My second Aeschylus book, this one containing all of his remaining surviving works. Sadly, those which were part of trilogies are now orphaned, so like A Song of Ice and Fire and The Kingkiller Chronicles, we'll probably never get to experience the works in their completeness. I joke, but it does drive home just how much of human literature we have lost - how what survives is only a small fraction of what once existed.

This book was considerably slimmer, thanks to the comparatively brief 15-page introduction, although Philip Vellacot is still the editor/translator. Looks like this may have been the earlier publication, so maybe he just hadn't worked up all that steam yet?

As to the plays, I liked Prometheus Bound, it had a similar intensity of emotion to the Orestia. The Supplicants I felt was the weakest. I felt the chorus of women was very effective in Seven Against Thebes, their mounting terror at the sounds of the besieging army really hightened the tension and the perspective - that of the helpless women who cannot act to defend their city, but must trust that they will be saved and can only fear what will happen if their menfolk fail - provides a different angle from the standard point of view of the brave defending warrior or war-leader, which even today I feel is too often the only focus of war stories. I did agree the conclusion dragged on, and apparently this part might be a post-Aeschylus add-on. I did quite like the idea of the divided chorus exiting in different directions though.

The Persians was simple propaganda. Here we lose the complex motivations and perspectives that I praised in Aeschylus's other works - although we take the "perspective" of the defeated Persians, the whole play is them lamenting how much they suck and talking about how awesome the Greeks are. The conclusion to this one reeeeally dragged. Yes yes, tears and beating your breasts, I get it. For Athenians of the time, however, this would have been more meaningful - a celebration of their victory.

And with that, I have finished all of Aeshylus's surviving works, probably about 10% of what he actually wrote. Pretty impressed overall, let's see what future playwrights do with the material. ( )

I am interested in the ancient stories as being the seeds of modern literature. I'm reading them in translation, of course, and I can't comment on the quality of that since I don't speak Greek, modern or ancient. But I'm struck by the overall readability of these plays, and the universality of the themes. Meaning, we still grapple with some of these ideas today. The introduction is quite readable and informative about the cultural background of these plays. Also, knowing that they are individual pieces of larger arcs is helpful.

PROMETHEUS BOUND - my favorite of the four plays, the titan Prometheus punished by Zeus for daring to help humanity rise above the animals by gifting us with fire and the various crafts and sciences which underpin civilization. Interesting to speculate how history would be different if the being that favored humanity had been allowed to continue shepherding our development, rather than humanity falling under the sway of a god (Zeus) who actually didn't really like us! Even Hephaestus, who is part of Zeus's cohort, thought he was being unfair to Prometheus. Themes of justice/fairness, knowing that what you do will have dire consequences but doing it anyway because it is right.

The Suppliants - my second favorite. I liked this one because Aeschylus acknowledges the injustice to women who are forced to marry against their will. The fact that they have to apply for help to a neighboring kingdom, rather than being able to rely on their own nation to protect them, underlines the unfairness. Not something I expected in the male-dominated ancient world. Made me want to read the (missing) others to see how this issue was resolved.

Seven Against Thebes - Least favorite. I've read Sophocles' Oedipus so I have the gist of the background, but this one was a little too much like the Iliad for my taste. Lists of names of warriors and descriptions of their armor and who they are. Not very interesting to read, although I understand it was based on an actual battle.

The Persians - third favorite. Again, not really a story, but a summary of the battle of Salamis in which the Greeks defeated the Persians in a decisive naval battle. Interesting in that Aeschylus chose to put it in the point of view of the defeated Persians and not the victorious Greeks. Deeper themes of hubris and 'pride going before a fall.'

All in all, I enjoyed reading these plays and learning more about ancient history. ( )

recensione sul blog: http://thereadingpal.blogspot.it/2018/01/recensione-159-prometeo-incatenato-i.ht...



