About the work
Aeschylus's „The Persians" was first performed in Athens in 472 BCE and is the oldest completely preserved tragedy in world literature. Unusually, the play treats not a mythological subject but a contemporary historical event: the defeat of the Persians in the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, in which Aeschylus himself had fought. The tragedy presents the events consistently from the perspective of the defeated enemy.
Plot
At the Persian court in Susa, the chorus of Persian elders and the queen mother Atossa wait anxiously for news of King Xerxes's campaign against Greece. Atossa relates ominous dreams and portents. A messenger arrives and describes the annihilating defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis — the flower of the Persian army destroyed, countless nobles fallen or drowned. Summoned by ritual, the ghost of the dead king Darius, father of Xerxes, rises from his tomb. He interprets the catastrophe as divine punishment for the hubris of Xerxes, who bridged the Hellespont with a pontoon of ships and so violated the order of the gods. At last Xerxes himself returns, in torn garments, broken and alone — together with the chorus he raises a great lament over the ruin.
Cultural significance
The Persians is not only the earliest surviving drama but a singular document: the victorious Athenians portrayed their defeated enemy not as caricature but as suffering, dignified human beings. The play established the theme of hubris and its punishment as a foundational pattern of tragedy. In modern times it has repeatedly been read as an anti-war play and a warning against imperial overreach; stagings by Peter Sellars (1993) and Dimiter Gotscheff (2006) turned it into a commentary on contemporary wars.