CHAPTER V.
THE PERSIANS.
"The Persians" was not produced until six or seven years after the events which it celebrates; and this was perhaps an advantage. For no great event can easily be regarded as an entire whole until some time after its occurrence. Details are at first too prominent; personal or local interests have not yet sunk down into their proper relative importance: it is not fully seen, until later, what was the true beginning and source of the main action, nor when it can be rightly said to have ended—in short, the spectator is too close to the object to see it as a whole, and to grasp the principle of its structure. Now it is the very essence of all tragedy that it should present a great action as a whole—in its greatness, not in its complexity; and in Greek tragedy, through its shortness and simplicity, this character is especially marked. Further, we have seen that the Greek dramatist contemplates an action as part of a course of divine providence; sets it, that is, in its true light as a moral result, and traces throughout it the retributive agency of heaven. Clearly this function cannot be adequately fulfilled until time enough has elapsed to distinguish permanent effects from those which were transient, and to enable the observer, freed from the obstructions of temporary passion, to award praise and blame with justice.
With these considerations before us, we may say that Æschylus could not have produced his drama of "The Persians" earlier, without losing something of unity and certainty, and something of that distance, or half-unreality, which constitutes the characteristic charm of the Athenian tragedy.
Knowing how essential this distance from common life—this "removedness" of the scene and action—is, we shall rather wonder that the poets did not entirely avoid subjects taken from recent history, and confine themselves to
"Presenting Thebes and Pelops' line,
Or the tale of Troy divine."
And in fact the cases in which they did leave the mythological cycle were exceptional, and perhaps not often successful; though the pre-eminent importance of the Persian war made success possible here. An early contemporary of Æschylus, Phrynichus, had many years before made a great mistake by his injudicious choice of such a subject—one connected with this very Persian war itself. The war originated, as the reader will remember, in the feuds between the Persians and the Ionian colonies in Asia Minor, of which Miletus was chief These cities had attempted to throw off the yoke of the Persians, who had long assailed their liberties, and in the failure of their attempt Miletus was destroyed. The Athenians, as Ionians themselves, were kinsmen and close allies of these Asiatic Greeks; and the fall of their leading city was a heavy blow to Athens, especially as she had made the Ionian cause her own by that enterprise of almost incredible courage, in which her troops burnt the royal city of Sardis, and so brought upon Greece the two gigantic invasions which were repelled at Marathon and Salamis. It was the fall of Miletus which Phrynichus chose for his subject, and so far as its importance went, it was a truly tragic theme; but it came home too closely to the feelings of the Athenians—they could not bear to see the sufferings of their friends so vividly represented, the sympathy exacted was too painful, the drama too like reality; so they fined Phrynichus a large sum for breaking the rules of his art, and giving pain to his audience. Not unnaturally, when the fall of Miletus had been amply revenged, Phrynichus hastened to atone for his error by representing the triumph. He produced a drama founded on the Persian war, two years after Salamis;—as soon, that is, as it could be safely said that Persia was finally defeated. We may not doubt that on this latter occasion the Athenian audience forgot the violation of an unwritten canon of art, in their exultation at the picture of their successes; but we may be sure, at the same time, that Phrynichus was unable to give to his play the same heroic and ideal greatness which we find in that of Æschylus.
We have said that the paramount importance of the Persian war made it a fit subject for tragedy, and we need not here enlarge upon the causes and signs of that importance; we will point now to another fact by which its case differed from most other events of contemporary history. This fact is the comparative ignorance of the manners and character of the Persians which still prevailed among the Greeks. The enormous size of their armies, their boundless wealth and luxury, their barbarous tongues and dark faces,—these, exaggerated to still greater proportions in the popular imagination, produced an impression of dim and indefinite greatness, not unlike that in which the mist of time veiled the heroes of mythology. How fully aware the poet was of this is amply shown by his manner of dealing with the subject. He has kept as far as possible from familiar names and places; his hero is not the victorious Greek, but the defeated Persian king; the scene is not the battle-field,—not Marathon, or Thermopylæ, or Salamis,—but the palace of Xerxes, far away in the wonder-land of the east; and all is treated from the Persian side. Instead of the triumph of Israel, he gives us the fears and sorrows of the mother of Sisera and her attendant ladies.
