Tradition and Dramatic Form in "The Persians" of Aeschylus 9789004065864, 9004065865

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TRADITION AND DRAMATIC FORM IN THE PERSIANS OF AESCHYLUS

CINCINNATI CLASSICAL STUDIES NEW SERIES

VOLUME I V

LEIDEN

E. J. BRILL 1982

TRADITION AND DRAMATIC FORM IN THE PERSIANS OF AESCHYLUS BY

ANN N. MICHELINI

LEIDEN E. J. BRILL Ig8z'

Published with financial support of the Classics Fund of the University of Cincinnati established by Louise Taft Semple in memory of her father, Charles Phelps Taft.

Michelini, Ann N. - Tradition and dramatic form in the Persians of Aeschylus / by Ann N. Michelini. Leiden : Brill. (Cincinnati classical studies : New series; vol. 4)

UDC792

ISBN go 04 06586 5

Copyright 1982 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Neth erlands All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, pbotoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission from th e publisher PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

For Dick

TABLE OF CONTENTS Pr eface

.

1. Th e Persian s and Literary History . 1. Traditional Form in Tragedy 2. Archaic Elements in th e Persians 3· Trochaic Tetrameter .

IX I

3

27 41

II . The Aesthetic St ructure of the Persians . 1. Paratactic Style in Drama. 2. Major Themes in Lineverse and Lyric. 3· The Rheseis . . 4· Dramatic Art in t he Persians

65 66 76 99 127

Appendix, Plautus' Captivi

154

Bibliogr aphy

157

References to Aeschylean Plays

159

General Index .

160

PREFACE This book falls into two parts, because the tasks I set myself in writing it were two-fold. I wanted first to place the Persians in the development of Aeschylean drama and to show what it can contribute to our understanding of the history of tragedy. My other concern, pursued in the second part, was to examine the play for itself, as an independent aesthetic whole. In both studies I found the play 's structure to be determined by a dialectic between traditional form and particular form, the latter being preconditioned for the Persians by its non-mythical theme and by the objective and, in a broad sense, historical viewpoint required by that theme. While I have not considered the connections between the historical relations of Greek to Persian and the play Aeschylus wrote , I hope that I have given a clear picture of the aesthetic consequences of such a thematic choice. (It should be noted that Guido Paduano's book, Sui Persiani di Eschilo: Problemi di Jocalizzatione drammatica (Rome, 1978) came to my hands too late to affect the writing of this book. His assessment of Dareios' role as parent and judge , and of the themes of hubris, has several points in common with my own.) I began work on the P ersians in my dissertation, written under Professor Cedric Whitman, whom I first met long ago, when I was an undergraduate at Radcliffe. Then and later, like many others, I was warmed by his kindn ess, spurred on by his intelligence, and inspired by th e intensity of his love for Greek poetry. Of my teachers at Harvard, I must also thank Professor J. H. Finley, and especially Professor Gregory Nagy, whose t eaching showed me-7tOAAOC 1" share the same line. 54 The major point of the speech is Xerxes' blasphemy. But only after the bridge has been described is the crime more clearly defined: though a mortal, Xerxes has attempted to master divinities (779-780). The speech concludes with two further topics, Xerxes' mad folly (vocroc; 'Ppevwv) and Dareios' fear for his wealth. These ideas pick up in a desultory way material from the earlier lines about Xerxes' rash ignorance (744) and the "spring of evils... for all his friends" (743). But there is no return to a topic stated in the beginning; a number of themes or ideas are associated loosely in this speech, with no attempt to make one dominant. The chorus' eleven line speech at 215 has a similar repetitiveness and lack of subordinating structure. The Queen is advised to make two sets of offerings. She should pray to "the gods" to avert evil and fulfill &.yrx6&... croL"t'e XrxhEXVO~C; crE6ev (218). "Second-s-Secrepov," XP~ xoOcc; / in. . . she should pour libations to earth and the dead, especially to Dareios, asking them Ecr6M cro~ 7tE!J.7teW 'rEXVcp 're, "from beneath the earth into the light... ," while evils should be hidden in the dark below the earth (221-223). The contrast between good and evil-or light and dark-is an inevitable opposition in ancient thought; but the chance for more complex antitheses, which would have created a subordinating structure in the speech, is entirely missed. The general reference to "the gods" in the second 54 Cf. also the repeated lJV\)(J~v, which builds a ring, subordinating 745-749 to 744. Again, the ring is built by a repetition of a word, rather than by a close match of ideas. (lJvu(J~v is also repeated at 721 ,726) .

TH E PE RSI ANS AN D LITERARY HISTORY

line of the speech does not permit us to anticipate that the offerings will be divided between two sorts of gods, a distinction that develops only afte r the ~e:u't"e:pov th at introduces th e second set. Th e two sorts of offerings are not opposed at all, rat her they are made equivalent by the repetition of the good-evil oppositio n and the repeated references to good things " for you and your child." In these speeches the tight, subordinating form of trimet er st yle is altoget her lacking. While t he latter lends itself to expansion, wit h the va rious sub-heads shrinking or growing as the topic requires, the tetramet er speech, dense and allusive in language but loose and repetitive in structure, works better in a shorter length. The extension typi cal of the tragic rhesis, therefore, is not likely to have characterized the tragic tetrameter speech, if the speeches in the P ersians are taken as a model. The analysis of the shape s of both sorts of speeches confirm s that the trimeter rh esis, isolated and organi zed for extension, can be contrasted with the material that app ears in tetram eter, shorter and less st ruct ure d speeches, and stichomythic dialogue. The arr angement in which the two meters appear is layered, with tetramet er introducing or framing the rhesis, emphasizing it s separa tion by defining it s background. Thi s rather formal arrangement is well-suite d to the needs of an art form where an actor and a chorus must face each other and, to some extent , interact . The chorus' unfitness for the long rhesis does not place t hem at so much of a disadvantage, if they can meet the actor on an equal basis in tetrameter. The rhesis then becomes the actor's exclusive area , as the lyric belongs to th e chorus. Before the Queen begins her trimet er rhesis, a rather complex sequence of other metrical t ypes has occurred : the chorus began in ana paests, shifted to lyr ic, fell back into ana paests, and then moved t o trochaics. Th e transiti onal meter of the chorus , the anapaests, creates a grade or ste p between the imaginative world of lyric, which oft en ranges far from the dramatic scene and where emotion may be very intense, and the stage area proper , where entra nces and exits of the actors take place and where t he chorus has a role to play in dr amatic events . Similarly, the tetram eter crea tes a tran sition between the absorbing exposition of th e nar rative rhesis and the events in the orchest ra in which chorus and actors share.55 55

