Xerxes finally arrives, dressed in torn robes ("grief swarms,"

232-575: A double bill in the 2022 Cambridge Greek Play . In March 2024 Dublin 's Abbey Theatre staged the first Irish language translation of the play by poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill . Aeschylus' drama was a model for Percy Bysshe Shelley 's 1821 Hellas: A Lyrical Drama , his final published poetical work before his death in 1822. T. S. Eliot , in The Waste Land , "The Burial of the Dead", line 63 " I had not thought Death had undone so many " echoes line 432 of

290-484: A field with fire-breathing oxen, the Khalkotauroi , that he had to yoke himself. Medea provided an ointment that protected him from the oxen's flames. Then, Jason sowed the teeth of a dragon into a field. The teeth sprouted into an army of warriors ( spartoi ). Medea had previously warned Jason of this and told him how to defeat this foe. Before they attacked him, he threw a rock into the crowd. Unable to discover where

348-497: A number of heroes, known as the Argonauts after their ship, the Argo . The group of heroes included: The isle of Lemnos is situated in the north Aegean Sea , near the Western coast of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey ). The island was inhabited by a race of women who had killed their husbands. The women had neglected their worship of Aphrodite , and as a punishment the goddess made

406-522: A production at Athens in 1965 the audience "rose to its feet en masse and interrupted the actors' dialogue with cheers." The American Peter Sellars directed an important production of The Persians at the Edinburgh Festival and Los Angeles Festival in 1993, which articulated the play as a response to the Gulf War of 1990–1991. The production was in a new translation by Robert Auletta . It opened at

464-449: A response to George Bush's invasion of Iraq . The production starred Len Cariou as Darius and Michael Stuhlbarg as Xerxes. A 2010 translation by Aaron Poochigian included for the first time the detailed notes for choral odes that Aeschylus himself created, which directed lines to be spoken by specific parts of the chorus (strophe and antistrophe). Using Poochigian's edition, which includes theatrical notes and stage directions, "Persians"

522-594: A speech by a minor character. An exhausted messenger arrives, who offers a graphic description of the Battle of Salamis and its gory outcome. He tells of the Persian defeat, the names of the Persian generals who have been killed, and that Xerxes had escaped and is returning. The climax of the messenger's speech is his rendition of the battle cry of the Greeks as they charged: On, sons of Greece! Set free Your fatherland, set free your children, wives, Places of your ancestral gods and tombs of your ancestors! Forward for all In

580-537: A time of war. During the play, Xerxes calls his pains "a joy to my enemies" (line 1034). According to a scholium at Aristophanes ' Frogs 1028, Hiero of Syracuse at some point invited Aeschylus to reproduce The Persians in Sicily . Seventy years after the play was produced, the comic playwright Aristophanes mentions an apparent Athenian reproduction of The Persians in his Frogs (405 BC). In it, he has Aeschylus describe The Persians as "an effective sermon on

638-453: A while without men, with Hypsipyle as their queen. During the visit of the Argonauts the women mingled with the men creating a new "race" called Minyae . Jason fathered twins with the queen. Heracles pressured them to leave as he was disgusted by the antics of the Argonauts. He had not taken part, which is truly unusual considering the numerous affairs he had with other women. After Lemnos

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696-484: The Hercules episode "Hercules and the Argonauts" voiced by William Shatner . He is shown to have been a student of Philoctetes and takes his advice to let Hercules travel with him. In the series The Heroes of Olympus ' s first novel The Lost Hero , there was a reference to the mythical Jason when Jason Grace and his friends encounter Medea. The BBC series Atlantis , which premiered in 2013, featured Jason as

754-519: The Odyssey . The Sirens lived on three small, rocky islands called Sirenum scopuli and sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them, which resulted in the crashing of their ship into the islands. When Orpheus heard their voices, he drew his lyre and played music that was more beautiful and louder, drowning out the Sirens' bewitching songs. The Argo then came to the island of Crete , guarded by

812-725: The Royal Lyceum Theatre on 16 August 1993. Hamza El Din composed and performed its music, with additional music by Ben Halley Jr. and sound design by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger . Dunya Ramicova designed the costumes and James F. Ingalls the lighting. Cordelia Gonzalez played Atossa, Howie Seago the Ghost of Darius, and John Ortiz played Xerxes. The Chorus was performed by Ben Halley Jr , Joseph Haj , and Martinus Miroto . Ellen McLaughlin translated Persians in 2003 for Tony Randall 's National Actors Theatre in New York as