Sto cercando di recuperare la lettura di classici greci e latini, per piacere personale. Purtroppo mi manca la conoscenza sia del greco antico che del latino, entrambe lingue che dovrei imparare. Questa volta è toccato ad alcune opere di Eschilo.
La mia è una copia vecchissima, tanto che ha il prezzo in lire, ma sia l'introduzione che la traduzione sono state scritte dalle stesse persone della nuova versione.
Consiglio di non saltare la parte introduttiva: io, presonalmente, l'ho trovata molto interessante. Purtroppo nel corso di Letteratura Greca quest'anno si ci è concentrato su altri autori, quindi per me è stato un approfondimento molto gradito.
Per quanto riguarda la traduzione, senza sapere la lingua non posso dire molto, ecco. Guardando l'originale riconoscevo qualche parola, ma non tanto da poter controllare la traduzione. Nel complesso si leggeva bene, anche se alcuni punti mi sono piaciuti più di altri. È un peccato che ci manchino alcuni versi. Mi chiedo come sarebbe leggerlo, e anche vederlo, in originale. Eschilo ha portato parecchie innovazioni al teatro greco, e le tragedie da lui scritte sono davvero interessanti.
Tra queste quattro opere, quella che ho preferito è sicuramente il Prometeo Incatenato, seguito da I persiani. Per quanto riguarda il Prometeo, racconta il mito del titano Prometeo e della sua punizione, inflittagli da Zeus per aver donato il fuoco agli umani. È quella che mi è piaciuta di più perché adoro la mitologia greca, e perché, leggendo opere che parlano di loro, mi sento più vicina agli dèi. Per quanto riguarda I Persiani, invece, viene portata a Susa la notizia della sconfitta di Salamina. L'ultima parte, dove appare Serse, è uno dei punti che più ho amato. Anche I sette contro Tebe e Le supplici sono bellissime opere, sopratutto la seconda per quanto mi riguarda.
In tutte queste opere possiamo individuare dettagli della cultura greca del tempo, altro dettaglio che mi interessa molto, e le note a volte aiutano ad individuare dettagli che potrebbero sfuggire.
Non ho molto da dire, a essere sincera. Le opere mi sono piaciute, le trame erano interessanti e la traduzione facile da seguire. Il tutto si legge piuttosto velocemente ed io, personalmente, non mi sono affatto annoiata nella lettura.
( )

4/25/22

2016 (review can be found at the link - which is a LibraryThing page)
https://www.librarything.com/topic/220674#5622411 ( )

The Persians and Other Plays is a collection of plays and commentary about plays by Aeschylus (525/4 - 456 BCE).

The book contains the following:

The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
Prometheus Bound

Each play comes with a thorough introduction of the play itself as well as details of what we (think we) know about the history of the plays performances and how they may have influenced other Classical plays and playwrights, references in which inevitably have been used to date the plays themselves.
This is followed by more commentary and notes on the plays and on related plays that may have existed.

For example, it appears from the commentary that it has long been unclear in what order Aeschylus wrote the plays:

The production of 472 is the only one by Aeschylus that is known to have consisted of four plays whose stories were, on the face of it, unrelated - indeed, they were not even placed in proper chronological order. The first play was Phineus, about an episode in the saga of the Argonauts. This was followed by The Persians; then, jumping back to the heroic age, by Glaucus of Potniae, about a man who subjected his horses to an unnatural training regime and was devoured by them after crashing in a chariot race; and then by a satyr play about Prometheus ("Prometheus the Fire-Bearer" or "Fire-Kindler"). Repeated efforts have been made to find method behind the apparent madness of this arrangement, so far with little success.

As entertaining as it is to imagine someone making a simple mistake when noting down the running order of the plays in Ancient times, this must be quite frustrating to Classicists.

It took me way longer to read this collection than I thought but I don't regret a single minute of it.

While some of the concepts discussed and displayed in the plays were not instantly recognisable to a 20th- and 21th-century reader, the context an explanatory notes provided by Alan H. Sommerstein was so excellent that each of the plays not only made sense but actually made it a joy to discover how Aeschylus' may have raised smiles in some and incensed others of his audiences.

And some ideas and points of view in his plays - especially the description of the Persian's defeat (in The Persians), the exposition that women may refuse marriage (in The Suppliants), and some of the rather humanist views of Prometheus (in Prometheus Bound) - we quite different from what I had expected. Or rather, different from what I have come to expect from the Ancient Greek world when coming to Ancient Greek drama after reading the Greek myths (in whichever version: Apollodorus, Ovid, or any of the modern retellings). But even coming to Aeschylus with some familiarity of other playwrights such a Sophocles, I found Aeschylus surprisingly empathetic, satirical, and ... oddly modern.

CHORUS: You didn't, I suppose, go even further than that?
PROMETHEUS: I did: I stopped mortals foreseeing their death.
CHORUS: What remedy did you find for that affliction?
PROMETHEUS: I planted blind hopes within them.
CHORUS: That was a great benefit you gave to mortals.
PROMETHEUS: And what is more, I gave them fire.

It is easy to think of Prometheus only as the rebel who went against Zeus' wishes and brought fire to mankind, but there is more to him. I loved how Aeschylus focuses not on the fire-bringing alone but also on his shared humanity, and on the prophecy that Prometheus knew of that would lead to the decline of Zeus' power, the proverbial Götterdämmerung of the Ancient Greek gods.

