The Persians

The Persians by Aeschylus and translated into English Verse by E. D. A. Morshead. From the plays of Aeschylus. The surviving dramas of Aeschylus are seven in number, though he is believed to have written nearly a hundred during his life of sixty-nine years, from 525 B. C. to 456 B. C. That he fought at Marathon in 490, and at Salamis in 480 B. C. is a strongly accredited tradition, rendered almost certain by the vivid references to both battles in his play of The Persians, which was produced in 472. The Persians has been placed second in this volume, as the oldest play whose date is certainly known. It was brought out in 472 B. C., eight years after the sea-fight of Salamis which it commemorates, and five years before the Seven against Thebes (467 B. C.). It is thought to be the second play of a Trilogy, standing between the Phineus and the Glaucus. Phineus was a legendary seer, of the Argonautic era-"Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old"-and the play named after him may have contained a prophecy of the great conflict which is actually described in The Persae: the plot of the Glaucus is unknown. In any case, The Persians was produced before the eyes of a generation which had seen the struggles, West against East, at Marathon and Thermopylæ, Salamis and Plataea. It is as though Shakespeare had commemorated, through the lips of a Spanish survivor, in the ears of old councillors of Philip the Second, the dispersal of the Armada.