Very much, then, is gained by this treatment. Not only is Xerxes greater in his fall than even Miltiades in his triumph,—as a despot, if great at all, is greater than one leader among many can be in a free people,—but the familiar event is set in a new light, as a Persian calamity instead of a Greek success, and in a light even more flattering to the national pride of Athens.
We have spoken at length on this point, lest it should be thought that Æschylus makes Xerxes his hero simply because tragedy requires a calamity. A sad ending is not essential to tragedy; greatness and "removedness" are.
But we must hasten to inquire at what point in the series of events the action of the play begins, and what was the knowledge of the preceding history with which the Athenian spectator was prepared. It was in the year 500 B.C., eight-and-twenty years ago, that the Ionian cities rebelled against Darius, and nearly six years later that Miletus was sacked and the revolt suppressed. The next year the Athenians had come to the assistance of their kinsmen in Asia; had accomplished a two months' march from the sea to Sardis, and insulted the Great King almost in his own house. Darius had no sooner put down the rebels in Ionia than he remembered the insolent strangers who had ventured to burn his palace; and in the year 490 B.C. he sent over the great armament under Mardonius which was to bring the Athenians in chains to Persia. Till of late their very name was unknown to him. He is said to have asked contemptuously where Athens was; a question which, in the play before us, is put into the mouth of his wife Atossa. But the unknown little state proved too strong for Mardonius, and Marathon destroyed the hopes of that expedition. This was in 490 B.C., or about eighteen years ago.
Darius bequeathed to his son Xerxes the task of subjugating Greece, and after several years spent in preparations, the young king set forth to lead against these few despised tribes the flower of all the nations which owned his rule. The incredible numbers which the historians assign to his forces are well known; at the lowest calculation they far exceeded the greatest hosts of modern times. But wealth, when it has given birth to pride, always brings ruin on its possessor. Overweening confidence is, in the Greek creed, an insult to the gods, and cannot fail to call down their wrath. Such was the fate of Xerxes. Checked at Thermopylæ, routed at Salamis, driven home in confusion to his own shores, followed thither by losses and defeat, the Great King became a spectacle to all men of the vanity of greatness when it is not guarded by moderation. Now for five years at least the Persian power has lain prostrate at the feet of Greece, and men have had time to learn the lesson which her misfortunes teach.
Such are perhaps the reflections which pass through the Athenian's mind when he hears it announced that the next play is to be "The Persians."
The curtain rises[1] on a splendid scene of Eastern magnificence. It is Susa, the Persian capital, the abode of fabulous wealth, though now so humbled. The Chorus enter with the usual stately march, and with more than the usual gorgeousness of dress. They are the state councillors of the Great King, who, under the queen-mother Atossa, guard the dominions of their absent master. As they advance towards the orchestra they sing, in their processional hymn, a strain of anxiety and sad foreboding. No messengers have come from the host of late; the land is empty, all are gone to the war; and a gloomy desolation, not unmixed with apprehension, makes wives and parents
"Count the slow days,
And tremble at the long protracted time."
The chant contains a catalogue of nobles who are gone;—a list of sounding names, diversified with picturesque circumstances, reminding us of the roll of the fallen angels in Milton, or the lists of dead warriors in Homer:—
"Amistres, Artaphernes, and the might
Of great Astaspes; Megabazes bold . . .
Artembares, that in his fiery horse
Delights: Masistres; and Imœus bold,
Bending with manly strength his stubborn bow;
Pharandaces, and Sosthenes that drives
With military pomp his rapid steeds."
From sacred Nile and Memphis; Lycians, the sons of luxury; foresters from far inland; troops from Euphrates and golden Babylon; Mysians who wield the javelin; Mardon from Tmolus, and Tharybis and Arcteus—all are gone forth to battle, and Persia is desolate and sad.
Some have found in this opening a burlesque of Persian names intended to amuse the Athenians: we may rather regard it as showing, what we have seen before, how Æschylus shares with Homer and Milton and Scott that power over names, which is one of the surest signs, says Mr Palgrave, of high poetic talent.
When the Chorus have reached the orchestra, their song begins with a description of the grand departure of the army, and the proud position of Xerxes, himself the most beautiful in person of all that magnificent host.
Strophe.
"Already o'er the adverse strand
In arms the monarch's martial squadrons spread;
The threat'ning ruin shakes the land,
And each tall city bows its towered head.
Bark bound to bark, their wondrous way
They bridge across the indignant sea;
The narrow Hellespont's vexed waves disdain,
His proud neck taught to bear the chain.