PROMETHEUS:
It's very easy for someone who is standing safely out of trouble to advise and rebuke the one who is in trouble.
I knew that, all along. I did the wrong thing intentionally, intentionally, I won't deny it: by helping mortals, I brought trouble on myself. But I certainly never thought I would have a punishment anything like this, left to wither on these elevated rocks, my lot cast on this deserted, neighbourless crag. Now stop lamenting my present woes: descend to the ground and hear of my future fortunes, so that you will know it all to the end. Do as I ask, do as I ask. Share the suffering of one who is in trouble now: misery, you know, wanders everywhere, and alights on different persons at different times. ( )

Some have compared Prometheus to Jesus Christ. Certainly the opening scene of Aeschylus's play, with Prometheus splayed upon a rock as he is bound by Hephaestus, invites the comparison. I would not go so far and see the interplay between the Greek gods to be the relevant context for this scene. Played out at the "world's limit" in a bleak setting the drama portrays Prometheus suffering punishment for making humans "intelligent and masters of their minds". (line 444)

Prometheus' crime is not the only reason for his punishment for the chorus tells us that there is a war going on between the "Old" gods (Olympians) and the new generation of Gods. Zeus is seeking to maintain his primacy while Prometheus and his brothers are the dangerous new gods on the block. Atlas is suffering as well carrying the weight of the whole world on his back. The scales are not even - their is nothing like fairness or justice in this world. Prometheus is doomed even as he is visited by Io who is also suffering due to Hera's jealous rage over Zeus's attentions.

Being a god does not seem to lead to a completely pleasant life - there is strife and anger at every turn even for the most powerful. The winners in this play seem to be humans who do not have to relinquish the gifts endowed them by Prometheus. However, even these can be seen as a two-edged sword for our ancestors who had to endure hardships of many kinds in the struggle of living in the world. Prometheus cries out "O sky that circling brings light to all, you see how unjustly I suffer!" (lines 1091-2) Could that be our own cry even today? ( )

I rate this work as high as I do only for its classic interest; it is hard to view it as compelling drama in the modern world. Though award winning in its own time, theatre has moved on and left this sort of writing long behind, with all action happening offstage and delivered to the audience as long expository speeches by an annoying chorus that is by turns whiny, pompous, and groveling. It is always interesting to see the historical background of a field you are involved in, but this is not what I would classify among the best of classical drama. It doesn't hold a candle to the Oedipus Cycle, or even the author's own Oresteia. It also suffers in that these are mainly fragments of plays, or parts of trilogies or tetrads that are the only remaining parts of the work, so they feel unfinished, or like they start in the middle, which does them no benefit. Overall, recommended for people interested in historical theatre, or in the period in general, but for people wanting compelling drama, probably should look somewhere else. ( )

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. ( )

Because I'm not a classicist or poet, I don't usually rate ancient plays. However, I will say this edition with more modern language was easy to read and comprehend. I'm very familiar with the myths and legends referenced in the work and found the stories tragic and affecting. Of the four, I liked "Prometheus Bound" best for its discussion of deeper issues such as the nature of tyranny and the need for compassion and kindness.

With an Introduction to each of three plays by Aeschylus. The Suppliant Maidens is the earliest Greek play still preserved, and was produced circa 490 BC. 50 daughters of Danaus flee from Egypt to Argos to avoid forced marriage. The action takes place in a Sacred Grove.

The Persians was produced in 472 BC, 8 years after the naval battle at Salamis, celebrated by the play. This is the only extant Greek tragedy not based on myth but on a contemporary event. In addition, this is the only tragedian known, ancient or modern, who dared present such a sympathetic picture of the deadly enemies of the audience. In addition, it is the Queen (although never named but as such), not Darius the King, who raises our sympathy. Perhaps precisely because the Athenians were free, fighting the enslaving despots of Persia, Aeschylus demands they comprehend the merits of their foes -- and ours.

"Seven Against Thebes" is a very strange play, produced ~ 467 BC. Possibly part of a trilogy based on the Oedipal myths. For me the importance of this elusive play lies in the very very clear invocation of "justice" urged upon the audience. ( )

A nice small collection of plays. Some of the plays have numbered verses but some do not.

One of the most classic collections of the best of the Greeks. Prometheus Bound and The Persians are top notch.Seven Against Thebes adds to Antigone in particular. Anything that remains of Aeschylus is priceless.

Hard to understand but naturally since they were written in about 500 BC. Most plays are historical reflecting events during those times . Excellent plays opening windows to the ancient times. Great source if one wants to know more about Greek Gods and their legends ( )