870-506: The centaur Chiron . She claimed that she had been having an affair with him all along. Pelias, fearing that his ill-gotten kingship might be challenged, consulted an oracle , who warned him to beware of a man wearing only one sandal. Many years later, Pelias was holding games in honor of Poseidon when the grown Jason arrived in Iolcus, having lost one of his sandals in the river Anauros ("wintry Anauros") while helping an old woman (actually

928-617: The epic poem has been lost, or if it was never finished. A third version is the Argonautica Orphica , which emphasizes the role of Orpheus in the story. Jason is briefly mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy in the poem Inferno . He appears in the Canto XVIII. In it, he is seen by Dante and his guide Virgil being punished in Hell's Eighth Circle (Bolgia 1) by being driven to march through

986-595: The Argonauts landed among the Doliones , whose king Cyzicus treated them graciously. He told them about the land beyond Bear Mountain, but forgot to mention what lived there. What lived in the land beyond Bear Mountain were the Gegeines , which are a tribe of Earthborn giants with six arms who wore leather loincloths. While most of the crew went into the forest to search for supplies, the Gegeines saw that few Argonauts were guarding

1044-589: The Doliones, among them the king Cyzicus. Cyzicus' wife killed herself. The Argonauts realized their horrible mistake when dawn came and held a funeral for him. Soon, Jason reached the court of Phineus of Salmydessus in Thrace . Zeus had sent the harpies to steal the food put out for Phineus each day. Jason took pity on the emaciated king and killed the Harpies when they returned; in other versions, Calais and Zetes chase

1102-551: The Gorgon's Head the mythical story of Jason is described. Padraic Colum wrote an adaptation for children, The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles , illustrated by Willy Pogany and published in 1921. The mythical geography of the voyage of the Argonauts has been connected to specific geographic locations by Livio Stecchini but his theories have not been widely adopted. Jason appeared in

1160-703: The Messenger account in The Persians : " However, you can be sure that so great a multitude of men never perished in a single day ", which is also similar to Dante 's line in Inferno , Canto III, lines 56–57: ch'i' non averei creduto/Che morte tanta n'avesse disfatta . In modern literature, Dimitris Lyacos in his dystopian epic Z213: Exit uses quotations from the Messenger's account in The Persians ( δίψῃ πονοῦντες, οἱ δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἄσθματος κενοὶ: some, faint from thirst, while some of us, exhausted and panting ) in order to convey

1218-655: The Queen says just before his arrival, "but worst of all it stings / to hear how my son, my prince, / wears tatters, rags" (845–849)) and reeling from his crushing defeat. The rest of the drama (908–1076) consists of the king alone with the chorus engaged in a lyrical kommós that laments the enormity of Persia's defeat. Aeschylus was not the first to write a play about the Persians — his older contemporary Phrynichus wrote two plays about them. The first, The Sack of Miletus (written in 493 BC, 21 years before Aeschylus' play), concerned

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1276-428: The bronze man, Talos . As the ship approached, Talos hurled huge stones at the ship, keeping it at bay. Talos had one ichor vessel which went from his neck to his ankle, bound shut by only one bronze nail (as in metal casting by the lost wax method). Medea cast a spell on Talos to calm him; she removed the bronze nail and Talos bled to death. The Argo was then able to sail on. Thomas Bulfinch has an antecedent to

1334-401: The burial of the dead, prophesies the future", and "announces the foundation of a cult". Later Jason and Peleus , father of the hero Achilles , attacked and defeated Acastus, reclaiming the throne of Iolcus for himself once more. Jason's son, Thessalus , then became king. As a result of breaking his vow to love Medea forever, Jason lost his favor with Hera and died lonely and unhappy. He

1392-612: The capitals of the Persian Empire , and opens with a chorus of old men of Susa, who are soon joined by the Queen Mother, Atossa , as they await news of her son King Xerxes' expedition against the Greeks. Expressing her anxiety and unease, Atossa narrates "what is probably the first dream sequence in European theatre." This is an unusual beginning for a tragedy by Aeschylus; normally the chorus would not appear until slightly later, after