Now has the peopled Asia's warlike lord,
By land, by sea, with foot, with horse
Resistless in his rapid course,
O'er all their realms his warring thousands poured;
Now his intrepid chiefs surveys,
And glitt'ring like a god his radiant state displays."
Antistrophe.
"Fierce as the dragon scaled in gold
Through the deep files he darts his glowing eye:
And pleased their order to behold,
His joyous standard blazing to the sky,
Rolls onward his Assyrian car,
Directs the thunder of the war,
Bids the winged arrows' iron storm advance
Against the slow and cumbrous lance.
What shall withstand the torrent of his sway,
When dreadful o'er the yielding shores
The impetuous tide of battle roars,
And sweeps the weak opposing mounds away?
So Persia with resistless might
Rolls her unnumbered hosts of heroes to the fight."
Very pleasing to the Athenian is the irony which he traces here;—the contrast between the hope and the event. Those clouds of arrows only kept the sun from the eyes of the Greeks, while the "slow and cumbrous lance" was active enough to scatter all those "unnumbered hosts of heroes." Still intenser is the irony in the stanzas that follow—"What mortal," they sing, "can withstand misfortune and the vengeance of the sky? Flattering at first, she falls with crushing power upon her victim: and so"—mark here the irony—"shall Persia fall upon her foes." But there is ground for fear too. While all are away in Greece, any invader might find in Persia an easy prey. Then how would her homes be filled with mourning; with maidens rushing in despair about her streets, lamenting for the guardians of her towers; with wives deploring the long absence of their loves! So the song ends with the very same strain of lamentation for a supposed calamity as will soon be raised for a real one; when the youth, for whom the maidens weep, will be known to be absent for ever, and the matron's couch for ever desolate.
When this chorus, one of the finest in all Æschylus, is concluded, Atossa, the queen-mother,—"the mother of the Persians' god,"—comes upon the scene, and is greeted by the elders with the utmost reverence. She comes to seek their advice. Unquiet thoughts have for some time disturbed her, and dreams of ominous import have visited her, but especially in the night that is just past. "Methought," she says,
"Two women stood before mine eyes
Gorgeously vested, one in Persian robes
Adorned, the other in the Doric garb.
With more than mortal majesty they moved,
Of peerless beauty; sisters too they seemed,
Though distant each from each they chanced to dwell,
In Greece the one, on the barbaric coast
The other. 'Twixt them soon dissension rose:
My son then hasted to compose their strife,
Soothed them to fair accord, beneath his car
Yokes them, and reins their harnessed necks. The one
Exulting in her rich array, with pride
Arching her stately neck, obeyed the reins;
The other with indignant fury spurned
The car, and dashed it piecemeal, rent the reins
And tore the yoke asunder: down my son
Fell from the seat, and instant at his side
His father stands, Darius, at his fall
Impressed with pity: him when Xerxes saw,
Glowing with grief and shame he rends his robes.
This was the dreadful vision of the night."
Disturbed by such a dream, the queen had gone to sacrifice to the gods, but there a new omen had presented itself—an eagle defeated by a hawk, and flying for sanctuary to the altar of the Sun. She cannot but interpret these things as portending some misfortune to her son, and she feels that on his success in war his prestige at home, and perhaps his throne, depends. By the advice of the elders, she promises to seek assistance from the gods, and in particular to pray for help to the shade of her dead husband Darius. Meanwhile she asks the old question that had so irritated Athenian pride—"Where, in what clime, the towers of Athens rise?"
"Chorus. Far in the west, where sets the imperial sun.
Atossa. Send they embattled numbers to the field?
Chor. A force that to the Medes hath wrought much woe.
Atos. Have they sufficient treasures in their houses?
Chor. Their rich earth yields a copious fount of silver.[2]
Atos. From the strong bow wing they the barbèd shaft?
Chor. They grasp the stout spear, and the massy shield.
Atos. What monarch reigns, whose power commands their ranks?
Chor. Slaves to no lord, they own no kingly power.
Atos. How can they then resist the invading foe?
Chor. As to spread havoc through the numerous host
That round Darius formed their glitt'ring files
Atos. Thy words strike deep, and wound the parent's breast,
Whose sons are marched to such a dangerous field."