For t he corre la ti on of troch . and anapaestic meters , d . t he enigmat ic

TROCHAIC TETRAMETER

The sequence of lyric, anapaestic, tetrameter, trimeter is a gradual progression from musical to non-musical, from emotive to objective, from chorus-dominated to actor-dominated poetry. The anapaests, which in later tragedy are the preferred medium through which the actor joins the chorus in song, are a flatter or prosed version of the lyric ; the tetrameters, with their dancing gait, are the musical version of lineverse. But, if I am right about their original function, the tetrameters played a most significant role as the medium through which, in early tragic theater, dialogue and interaction took place, and the beginning of what was to become theater took shape. The loss of the tetrameter as an important part of tragic drama may be related, as so much else, to Aeschylus' introduction of a second actor. At that point, the division of the tragic dramatic universe between an actor and a chorus began to disappear, and the balance between song and speech that was replicated in the two lineverse meters ceased to be at the very center of tragic form. remark of Aristotle (Poet . 1452 b 23-24): ocvomex(O"TOU xext TPO;(ex(OU • • .

O"TtXO"L!J.OV

ae:

!J.EAOi; ;(OPOU TO &V£U

II

THE AESTHETIC STRUCTURE OF THE PERSIANS

1.

PARATACTIC STYLE IN DRAMA

The metrical split in tragedy and the juxtaposition of actor and chorus that defines and perpetuates the metrical division, have necessarily had profound effects on dramatic arrangements. Tragic plays like any sort of drama must claim audience acceptance and comprehension for a pretended reality created by the impersonation of the actors and the imagined world in which-however erratically-dramatic time is supposed to elapse.' The chorus, however, has certain traits that tend to limit its participation in dramatic illusion. Already hampered by a group personality inherited from the traditional choral performances, it often shows in lyric a prophetic insight that may contrast almost ludicrously with its timid obtuseness in line verse scenes .? The result of the chorus' dual role as singer and speaker is a fragmentation of dramatic identity. The actor, perhaps because he operates largely within the lineverse scene, has a more solid identity; but he too may change abruptly from a more sensitive and reflective mood, to become something like an impersonal channel for narration, once 1 G . M. Sifakis has valuable things to say about conventional theater, Ch . 1, "Dramatic Illusion and Old Comedy," in Parabasis and Animal Choruses ; A Contribution to the History of Attic Comedy (London, 1971) ; but he is surely wrong to assume that illusion has no part in ancient drama, or that illusion involves a deception of the audience, either in ancient or modern theater. Cf. the comments of D . Bain, Actors and Audience ; A Study of A sides and Related Conventions in Greek Drama (Oxford, 1977) 4-5, and 6, "Actors pretend to be the people they play and the audience a ccepts that pretence. That is all that I me an . .. [by] the term 'dramatic illusion' . " 2 In Pe , the contrast between lyric and nonlyric choral " proph ecy" is stressed by verbal parallels. The true fears at 10-II (xO'xo[J.O'\lnc; &YO'\I opcroA01te:'i:"t'O't j6u[J.oc; ~crw6€\I) are to be contrasted with false prophecies at 224-225 : "t'O'u"t'O' 6u[J.o[J.O'\I"t'tC; &\1 eel 1tp€u[J.e\lwc; 7tlXP~\I€crO' dj ae 1t0'\I"t'O'X~ "t'€Ae:'i:\I oot "t'(";'wa€ xpl\lo[J.€\I 1tept. a judgment that the Queen rightly deplores later, q>O'UAWC; O'ih' &YO'\I €xpl\lO'"t'€ (520) . Cf. the similar contrast between the prophetic fears of the Ag. chorus at 979 (d. roaff.] with their later rejection of Kassandra's prophetic skills (1098-1099), when they speak trimeters, while she sings in lyric. Misunderstanding of the chorus' role can result in the presumption of accidental " inconsist ency " caused by mere oversight (DAwE, 46, 59) or may create misinterpretation of the lyric, if one assumes that its meaning is limited by the probable psychological range of the chorus as actors (d. the discussion at the mesode, 11.2, n. 10) .

THE AESTHETIC STRUCTURE OF THE PERSIANS

67

he leaves dialogue behind to deliver a lengthy rhesis. Of course the use of tetrameter for dialogue amplifies the alienating quality of the rhesis and thus qualifies further the integrity of the dramatic illusion. The presence of such built-in inhibitions to the full development of the drama's imaginary world suggests that in its early years tragedy presented a satisfying and aesthetically rewarding form of drama that was not wholly dependent on impersonation and illusion for its impact. The actor in pre-Aeschylean drama is likely to have been a figure similar in function to the chorus: that is, he was primarily a commentator rather than an " actor" or participant in a dramatic event, a figure who might at times take his view of the myth from a rather remote and isolated point. I have already suggested that in actor-chorus drama the necessary serial form makes it difficult for a single personality to dominate a play. The play will acquire movement and interest only through the exit of the actor, who can then reenter with news and in a new role. Until the original actor was set free by the recruitment of a second, his necessary function as a newsbringer or messenger to a static group was the primary dramaturgical given of tragic theater. This given continues to shape Aeschylean theater down to the last two plays of the Oresteia, where a new kind of interaction among actors replaces the former patterns." That Aeschylus makes a varied and ingenious use of message-bearing figures such as Danaos or Dareios should not obscure the continuing emphasis on bringing news, or the concomitant sense of division-especially strong in the three earliest plays-between the fixed chorus and the more mobile actors. The formalization of the messenger scene in Sophocles and especially in Euripides is a part of the usual process in which an original element in the tradition gradually passes into a position of higher relief, by contrast with its changed surroundings. Later tragedy offers the audience vivid scenes of interaction and conflict among the actors, who come and go in rapid succession; the relation of messenger to chorus or other auditor becomes, though still powerful and effective, somewhat anomalous, a strong statement on the early actor's role as messenger, d. SCHADEUrs., I IIf£. For an opposing view d . TAPLIN, 84ff. ; I attempt to answer some of his objections in the text below. Cf. also GARVIE, I05-108; and DEICHGRABER, 38. 3 For WALDT,