1450-499: The cauldron. Medea did not add the magical herbs, and Pelias was dead. Pelias' son, Acastus , drove Jason and Medea into exile for the murder, and the couple settled in Corinth. In Corinth, Jason became engaged to marry Creusa (sometimes referred to as Glauce ), a daughter of the King of Corinth, to strengthen his political ties. When Medea confronted Jason about the engagement and cited all

1508-438: The circle for all eternity while being whipped by devils . He is included among the panderers and seducers (possibly for his seduction and subsequent abandoning of Medea). The story of Medea 's revenge on Jason is told with devastating effect by Euripides in his tragedy Medea . William Morris wrote an English epic poem, The Life and Death of Jason , published in 1867. In the 1898 short novel The Story of Perseus and

1566-491: The daughter of Salmoneus , and the sea god Poseidon . In a bitter feud, he overthrew Aeson (the rightful king), killing all the descendants of Aeson that he could. He spared his half-brother for unknown reasons. Aeson's wife Alcimede I had a newborn son named Jason, whom she saved from Pelias by having female attendants cluster around the infant and cry as if he were stillborn . Fearing that Pelias would eventually notice and kill her son, Alcimede sent him away to be reared by

1624-461: The definitive telling, on which this account relies, is that of Apollonius of Rhodes in his epic poem Argonautica , written in Alexandria in the late 3rd century BC. Another Argonautica was written by Gaius Valerius Flaccus in the late 1st century AD, eight books in length. The poem ends abruptly with the request of Medea to accompany Jason on his homeward voyage. It is unclear if part of

1682-547: The destruction of an Ionian colony of Athens in Asia Minor by the Persians. For his portrayal of this brutal defeat, which emphasized Athens' abandonment of its colony, Phrynichus was fined and a law passed forbidding subsequent performances of his play. The second, Phoenician Women (written in 476 BC, four years before Aeschylus' version), treated the same historical event as Aeschylus' Persians . Neither of Phrynichus' plays have survived. Interpretations of Persians either read

1740-525: The dove made it through, to row with all their might. If the dove was crushed, he was doomed to fail. Jason released the dove as advised, which made it through, losing only a few tail feathers. Seeing this, they rowed strongly and made it through with minor damage at the extreme stern of the ship. From that time on, the clashing rocks were forever joined leaving free passage for others to pass. Jason arrived in Colchis (modern Black Sea coast of Georgia ) to claim

1798-615: The exchange between Orestes , Electra and the chorus immediately after Clytemnestra 's murder in Euripides ' Electra (c.410 BCE). See also [ edit ] [REDACTED] Look up kommos in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Theatre of ancient Greece Monody - a "solo song" sung by a dramatic character without the chorus Lament Elegy References [ edit ] ^ κομμός . Liddell, Henry George ; Scott, Robert ; A Greek–English Lexicon at

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1856-406: The failure of a military operation and the subsequent retreat of the troops in a post-apocalyptic setting. The excerpts from The Persians enter a context of fragmentation whereby broken syntax is evocative of a landscape in the aftermath of war. Jason Jason ( / ˈ dʒ eɪ s ən / JAY -sən ; Ancient Greek : Ἰάσων , romanized :  Iásōn [i.ǎːsɔːn] )

1914-467: The fleece as his own. It was owned by King Aeetes of Colchis. The fleece was given to him by Phrixus . Aeetes promised to give it to Jason only if he could perform three certain tasks. Presented with the tasks, Jason became discouraged and fell into depression. However, Hera had persuaded Aphrodite to convince her son Eros to make Aeetes' daughter, Medea , fall in love with Jason. As a result, Medea aided Jason in his tasks. First, Jason had to plow

1972-504: The goddess Hera in disguise) to cross. She blessed him, for she knew what Pelias had planned. When Jason entered Iolcus (the present-day city of Volos ), he was announced as a man wearing only one sandal. Jason, aware that he was the rightful king, so informed Pelias. Pelias replied, "To take my throne, which you shall, you must go on a quest to find the Golden Fleece." Jason readily accepted this condition. Jason assembled for his crew,

2030-444: The gods on her side. As Bernard Knox points out, Medea's last scene with concluding appearances parallels that of a number of indisputably divine beings in other plays by Euripides. Just like these gods, Medea "interrupts and puts a stop to the violent action of the human being on the lower level, ... justifies her savage revenge on the grounds that she has been treated with disrespect and mockery, ... takes measures and gives orders for