In this way the queen gains some notion of her son's danger, while, by the way, the Greek spear is again contrasted with the Persian arrow, and the Athenian freedom with the despotic rule of Xerxes. Atossa is made to wonder that a free people can resist nations who are driven into battle with whips and goads, in order that the Athenian may be led to reflect that he owes his independence to his free constitution.
But forebodings are now to be converted into actual lamentation. A messenger arrives with cries of "Woe to Persia!" and briefly tells his tale—"The whole barbaric host has fallen."
"In heaps the unhappy dead lie on the strand
Of Salamis, and all the neighbouring shores."
Under the first crushing force of this announcement Atossa is silent. The Chorus are loud in their cries, but the queen speaks no word; and when at last she finds a voice, she dares not utter the question that is nearest to her heart, but asks, Who is not fallen?
"What leader must we wail ? What sceptred chief
Dying hath left his troops without a lord?"
The messenger answers her meaning,—
"Xerxes himself lives, and beholds the light."
Then comes a list of the fallen; a list as long as, and even more beautiful than, that which the Chorus gave of the chiefs in their hour of pride. It is doubtless imitated from Homer, and has some of those touches of pathos in which Virgil delights on a similar occasion.
"Amestris, and Amphistreus there
Grasps his war-wearied spear; there prostrate lies
The illustrious Arimardus, long his loss
Shall Sardis weep: the Mysian Sisames,
And Tharybis that o'er the burdened deep
Led five times fifty vessels; Lerna gave
The hero birth, and manly grace adorned
His pleasing form, but low in death he lies,
Unhappy in his fate."
Our sympathy is roused for the hero of Lerna, just as in the Æneid for Rhipeus, or Panthus,—
"Then Rhipeus followed in th' unequal fight,
Just of his word, observant of the right,
Heaven thought not so."—Virg., Æn. i. 426. (Pitt.)
Having mentioned a long list of the dead—yet only a few out of so many—the messenger goes on to describe the circumstances of the defeat. And here we are to have, from an eyewitness, a detailed account of the fight at Salamis. The poet had best be accurate and impartial, for half his audience were present there, and any error will be promptly noticed.
"In numbers, the barbaric fleet
Was far superior: in ten squadrons, each
Of thirty ships, Greece ploughed the deep; of these
One held a distant station. Xerxes led
A thousand ships; their number well I know;
Two hundred more and seven, that swept the seas
With speediest sail: this was their full amount.
And in the engagement seemed we not secure
Of victory? But unequal Fortune sunk
Our scale in fight, discomfiting our hosts."
And even Atossa is constrained to say;
"The gods preserve the city of Minerva:"
and the messenger replies;—
"The walls of Athens are impregnable,
Their firmest bulwarks her heroic sons!"
How the Athenian audience must have cheered!
The description which follows gives us a more vivid picture of an ancient sea-fight than is anywhere else to be found. It is the work of a soldier who understood the tactics displayed, as well as of a poet whose eyes were open to the outward aspect of the scene. It explains to us why there was so little distinction in those times between the soldier and the sailor. The same men who fought on land at Marathon fought on the sea at Salamis, and their naval warfare consisted mainly in hand-to-hand fighting after the ships had grappled one another; the chief aim, besides this, being to disable the enemy's ship by a blow from the armed prow, either crushing in its sides, or passing over and breaking its oars.
The messenger narrates how, by a stratagem of the Greeks, which we know from Herodotus was due to Themistocles, the Persians had been induced to surround the Greek fleet, in the belief that they meditated flight by night. Every passage by which a Greek ship could escape was carefully secured, but the Greeks did not stir. But when the day with its white steeds spread in its beauty over the earth,—
"At once from every Greek with glad acclaim
Burst forth the song of war, whose lofty notes
The echo of the island rocks returned,
Spreading dismay through Persia's hosts thus fallen
From their high hopes: no flight this solemn strain
Portended, but deliberate valour bent
On daring battle; whilst the trumpet's sound
Kindled the flames of war."
With oars dashing up the waves, the Greeks advance to the attack, their right wing leading, and on every side the voice of exhortation is heard. "Forward, Greeks, for your homes and the temples of your gods, and for your father's tombs: all are at stake to-day!" A Greek ship is the first to strike, and crushes in by the force of its charge the sculptured prow of a Phœnician: then the engagement rages along the whole line.
"The deep array
Of Persia at the first sustained the encounter;
But their thronged numbers, in the narrow seas
Confined, want room for action; and, deprived
Of mutual aid, beaks clash with beaks, and each
Breaks all the other's oars: with skill disposed
The Grecian navy circled them around
With fierce assault."