68

PARATACTIC STYLE IN DRAMA

because it now contrasts with the more naturalistic dramatic style prevailing in these plays.' The alienating quality of the long rhesis, and the division it imposes between speech and dialogue, fits the messenger role as no other. While being questioned by the chorus, the messenger may express his own anxieties or joy; but, when he begins to tell his tale, the narrator tends to become a transparent medium for the story, to which his own reactions are irrelevant.s In the Persians the Queen 's address to the Messenger draws specific attention to the necessary suppression of affect that the role entails." On the other hand, the anxious or foreboding mood which Snell traced in Aeschylean theater belongs peculiarly to a situation in which the performers are in fact observers of the action rather than primary participants, affected by the dramatic event without being themselves 'a ble to affect its course." When messenger and chorus meet, the passivity of these performers generates their intense and fearful curiosity about the dramatic event, feelings which are shared-to a lesser extent-by the audience itself. Bacchylides' tragic dithyramb (18) is an excellent example of this sort of theater: Theseus' progress towards Athens is a rumor brought by a herald from the Isthmus, who has reported the deeds of an unknown youth. 8 The "chorus," however, dimly guess that the boy's singular prowess will lead to great goods-or great evils. Further poignancy is 4 The entry of the t~ciyye)..o~ in the G.T ., for instance, makes a strong impression of formality (1223ff .). The formal introduction is familiar from other plays (e.g . Ant. II93, G.C. 1580-1581). In the long, vivid sp eech which follows (note the messenger's regret that the interior scene cannot actually be seen, 1237-1238, d . Track . 896-897) the old style of reported drama clashes a bit with the new style of on-stage revelation which dominated the preceding scenes of liv ely and complex dialogue. 5 The longest tragic speeches are all by messengers, d . 11.3, bel ow, n . 18. 6 Clarity and vividness in narration are obscured by any persistent emotive responses on the part of the teller. In Medea II36ff., the messenger expresses strong concern, but proceeds to belie it-in naturalistic terms-by the minuteness of his observation. Cf. L. Di Gregorio, Le scene d' annuncio nella tragedia greca (Milan, 1967) 19-20. The urging to the Persian messenger that he speak, xd (JTE:Vet~ XlXXOr~ o(.L(,)~ (295) is merely a formal recognition of this perennial problem of the clash between expressive and narrative modes. 7 Cf. SNELL on Angst, 35, 41-50 . 8 Cf. SCHADEWALDT, Urs., 109. But this dithyramb is unlikely to reflect Arion's period . It seems instead to have readapted more contemporary tragic form to the strophic lyric; D . A. Campbell (Greek Lyric Poetry; New York, 1967 ; 440) points out that strophic form is ill-adapted to the question-answer format of the song.

THE AESTHETIC STRUCTURE OF THE PERSIANS

69

gained by having the conventional messenger displaced by Aigeus, who is quite ignorant of the significance of his news. In this early and persisting relation, chorus and actor (allowing for the contrast between "poetic" and "prosaic" expression in lyric and trimeter) are quite similar in stance. Except in certain Aeschylean plays where the chorus is protagonist, tragic choruses generally continue to exhibit this outsider status, as they speculate on the great figures of myth, which they like Klytaimestra's watchman view from afar, E{Jo7tPE7tOV't"~C; ~t6EpL. But, where the actor himself is another such outsider, and functions as a messenger rather than as a director of events, the situation is simplified: actor and chorus are then both placed somewhere between the heroic world and the world of the theater. This kind of mimesis, which stops at a point intermediate between the full impersonation of a mythical protagonist and a flat narration of myth, is a plausible beginning for drama, or for proto-drama. There is of course a profound and well-marked division between drama and any other poetic performance in lyric or trimeter; but the full requirements of impersonation impinged only gradually on tragedy, as actor and chorus moved slowly towards active and independent dramatic personalities. The Persians, a play in which this earlier function of the actor as newsbringer is still relevant, preserves for us something of the flavor of a theater for which characters and stage action are peripheral, while vision and understanding are at the core of the dramatic experience. It is a theater of contemplation in which the mind continually supplements the evidence of the senses. While tragedy was to become a smoother and more unified dramatic performance in the hands of Aeschylus ' successors, the Aeschylean plays and particularly the Persians, reveal some of the charms and power of theater in a day when organic unity was not a major aim of the poets. The dominant intellectual and aesthetic style of the archaic period, that of parataxis, creates its structures out of elements that retain definition rather than being merged into the whole." The neat compartmentalization traced above in 9 On this topic, d. FRANK EL , HOLTSMARK. VAN GRONINGEN, and also by the last, "Paratactische compositie in de oudste griekscbe literatuur," in Mededeelingen d. K. Akad . v , Wetensch. (Amsterdam). afd. Letterkunde, 33.A.3, 1937; and W . van Otterlo, " Griechische Ringskomposition," in Mededeelingen, N.R. 7.3. 1948 ; as well as Beschousuingen over het archaische