2088-478: The harpies away. In return for this favor, Phineus revealed to Jason the location of Colchis and how to pass the Symplegades , or The Clashing Rocks, and then they parted. The only way to reach Colchis was to sail through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks), huge rock cliffs that came together and crushed anything that traveled between them. Phineus told Jason to release a dove when they approached these islands, and if

2146-468: The help she had given him, he retorted that it was not she that he should thank, but Aphrodite who made Medea fall in love with him. Infuriated with Jason for breaking his vow that he would be hers forever, Medea took her revenge by presenting to Creusa a cursed dress, as a wedding gift, that stuck to her body and burned her to death as soon as she put it on. Creusa's father, Creon , burned to death with his daughter as he tried to save her. Then Medea killed

2204-554: The interaction of Medea and the daughters of Pelias. Jason, celebrating his return with the Golden Fleece, noted that his father was too aged and infirm to participate in the celebrations. He had seen and been served by Medea's magical powers. He asked Medea to take some years from his life and add them to the life of his father. She did so, but at no such cost to Jason's life. Medea withdrew the blood from Aeson's body and infused it with certain herbs; putting it back into his veins, returning vigor to him. Pelias' daughters saw this and wanted

2262-491: The original, this reads: ὦ παῖδες Ἑλλήνων ἴτε, ἐλευθεροῦτε πατρίδ', ἐλευθεροῦτε δὲ παῖδας, γυναῖκας, θεῶν τέ πατρῴων ἕδη, θήκας τε προγόνων: νῦν ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀγών. At the tomb of her dead husband Darius , Atossa asks the chorus to summon his ghost: "Some remedy he knows, perhaps,/Knows ruin's cure" they say. On learning of the Persian defeat, Darius condemns the hubris behind his son's decision to invade Greece. He particularly rebukes an impious Xerxes’ decision to build

2320-497: The play as sympathetic toward the defeated Persians or else as a celebration of Greek victory within the context of an ongoing war. The sympathetic school has the considerable weight of Aristotelian criticism behind it; indeed, every other extant Greek tragedy arguably invites an audience's sympathy for one or more characters on stage. The celebratory school argues that the play is part of a xenophobic culture that would find it difficult to sympathize with its hated barbarian enemy during

2378-469: The protagonist. Kommos (theatre) Lyrical song of lamentation in an Athenian tragedy A kommos (from Greek κομμός, kommós , literally "striking", especially "beating of the head and breast in mourning " ) is a lyrical song of lamentation in an Athenian tragedy that the chorus and a dramatic character sing together. It is also found in comedies with certain peculiarities. A kommos occurs "when

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2436-526: The rock had come from, the soldiers attacked and defeated one another. His last task was to overcome the sleepless dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece . Jason sprayed the dragon with a potion, given by Medea, distilled from herbs. The dragon fell asleep, and Jason was able to seize the Golden Fleece. He then sailed away with Medea. Medea distracted her father, who chased them as they fled, by killing her brother Apsyrtus and throwing pieces of his body into

2494-438: The same service for their father. Medea, using her sorcery, claimed to Pelias' daughters that she could make their father smooth and vigorous as a child by chopping him up into pieces and boiling the pieces in a cauldron of water and magical herbs. She demonstrated this remarkable feat with the oldest ram in the flock, which leapt out of the cauldron as a lamb. The girls, rather naively, sliced and diced their father and put him in

2552-457: The sea; Aeetes stopped to gather them. In another version, Medea lured Apsyrtus into a trap. Jason killed him, chopped off his fingers and toes, and buried the corpse. In any case, Jason and Medea escaped. On the way back to Iolcus, Medea prophesied to Euphemus , the Argo's helmsman, that one day he would rule Cyrene . This came true through Battus , a descendant of Euphemus. Zeus , as punishment for

2610-444: The ship and raided it. Heracles was among those guarding the ship at the time and managed to kill most of them before Jason and the others returned. Once some of the other Gegeines were killed, Jason and the Argonauts set sail. The Argonauts departed, losing their bearings and landing again at the same spot that night. In the darkness, the Doliones took them for enemies and they started fighting each other. The Argonauts killed many of

2668-552: The slaughter of Medea's own brother, sent a series of storms at the Argo and blew it off course. The Argo then spoke and said that they should seek purification with Circe , a nymph living on the island of Aeaea. After being cleansed, they continued their journey home. Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus , the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens —the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer 's epic poem