The sea is hidden with ships floating keel upwards, and with wrecks and corpses. The shores are covered with the dead. The Persians take to flight, and the Greeks pursue, spearing and striking their drowning foes, "as men spear a shoal of tunnies," with spars and broken oars; and over the wide sea wailing is heard and lamentation, until night falls upon the scene of destruction. Worse even than this remains. For on a little island close to Salamis,—a rugged island such as Pan delights in,—Xerxes had set the flower of his nobility, that they might cut down the Greeks who would seek shelter there, or help any Persians in distress; and all these, the bravest of his hosts, were cut to pieces before the monarch's eyes. "Bitter fruit," Atossa cries,
"My son hath tasted from his purposed vengeance
On Athens famed for arms; the fatal field
Of Marathon, red with barbaric blood,
Sufficed not; that defeat he thought to avenge,
And pulled this hideous ruin on his head."
Already the sufferers are attributing their troubles to the wanton rashness of Xerxes, and we shall see that this feeling is more and more clearly expressed as the play goes on, so that Darius, with whom the whole expedition originated, is regarded as having been comparatively cautious and sparing of his people. This is not a true view of the history. Xerxes was rather indolent and reluctant, and required much pressure before he would carry out his father's plans. Whether Æschylus was himself in error on this point, or wished to represent the Persians as forgetting the true state of the case in their distress, we cannot tell: at any rate, it is necessary to the poem that the author of the calamity should suffer by it, so that it was natural to exaggerate the rashness of Xerxes, and to contrast with it the supposed moderation of his father.
But there are more calamities still to tell. In their disordered flight some died of thirst and famine; some perished in the attempt to cross the frozen Strymon, the great river of Thrace, where "such as owned no god till now, awe-struck, with many a prayer, adored the earth and sky." A few "dragged on their toilsome march, and reached their native soil,"—few indeed out of so many.
"My visions," says the unhappy queen, "were too true; it is too late for sacrifices now to change the past, yet I will offer libations to the dead and prayers to the gods, in case there may yet be some better thing in store." Then she departs, begging the Chorus to receive her son with words of comfort.
Sad and majestic music now swells up the crowded theatre, and echoes on the steep rocks of the Acropolis. The Persian councillors begin that chorus of lamentation which was portended by their opening chorus of anxiety.
Strophe.
"Awful sovereign of the skies,
When now o'er Persia's numerous host
Thou bad'st the storm with ruin rise,
All her proud vaunts of glory lost,
Ecbatana's imperial head
By thee was wrapped in sorrow's dark'ning shade;
Through Susa's palaces with wide lament,
By their soft hands their veils all rent,
The copious tear the virgins pour,
That trickles their bare bosoms o'er.
From her sweet couch upstarts the widowed bride,
Her lord's loved image rushing on her soul,
Throws the rich ornaments of youth aside,
And gives her griefs to flow without control;
Her griefs not causeless; for the mighty slain
Our melting tears demand, and sorrow-softened strain."
Antistrophe.
"Now her wailings wide despair
Pours these exhausted regions o'er;
Xerxes, ill-fated, led the war;
Xerxes, ill-fated, leads no more:
Xerxes sent forth the unwise command,
The crowded ships unpeopled all the land;
That land o'er which Darius held his reign,
Courting the arts of peace, in vain,
O'er all his grateful realms adored,
The stately Susa's gentle lord.
Black o'er the waves his burdened vessels sweep,
For Greece elate the warlike squadrons fly:
Now crushed, and whelmed beneath the indignant deep,
The shattered wrecks and lifeless heroes lie;
Whilst from the arms of Greece escaped, with toil
The unsheltered monarch roams o'er Thracia's dreary soil."
And they lament for power overthrown, so many nobles and rulers lost, not without implying that the power of Xerxes himself is shaken, and "his regal greatness is no more."
Atossa returns: this time she comes without her queenly train, and bears the offerings which are to call Darius from the dead. The list of them is graceful and pathetic. We may notice here again how Æschylus shares with other great poets the power of moving us by these simple things; they are like Perdita's flowers, or the offerings "to deck the laureate hearse where Lycid lies."