7°

PARATACTIC STYLE IN DRAMA

the form and function of lyric and anapaestic sub-lyric, or between trimeter and tetrameter in the Persians, is an excellent instance of the prismatic effect of paratactic style. Both the minor members, tetrameters and anapaests, are used primarily for communication or dialogue, and for stage business, allowing dramatic interaction to intervene in a rather external way on the striking juxtaposition of actor and chorus that may have been original to Attic tragedy. Through its balanced and parallel categories this arrangement of meters replicates rather than obscures tragedy's inherent dualism, which thus remains the basis of dramatic structure, rather than any impediment to the artist's aims. The relative independence of the units in this early style has the secondary effect of making prominent and even isolating the material linking unit to unit, so that joinings, as in the typical case of the "ring-form" or recapitulatory ending, tend to be mechanical rather than organic, abrupt and clearly marked rather than fluid and indiscernible.!? One result is that the structure of the paratactically composed work is overt, readily accessible to the conscious awareness of its audience. The references noted by Zielinski to an unused alternative version of the mythical plotline, and which were found above to mark the involvement of the second actor in dialogue are only another aspect of this openness about form: 11 in these special cases we are able to make out, not only the structure of the play, but the genesis of that structure and the principles that hold it together. In this archaic art, which does not yet care to conceal itself, structure is part of a complex system of communication between artist and audience. Suspense, the tension before the resolution of the dramatic event, cannot be a major goal of paratactic style, both because of the openness of the play and because the parts are not likely to be subordinated to any single climax. Like Oidipous Tyrannos , the Persians centers on a peripety or change of fortune . But, element in den stijl van Aeschylus (Utrecht, 1937). And, more recently, Harry and Agathe Thornton, Time and Style (London, 1962); D. Lohman, Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias (Berlin, 1970) ; R. A . Prier, Archaic Logic; Symbol and Structure in Heraclitus , Parmenides, and Empedocles (The Hague, 1976) 1-26 . 10 Cf. KORZENIEWSKI, II.46; he compares the flowing style of Sophocles with Aeschylus, remarking on "die blockhafte Fugung der Bauelemente, das Aneinanderstossen ihrer Kanten,' as a trait of archaic style . 11 Cf. 1.2, above.

THE AESTHETIC STRUCTURE OF THE PERSIANS

71

while Oidipous' state changes from best to worst before our eyes, the reversal in the Persians is continuously immanent in the play ; and there is no single shock in which confidence changes to despair, though a series of such realizations ripples through the play. The Sophoclean chorus, which seldom assumes the prophetic mood that reverberates in Aeschylean lyric , often approaches a moment of doom in a fever of joy or hope .P because-like the actors-the choral group are victims of the dramatic irony that has been created by the gap in time and knowledge between audience and performers. The audience in these moments is necessarily alienated from the performers by a foreboding that the chorus does not share and that robs their happy lyric of significance; and the tension before this irony is resolved becomes almost unbearable. In Aeschylean theater, where the performers are not so wholly immersed in the dramatic illusion, but are in closer contact with the mood of the audience, the people watching the play may be less enthralled and tense; and they may be absorbed by the meaning of the dramatic event, as much as by its realization in stage time. An audience in this mood will have the patience to listen to parallel stories-like those about 10 or Helen in the Suppliants and Agamemnon-that bear only a loose relation to the on-stage circumstances, since all the separate parts of the plays, though they appear in sequence, have independent value and help to illuminate the event around which the drama centers. From one viewpoint, Aeschylean theater is primitive; its mimesis of human actions is less complex and enthralling than that of the Sophoclean play. But, from the viewpoint of the earlier style , a tight, suspenseful, organic dramatic structure deforms every part in adapting it to serve the whole, and reduces the audience to passive and somewhat alienated spectators.P It is only in Aeschylean theater that each element in tragedy's synthesis of two genres attains full significance and effectiveness. 12 Aias 694ff. , O.T. 1086, Ant. I115 (and d .-in a more muted mood and at earlier points in the play-Tr. 205, 633, cited in Schmid-Stahlin 2.2, 337 n . 4). All three refer to cults of Pan or Dionysos that feature ecstatic experience in the wilds ; in each case the chorus hopes by pressing forward in action to forestall bad and produce good results. Each immediately precedes a tragic discovery. 13 Cf. J. Jones on Sophocles' treatment of the Orestes myth, in On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962), 159.

72

PARATACTIC STYLE IN DRAMA

The Persians is of all Aeschylean plays the weakest in dramatic illusion and the most static in form .v' Because of the foreboding and fears of the chorus, powerfully expressed in the parodos, and those of the Queen, with her emblematic dream, the news of the disaster seems the natural complement of these opening scenes, in which the origin and meaning of the defeat are already evident. The personalities of the major figures are typical rather than idiosyncratic; 15 and the plot, which represents the Persian disaster through a series of revelations or of messages, tends to reduce the significance of personal encounters : the important meeting between Xerxes and his fondly solicitous mother, though promised, never occurs. The three-part series of messages-in dream, eyewitness, and prophecy-provides a structure that exemplifies the best resources of paratactic style. The defeat is replicated in the speeches of the Queen, Messenger, and Ghost, each time from a different viewpoint and with differing insight. The messages increase in breadth and depth : the final vision, that of the Ghost, ranges over great stretches of the past and future , placing the defeat in ample moral and historical perspective.l" Yet all three episodes are in a limited and formal sense equivalent. I have already pointed out the similarity of this serial scheme to the episodic plots of actor-chorus drama.!? W. Schadewaldt has recently discussed the resemblance between the Persians and the first part of the AgamemnonP: The comparison between the two is of great help in illuminating the plot skeleton of the Persians. Both plays seem to be derived from a common model. The Agamemnon cannot be treated as a direct off-shoot of the Persians, since in at least one important respect the later play 14 Cf. E . Spring, "Exposition in Greek Tragedy," HSCP 28 (1917) 189 : " . ..a more static drama is almost unimaginable." ROUSSEL remarks (93), "Dans une piece ou il ne se passe rien, les personnages ri'ont pas grand chose a dire" (remarking on the chorus' feeble interpretation of the dream) . Cf. BROADHEAD, xxxiii-xxxv. 16 Cf. the discussion below (11.4) on dramatic personality and its workings. 16 On the broad vistas of the Pe ., d . HUGHES FOWLER, 1. On the tripartite structure, d . SCHADEWALDT, Urs., II7. 17 Above, 1.2. 18 SCHADEWALDT, Urs., 137ff., d . the earlier notice of this by NESTLE, Gno ., 406: " ...das erste Drittel des Agamemnon ist ja-sicher bewusst-in seinen kiinstlerischen Mitteln einfacher gehalten im Gegensatz zu der ungeh euren Pathetik des letzten und zeigt daher wie auch in seiner Anlage Ahnlichkeit mit den P ersern ."