2726-588: The spectacular landscape surrounding them, the particular history of the area, and the modern adaptation of the ancient Greek text performed onstage. The work went on to win O'Reilly the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, presented by the Poet Laureate , Carol Ann Duffy . Οn the occasion of the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Salamis , on July 25, 2020, Persians was the first Ancient Greek tragedy that

2784-542: The tension of the play rises to a climax of grief or horror or joy". Examples include the final section (lines 908–1077) of Aeschylus ' The Persians (472 BCE) in which Xerxes laments the defeat of his Persian army, the final appearance of Antigone in Sophocles ' Antigone (c.442 BCE), the interaction between the chorus and Oedipus when he returns having blinded himself in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (c.429 BCE), and

2842-637: The three. Aeschylus himself had fought the Persians at Marathon (490 BC). He may even have fought at Salamis, just eight years before the play was performed. The satyr play following the trilogy was Prometheus Pyrkaeus , translated as either Prometheus the Fire-lighter or Prometheus the Fire-kindler , which comically portrayed the titan's theft of fire. Several fragments of Prometheus Pyrkaeus are extant, and according to Plutarch , one of those fragments

2900-403: The tragedy Medea . In the modern world, Jason has emerged as a character in various adaptations of his myths, such as the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts and the 2000 TV miniseries of the same name . Pelias (Aeson's half-brother) was power-hungry and sought to gain dominion over all of Thessaly . Pelias was the progeny of a union between their shared mother, Tyro ("high born Tyro"),

2958-406: The two boys that she bore to Jason, fearing that they would be murdered or enslaved as a result of their mother's actions. When Jason learned of this, Medea was already gone. She fled to Athens in a chariot of dragons sent by her grandfather, the sun-god Helios . Although Jason calls Medea most hateful to gods and men, the fact that the chariot is given to her by Helios indicates that she still has

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3016-479: The will to win. Best thing I ever wrote"; while Dionysus says that he "loved that bit where they sang about the days of the great Darius, and the chorus went like this with their hands and cried 'Wah! Wah!'" (1026–28). The Persians was popular in the Roman Empire and Byzantine Empire , who also fought wars with the Persians , and its popularity has endured in modern Greece. According to Anthony Podlecki, during

3074-455: The women so foul in stench that their husbands could not bear to be near them. The men then took concubines from the Thracian mainland opposite, and the spurned women, angry at Aphrodite, killed all the male inhabitants while they slept. The king, Thoas , was saved by Hypsipyle , his daughter, who put him out to sea sealed in a chest from which he was later rescued. The women of Lemnos lived for

3132-450: Was a statement by Prometheus warning a satyr who wanted to kiss and embrace the fire that he would "mourn for his beard" if he did. Another fragment from Prometheus Pyrkaeus was translated by Herbert Weir Smyth as "And do thou guard thee well lest a blast strike thy face; for it is sharp, and deadly-scorching its hot breaths". The Persians takes place in Susa , which at the time was one of

3190-468: Was an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts , whose quest for the Golden Fleece is featured in Greek literature. He was the son of Aeson , the rightful king of Iolcos . He was married to the sorceress Medea , the granddaughter of the sungod Helios . Jason appeared in various literary works in the classical world of Greece and Rome , including the epic poem Argonautica and

3248-423: Was asleep under the stem of the rotting Argo when it fell on him, killing him instantly. Jason's father is invariably Aeson, but there is great variation as to his mother's name. According to various authors, she could be: Jason was also said to have had a younger brother, Promachus . Children by Medea : Children by Hypsipyle : Though some of the episodes of Jason's story draw on ancient material,

3306-605: Was played at its natural environment, i.e. the open-air theatre of Epidaurus , and was live streamed internationally via YouTube . The play was a production of the Hellenic National Theatre and was directed by Dimitrios Lignadis as part of the Epidaurus Festival . Actors delivered the play in Ancient and Modern Greek , while English subtitles were projected on YouTube. The play is currently in production as one of

3364-518: Was presented in a staged read-through as part of New York's WorkShop Theater Company's Spring 2011 one-act festival "They That Have Borne the Battle." Also in 2010, Kaite O'Reilly's award-winning translation was produced on Sennybridge Training Area (a military range in the Brecon Beacons) by National Theatre Wales . Audiences valued the way this production required them to shift their attention between

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