"Delicious milk that foams
White from the sacred heifer; liquid honey,
Extract of flowers; and from its virgin fount
The running crystal: this pure draught, that flowed
From the ancient vine, of power to bathe the spirits
In joy; the yellow olive's fragrant fruit,
That glories in its leaves' unfading verdure;
With flowers of various hues, earth's fairest off'spring,
Enwreathed."
The Chorus join to hers their prayers to Darius, and entreat the powers that rule the dead, and earth, and heaven, to send up his ghost into the light, that he may show the future, and the remedy, if there be any. They praise the dead monarch, who "wasted not his subjects' blood," and with repeated cries call him from the tomb. Darius comes. The ghost rises from the ground before his tomb, like the ghost in "Hamlet," in
"That fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Persia
Did sometimes march;"
and, anxiously startled, asks what troubles are troubling the state. Like the Danish king, Darius, for all his greatness, speaks with awe and reverence of the realms from which he comes: the gods there are stern, and will not easily allow the dead to return; his time is short; the "fearful summons" will soon call him back. He hears the full story of the calamity, and attributes all to the arrogance and rashness of his son, who had dared to chain the sacred Hellespont and divine Bosporus, and "to rise above the gods and Neptune's might.""Those who urged him on," says the ghost, "to this mad enterprise, have done a deed of ruin such as never yet was done to Persia, and have wasted the grand fabric which so many illustrious kings had raised. Greece must be attacked no more; the very earth fights for her, destroying your troops by famine and disease. The remnant who survive shall not return. In their wanton insolence they have overthrown temples and statues of the gods, and now heaven's anger is upon them. On Platæa's fields they shall lie in heaps, to teach mortals humility."
A tender passage follows, in which the father bids his wife show all gentleness to her offending son. It is not unlike the tenderness with which the ghost in "Hamlet" ends his revelations, bidding the son be gentle to his mother:—
"With gentlest courtesy
Soothe his affliction; for his duteous ear,
I know, will listen to thy voice alone.
Now to the realms of darkness I descend."
Again the Chorus chant the glories of Darius's reign, and sadly contrast them with the present ruin, while the queen goes away to put on her most gorgeous robes, according to the ghost's command, and meet her son.
"E'en the proud towns, that reared
Sublime along the Ionian coast their towers,
Where wealth her treasures pours,
Peopled from Greece, his prudent reign revered.
With such unconquered might
His hardy warriors shook the embattled field,
Heroes that Persia yields,
And those from distant lands that took their way,
And wedged in close array
Beneath his glittering banners claimed the fight.
But now these glories are no more:
Farewell the big war s plumèd pride,
The gods have crushed this trophied power;
Sunk are our vanquished arms beneath the indignant tide."
As this chorus ends, Xerxes, in rent robes and with disfigured face, comes lamenting upon the scene, tortured with the thought of his lost heroes, and wishing that he had died with them. The rest of the play is but one long wail. "I have no voice," the Chorus says,—
"No swelling harmony,
No descant, save these notes of woe,
Harsh and repulsive to the sullen sigh,
Rude strains that unmelodious flow,
To welcome thy return."
They ask after all the chiefs,—after Pharnaces and Dotamas,—
"Psammis in mailèd cuirass dressed,
And Susiscanes' glitt'ring crest."
And in every gloomy pause Xerxes replies that they are dead—drowned, or killed in the shock of battle.
The climax of disaster and disgrace is reached in the condition of the king himself.
"Cho. Is all thy glory lost?
Xer. Seest thou these poor remains of my rent robes?
Cho. I see, I see.
Xer. And this ill-furnished quiver?
Cho. Wherefore preserved?
Xer. To store my treasured arrows.
Cho. Few, very few.
Xer. And few my friendly aids."
And the irony of the whole, and its bearing on Athenian prowess, is summed up:—
"Cho. I thought these Grecians shrank appalled at arms.
Xer. No; they are bold and daring."
And so, with reiterated lamentations, the spectacle concludes.
With the Athenians, whose glory it exhibited so prominently, this play was naturally a favourite; but it appealed also to a far wider audience. The Persian War had been the means of bringing all Greeks together in union against the common foe; and accordingly, a play like this could not but be welcomed as an expression of the new national enthusiasm. This explains the fact that it was among those chosen by Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, while Æschylus was his guest, to be repeated before the Greeks of Sicily; and this also justifies the poet in leaving for once the old national heroes, Hercules and Agamemnon, to celebrate the event which, for the first time since the Trojan war, was for all Greece a common triumph.