THE AESTHETIC STRUCTURE OF THE PERSIANS

73

has retained a simpler plot form that had been subjected to a rather sophisticated alteration in the Persians. Both dramas feature the same contrast between homebodies-a queen and a chorus of elderly counsellors-and returning soldiers-a messenger and a monarch; but in the Agamemnon the third person to enter is the king himself . The sequence there is a quite straightforward progression from the Queen's uncertain information, through sure news from an eyewitness, to reality-the actual appearance of the king .l" The Persians uses a variant that is clearly its own: Xerxes' entrance, though expected, does not occur; and an apparition of the dead Dareios is inserted before the appearance of the real king. That the Dareios episode intervenes on an established sequence of Queen, Messenger, King is indicated not only by the parallel of the Agamemnon, but also by the form of the Persians itself. Just at the point at which Dareios is to be introduced.s? following the tremendous news of the Messenger, the Queen makes her first exit, suggesting that Xerxes may enter before she can return (XiXt 1tiXLa' Mv m:p aeup' E!J.OU 1tp6cr(}ev !J.6A7]... 529). The audience is teased with the suggestion that Xerxes' arrival is imminent; but, when the Queen reenters instead, she proceeds to prepare for the arrival of the other king, the Ghost of Dareios. The false expectation that Xerxes will enter, when he does not, marks the point at which the play's structure diverges to admit the Ghost's appearance. The close correlation of the Queen's second exit with her first-she eventually does leave just before the appearance of Xerxes-sets off the opening and close of the Dareios scene with

Zielinskian reminiscences of the rejected original that has been improved and amplified by this addition. The altered version is a paratactic amplification of the simpler form: Xerxes' arrival is postponed, not eliminated; and Dareios 19 The Ag., of course, has also altered this structure to serve its own needs : Klytaimestra anticipates the herald's news, imagining the sack of the city in some detail, so that the latter is free to devote himself to the more ominous news of the storm . A Zielinskian reference underlines the change from a plan in which the queen's news-as in Pe .-would be vague and inconclusive (274-277) : the chorus asks whether Klyt. is influenced by dreams or rumors, and she indignantly rejects such alternatives . Her own source of information -produced by active planning and much more reliable-suits her vigorous personality, and justifies her usurpation of the "eyewitness" role. 20 For a full er discussion of the mechanics of this insertion of Dareios, Sfe 11.4, below .

74

PARATACTlC STYLE IN DRAMA

is in fact the closest imaginable equivalent to Xerxes, or rather he is Xerxes bettered. For the defeated and deluded son is exchanged the wise and fortunate father; and indeed the linking and contrast of father and son begins at the first mention of Dareios, who appears rather abruptly in the Queen's dream, in time to pity the fall and complete the humiliation of Xerxes. The same trick of enlargement by replication that duplicated trimeter and lyric with anapaestic and tetrameter variants is used in the introduction of Dareios. Given the intact and separable units of the paratactic whole, another unit of balanced and matching form is easily inserted in the original sequence . One might say that the new unit is generated by the old, as a variation on it, theme and variation standing openly side by side. The Persians gives us two kings, instead of one. In this case, one result of the added episode is that the effect of parataxis or parallelism is increased, since the first three entrances have now become more nearly equivalent as messages. Xerxes, on the other hand, reduced almost to the status of epilogue, utters no speeches and appears only to lead off the ending kommos. 21 The Dareios episode is the play's crowning event, overshadowing and displacing the ending scene with Xerxes ; yet the scene with the Ghost is marked as an alien element in the play's inherited, and still valid, structure. The following chapters examine the themes of the Persians, the sequence of great narrative rheseis and their relation to the tetrameter segments, and finally the play's dramatic structure. In each case, the Dareios episode climaxes and yet transcends the rest of the play. As an instance, dominating motifs and themes, once established in the parodos or the first scene, are consistently elaborated and recapitulated in the rest of the play. Only in the Dareios scene are these themes changed or developed into new images (e.g. of the earth and fertility), while the final kommos reaches back to the original set of themes (catalogues of losses, the destructive power of the sea, the king vs. his army) that are derived from the parodos.P This discontinuity shows both the isolation of the Dareios episode in the play and the extent to which the separate units of the paratactic chain function effectively while remaining separate, contributing to a common whole into which they are never completely assimilated. 21 22

Cf. SNELL, 68 ; and II.2, below, n . 14, 48. Discussed in II .2, below.

THE AESTHETIC STRUCTURE OF THE PERSIANS

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In spite of the early date of the Persians, the five year gap separating it from the Seven Against Thebes is probably not sufficient to explain its structural primitivism, since the same trait is displayed throughout the play, in its use of tetrameter, in its retention of the messenger format, and in its use of a plot whose tendency to prefer paratactic balance to dramatic movement has actually been enhanced by the addition of the Dareios scene. If the play had formed part of a trilogy on a mythological theme, it might, even in 472, have required a dramatic structure more similar to that of the other extant plays, with their confrontations between a dominating protagonist and a passionate chorus. Since the Persians places greater emphasis on the fate of an empire than on the personal sorrows of Xerxes or the anxieties of his mother, the world that these performers construct out of their assumed identities and the situation that they are presumed to share is less important to the play than is the event itself, which the performers are to interpret for the audience. The relation between audience and event is paramount, of course, in a play dealing with the defeat of Persia, in which the Greeks had participated, but which they had seen only from the outside.P It was this relation in the historical play that found a congenial expression in the older stance of the tragic performance, midway between the present reality of the audience and the heroic vista of myth. The historical concerns that were to be developed more than a generation later in the work of Herodotos, Hellanikos, and Thucydides were largely anticipated by and were doubtless profoundly influenced by the Persians and other poetic and dramatic versions of historical events.P The aim of the historical play is understanding or insight, shared between performers and audience, as the tragic event is fully realized in all its aspects. In the Persians, the use of dual lineverse meters further serves to enhance objectivity and coldness in the narrative, emphasizing the actor-messenger's function as a transparent window upon the truth. 23 This special interest of the audience remains, though the play has few traces of pro-Greek bias and concentrates quite solidly on Persian-centered themes, ct. BROADHEAD, xvi-xxiv. The relation between Dareios and Xerxes, for instance, is designed from the Persian viewpoint, since it was to them, and not to the Greeks, that the old king would normally appear as benevolent and restrained in contrast to Xerxes . 24 For an instance of this influence in Herodotos, ct. the theme of 7tA1jeO~, which reappears in Hdt. 7.49 ; ct. II.2 , below. On the historical concerns of the play, ct. DEICHGRABER, 52-55 .

2.

MAJOR THEMES IN LINEVERSE AND LYRIC

The Persians is a play of messages, and the resolution of such a play, naturally enough, is a kind of knowledge. As the play unfolds, trimeter speeches centered in three major episodes which present the messages of the Queen, the Messenger, and the ghost of Dareios gradually incorporate and assimilate lyric themes. Themes that appear in the parodos in the confused and concentrated form of lyric are explicated in the more discursive medium of lineverse, so that the lyric is like a riddle, through whose deciphering potential knowledge becomes actual. Only in the last trimeter speech of the Ghost, a figure of oracular vision, does the lineverse outreach the initial formulation of major themes that is presented in the parodos. The tetrameter, because of its intermediate position , plays an important role in the transition from lyric. Tetrameter long remains the medium of interpretation for the great moral themes of the play, which are present in the narrative reportage of the earlier trimeter rheseis only through certain key metaphors.' The Persians falls short of the lyric stature of the other Aeschylean plays, particularly in the later lyrics, which move consistently within a narrow range of themes and moods, most of which can be derived directly from the parodos. These later lyrics for the most part anticipate or react to stage events. The growing dependen cy of lyric on lineverse scenes can be paralleled to some extent in other Aeschylean plays, in which the stronger and more independent lyrics tend to cluster around the earlier scenes; but a comparison with the Seven Against Thebes suggests that the very marked spareness of the Persians may be a special feature of the non-mythical play.s The Seven is curiously like a historical play for its first 654 lines: until Eteokles determines to meet Polyneikes at the seventh gate, the history of the Labdakids is very little in evidence, and Eteokles seems to be much like any conscientious ruler of a threatened state. In this first part of the Seven, the parodos and first stasimon, 1 The themes of the Persians have been listed quite comprehensively in the recent book of PETROUNIAS . For comments, d . the notes of this chapter passim, and especially n. 17, below. 2 For the diminishing lyric impulse, d. Ag., where the last long ode ends at 808, and Stcp-pl., wh ere lyrics after line 599 are directed toward stage events .

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usually the richest lyrics in Aeschylean plays, resemble the stasima in the Persians, in that they are thematically weak and are directed toward stage events (terror at noises outside the walls, prayers and supplications to the gods)." The second stasimon in the Seven, which in its wide mythical range and its reflective depth resembles the great odes of the Oresteia or the Suppliants , follows immediately on references in the previous scene to Eteokles' fatal family history. This reversal of the usual pattern indicates that-in the absence of the mythical background-lyric is less capable of generating independent themes and thus tends to become the handmaid of stage events. The parodos in the Persians probably owes its depth and power to the simple fact that it comes first in the play, without even a prologue as introduction. The parodos thus introduces all the major themes to be explicated later, anticipating the action, e.g. in its use of mourning themes-before there is anything to mourn forand of the catalogue form-before there can be any listing of the dead.! The entering anapaests listing the Persian and allied forces that went out with Xerxes are lengthy in comparison to the rest of the parodos and function almost as a self-contained poem." The thematic significance of the catalogue, a major motif in this play, is evident: since the task of the historical play is to assimilate to the form of saga events in the more recent past, motifs derived from epic are a useful source of atmosphere. Further, since the new stories are told about barbarians and not Greeks, parts of the epic language and ethos that have become obsolete and strange can be an effective source of dramatic irony. When we hear such a rare verb as O"'t'eU't'IXL for the boast of the Mysian host, we may remember that the conventional arrogance of the epic hero is less appropriate to fifth century warriors (49-52).6 The barbarians 3 The parodos of the Seven is a mere reflection of off-stage events and noises (151, 160). while the stasimon anticipates the events in a hypothetical sack of Thebes and is thus somewhat more independent of stage (or off-stage) action . Neither reaches the level of a commentary on the dramatic situation. For this lyric type. cf. ]urgen ROde, ]ENS, 102. 4 Mourning : II7ff., 134££. For other instances of the catalogue of dead, d. 302££. and the exodos. On the parodos, d . ] . ROde (JENS. 95). "Uberhaupt enthalt die Parodos in nuce die ganze Tragodie ." s The Ag . anapaests, the only ones in Aeschylus to exceed the length of those in the Pe ., are balanced by a lyric nearly twice as long as that in the Pe . 6 On the catalogue as an epic motif, d . 1.1; (J-re:U-rO(L. an archaic verb form which does not seem to appear in early non-epic poetry, except here, has no forms extant beside the 3rd s. and pI.

MAJOR THEMES IN LINEVERSE AND LYRIC

are claiming to have "thrown the yoke of slavery around Hellas." This important thematic idea returns very soon, in the lyric proper, where it becomes the symbol of Persian invincibility and its downfall. The parodos proper begins with ionic verses that refer first to the cros sing of the H ellespont by Xerxes, "throwing a yoke on the neck of the sea" (71). The ionics ascend swiftly to very intense and concentrated imagery. X erx es, driving the royal chariot at the head of his army, is a kind of sacred monster, "darting from his eyes the sable glare of the serpent." The army itself is likened to an invincible natural forc e, which it would be folly to oppose: 1)6XLfLoc; I)' ou'nc; {l7tocr't"~c; fLEy&.Acp PEUfLlXTL rpcu't"wv EXUPO~C; epxEcrLv EtpYELV &fLIXXOV XUfLlX fhA&.crcrlXc;· (87-90) In the manuscripts, there follows immediately a mesode, or non-responding vers e, alluding ominously to the "tricky dec eption of the god-l)oAOfL1JTLV I)' cX7t&.'t"IXV 6EOU," which no mortal can elude. What is said in the meso de is obscured in detail by a ruined t ext, but its meaning, one of the major them es in Greek moral reflection, is familiar enough to have remained evident: deception lures the hapless mortal into a treacherous situation ("the nets of &T1J" ), from which there can be no escape ." This crucial vers e has often been transposed to the end of the ionics, wh ere it marks a change of meter and makes a rather con ventional coda to what preced ed. " In its original position the mesode is more arresting and significant; it brings the poetic thread to a break, after a stanza that contains 7 After the first lin es-"What mortal man ca n escap e the devious deceit of god ?/W ho (can make) a swift leap with nimble foot ?" -the t ext of the mesode is a tissue of conjec t ure . Som ething grins in fri endly fashion and lures mortals into. . .something : qnMcppwv yap -mx(v . .. ~po't'ov de; . ..

't'66ev OUK

~O''t' LV

cXM~CI(V't"CI(

cpuyerv

The conj ecture of "ATI) and her "nets," however is persuasive. Cf. Fr. 301M, and A g. 361, P rom. 1078. BROADHEAD'S fur t he r su ggestions for the rewriting of the t ext are too in geni ous to inspire confide nce (58-61). 8 Metrical indications for the placem ent of the mesod e a re a bsent , sin ce it is unique in Aesch ylu s ' cho r uses . Wil arn owitz (Griechische Verskun st ; Berlin , 1921; 337 ) sees the meter as a 7tVryoC; t o end the seri es of ionics ; ot he rs have at tempt ed t o arrange t he mutilated t ext into t wo res po nding portions, e.g. SIDGW1CK. GROENEBOO;\! retains t he origina l pl acem ent.

THE AESTHETIC STRUCT URE OF THE PERSI ANS

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in condensed form some very important th ematic elements." The Persian arm y has just been called as invincible as the sea. The effect is a familiar one in Aeschylean verse : the truism about !X't7), inject ed at t he right moment, creates irony by letting t he chorus speak more than th ey realize." The bridge of Xerxes links two continent s by an attempt to master water wit h the "yoke on th e neck of the sea." If a bridge can be a yoke, then the Persians are themselves attempting t he ady naton that they have used as an archetype of folly.'! The contrast betw een land battles and sea travel in the next strophe-pair continues the same uneasy theme, a theme whose contrasts wind their way through t he play, to find a resolution in the final scene. The parodos stands almost alone in the first half of the play. Th e next lyric ode does not appear until aft er the long scene with the Messenger, and it does not bring new th emes. The cry of mourning anticipated in th e parodos (II7ff.) is raised in earnest, with some minor additions : reproaches for Xerxes, nost algia for Dareio s, and forebodin gs of rebellion. The second stasimon, which follows almost immediately on t he first , is perhaps of all lyrics in Aeschylus the most closely attached to stage events . The chorus summon th e shade of Dareios to the scene-a t ask the Queen has given them- ; th ey mention details of the ghostly app earance, t he tomb, the position of Dareios as he will emerge from it , and his clothing (659-663). The cont emplative detachment of the parodos is entirely absent; the chorus imagine only wha t the audience is to see a few moments later. T he third stasimon , t ho ug h not a close reflection of stage ev ent s , 9 Cf. KORZENIEWSKI 1.572-576 . H is argu me nts offer good su pport for the origina l pl acem ent (alt hough he ac tua lly proposes inser ti ng the lin es bet ween strophe a nd antis t rophe at 105) : "Der Gedankengang der Chorli ed es steigt bis zur got t lichc n H ohe. . . und fallt bis zur gross te n An gst de r persische n F ra ue n in ihre Verlassenheit . Die Mesode muss ihrer F unkt ion nach und au f Gru nd ihres I nhalts im W en depunkt steh en. " 10 BROADHEAD repels on ps yc hological grounds SIDGWICK 'S defens e of t he original p osition of t he mesode : " it is a qu estion able suppos ition that the Chorus fea r that sea-warfa re may be their ruin as cont rast ed wit h land warfa re." (54) . But t he application of such psychologizing t o t he choru s is ou t of pl ace in lyric, where cho ruses ofte n seem t o kn ow more, and perceive mo re dee ply, than t hey do in line verse sect ions . Cf. Ch . 11.1, a bove . For a simila r iro ny, centeri ng on Zeu s' relati on t o 10, d . Suppl . 86ff. 11 On this crucial act of X erxes, d . K ORZENIEWSKI, 1.566 , 572 ; H UGHES FOWLER, 3-10 ; P ETROUNIAS, 7-9, especially his d iscussi on of the p hr ase !X{L'Po"reptXC; OCALOV 1tp WVtX XOLVOV tXrtXC; (13 I-132).

80

MAJOR THEMES IN LINE VERSE AND LYRIC

complements the last scene by listing the sea possessions of Dareios. The catalogue, which had previously appeared in the anapaests and in several trimeter speeches, is an epic device and ordinarily quite alien to lyric; but, in spite of its odd form , the last ode does not depart from the mood of the other stasima." Once again nostalgia for the past under Dareios is combined with fear for the future under Xerxes.P By the time Xerxes himself enters, the thematic vigor of the lyric seems largely spent.P What is left to the final scene is the resumption of older themes; the catalogue of the slain and the corpses washing against the shore appear once again (976-977). The visible proof of Xerxes' torn clothing, already mentioned in each previous scene, is augmented by his empty quiver, a symbol of worthless sovereignty." The last lines are merely the verbal correlatives of the vigorously mimetic exit procession, and there is virtually nothing in them to provoke the imagination. The complementary expansion and contraction of the two tragic modes can be traced in the development of the major themes in the play. Two of the most important appear in capsule form in the verse before the mesode of the parodos. These themes are related each to the other, as well as being sufficiently broad to comprehend a number of subordinate lines of imagery. They are not equivalent, however. One, based on vivid metaphors, belongs primarily to lyric, where the symbolic value of language is greater than the discursive; this is the theme of the yoke, a figure for Persian power and Xerxes' use of it. 16 The second motif, which Cf. I. I, above, and further discussion in 11.3, below . Th ese themes derive directly from the first stasimon, d . 555ff. and 584ff . 14 Cf. 11.1, above; and PETROUNIAS, 2. 15 The effect of the quiver depends on a play on words between cr-ro"A~, usually associated with clothing, and cr-ro"Aoc;, which means expeditionary gear, or the army itself. The "arrow-receiver" is a " t reasury for the arrows," which are absent ; d . 6l]crocupoc; as a box or chest, perhaps in Hdt. 7.190, 9.106, clearly in IG 9 (2) 590 . What is left of Xerxes' gear and of his army is merely an ironic reminder of what has been lost . Cf. U. Holzle, Zum A ufbau der lyrischen Partien des A ischylos; Untersuchungen iiber die Bedeutung religiosen Gedanken- und Formengutes fur die Gliederung der Lieder (Diss . Freiburg, 1935) 20, n . 35 ; H . jurenka, "Szenisches zu Aischylos' Persern;' WS 23 (1901) 21g; ALBINI, 260-261. 16 This very striking theme has of course been widely recognized. d . KORZENIEWSKI, HUGHES FOWLER, and d . bibliography in PETROUNIAS, xvii-xx, and his own account of the yoke, 7-15 . 12 13

THE AES THE TIC STRUCTU RE OF THE PERSI AN S

81

does not express itself in a colorful image, attaches directly to widely -accepte d historical int erpretations of the Persian defeat, to the meaning of the disaster for the Persian people, and to broader moral and social concept s t hat are tradition al to Greek thought ; th is is the identificatio n of Persian power wit h "abundance" or " multitude- 7tA'ljOoc;" and connected ideas about excess." Th e motif of th e yoke depends on a metaphor out of technical milit ary language. The collat eral meanin gs of the word for "yoke~uy6v " are joined by the notion of a piece which connects two oth erwise separate members, the beam of a balance-scale, or th e thwart of a ship on which passengers sit , or even th e cross-strap of a sandal. A special usage, referring to the forcible union of separate things, is particularly important to Xerxes' sit uation : a short -term milit ary pontoon bridge , made usu ally as Xerxes made his by the lashing together of boats, is called by a word that is closely related to the " yoke," ~EUY[L(X. There is nothing poetic about thi s nam e ; it never app ears in the Persians, although Thuc ydides and Polybios use it for such struct ures .I S The idea of "yoking" belongs to pontoon st ruct ures because they temporarily combine normally separa te elements; but it leads , once appli ed, to another natural metaphor: th e two land areas, or the water passing between them, are "yoked" or forcibly united by th e bridge. Herodotos frequently refers to rivers as being "yoked-E~uY[LEv OC;" by bridges of this milit ary typ e.P The connections between yoking and Xerxes' 17 Cf. PETROUNIAS. 22-23 on "Fulle" and 2-7 on "Der ve rnichtete Schwarm ." P . carefully separa tes " Leit mo tive n " wit h t he ir necessary " Bilder " from mere " Mot ive " or " T he men" (d. x) ; but he frequently misses the connect ions among it ems which have been treated separately . Cf. 28. wh ere he arg ues t hat t he land -vs .-sea mo t if remains undeveloped. B ut this is not t he case, as becom es apparent once one in spe cts the ra mi fication s of a broad a nd flexible them e, such as that of 7!A'ij6oc; . P . is perceptive in what he has to sa y about t he images of t he Pe rsia n ar my as bees a nd (la ter) tuna ; but by conce ntrati ng on concre te images (the bees rem ain complet ely undevelope d, afte r a sing le appearance in lyric). he fails t o do ju stice t o a subt le concatenation of ideas that rests only in part on concre te images . 18 Thuc. 7.59 ; Polybios 3-46.2-4. d . a passage in the Suda that appears t o be a fragm ent of one of the lost books of Cassius Dio (Suda = Ad ler 2.502 = Dio 71.2) . Dio stat es t hat t he R om an s were throu gh long practice expert at br idge-bu ilding of this sort: flat boats, an chored wit h a load of st ones , a re floa ted down the cur rent t o the bridging point. ~ (J'I" lill €7!t -rljll &1I'l'L7!eprxll 0)(67)11 €AOC (J(i)(J\ '1'0 ~e:UyfJ.rx . 19 H dt. does not use the t erm ~e:uyfJ.rx. but his use of ~e:l)YIIUllrx\ probably sho ws acq uaintance wit h t he idiom . d . 1.205, 4.85. 7.114. a nd 7.8- all references t o pontoon bridges. Note that ~e:uyfJ.rx does not derive from

82

MAJ OR THEMES IN LINEVERSE AND LYRIC

bridge are thus clear and suggestive. When Aeschylus calls the bridge a ~uy6v, he draws upon ideas firmly rooted in ordinary language. This rich and powerful complex of ideas playing about "yoking" is a major motif of the play. The technical and referential language to which ~Ei)YfliX belongs, while alien to poetic language, is the unseen but strongly sensed complement of poetic meanings. Words collateral in meaning and derived from the same root appear again and again. In these word-plays, there is almost a prophetic quality : the poet's insights open up the inner, traditional meaning of a flat, referential term, transmuting it through genuine e-rUflOAOY(iX.20 The yoke over water reappears in the Queen's dream as a conventional yoke, part of a chariot that links two draft animals, with a straightforward allegorical significance. The connection with the parodos is implicit, but unstated. Xerxes yokes the two women, who though sisters live in a state of conflict (stasis), to his chariot. The chariot, known to the Greeks as a symbol of Persian royalty, has already appeared in the parodos." Here it becomes the means of uniting, through its yoke, two inimical peoples, miming the significant act of Xerxes that the play celebrates, the king's attempt to link his hegemony over the East Hdt.'s usage (since it is really the boats that are yoked together to make the ~e:uYfl-CJ() ; the opposite seems to be the case, since ~e:uY"ovCJ(t is not used of ordinary bridges, or even of pontoon bridges very often in prose (although, d . Xen. Anab. 1.2.5). (The word-play may not originate in Aeschylus either, if Bakis' oracle is authentic, d . Hdt. 8.20) In the orators it is a cliche to recall Xerxes' invasion in these Aeschylean-Herodotean terms: &a'T:e: 'T:ij'l a'T:pCJ('T:ort'€8cp rt'AEuaCJ(t fl-tV 8tIX TIj