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    The Suppliant Maidens: With linked Table of Contents
    The Suppliant Maidens: With linked Table of Contents
    The Suppliant Maidens: With linked Table of Contents
    Ebook66 pages2 hours

    The Suppliant Maidens: With linked Table of Contents

    By Aeschylus

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    Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived into modern times. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateAug 7, 2015
    ISBN9781515400837
    The Suppliant Maidens: With linked Table of Contents

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    Reviews for The Suppliant Maidens

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    • 5/5
      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?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      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 PersiansSeven Against ThebesThe SuppliantsPrometheus BoundEach 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.
    • 3/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      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

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Suppliant Maidens - Aeschylus

    The Suppliant Maidens

    by Æschylus

    Translated into English Verse by

    E. D. A. Morshead, M.A.

    late fellow of new college oxford, assistant master of winchester college

    ©2015 SMK Books

    All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

    SMK Books

    PO Box 632

    Floyd, VA 24091-0632

    ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-0083-7

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Argument

    Dramatis Personae

    The Suppliant Maidens

    Introduction

    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. But his earliest extant play was, probably, not The Persians but The Suppliant Maidens—a mythical drama, the fame of which has been largely eclipsed by the historic interest of The Persians, and is undoubtedly the least known and least regarded of the seven. Its topic—the flight of the daughters of Danaus from Egypt to Argos, in order to escape from a forced bridal with their first-cousins, the sons of Aegyptus—is legendary, and the lyric element predominates in the play as a whole. We must keep ourselves reminded that the ancient Athenian custom of presenting dramas in Trilogies- —that is, in three consecutive plays dealing with different stages of one legend—was probably not uniform: it survives, for us, in one instance only, viz. the Orestean Trilogy, comprising the Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers, and the Eumenides, or Furies. This Trilogy is the masterpiece of the Aeschylean Drama: the four remaining plays of the poet, which are translated in this volume, are all fragments of lost Trilogies—that is to say, the plays are complete as poems, but in regard to the poet’s larger design they are fragments; they once had predecessors, or sequels, of which only a few words, or lines, or short paragraphs, survive. It is not certain, but seems probable, that the earliest of these single completed plays is The Suppliant Maidens, and on that supposition it has been placed first in the present volume. The maidens, accompanied by their father Danaes, have fled from Egypt and arrived at Argos, to take sanctuary there and to avoid capture by their pursuing kinsmen and suitors. In the course of the play, the pursuers’ ship arrives to reclaim the maidens for a forced wedlock in Egypt. The action of the drama turns on the attitude of the king and people of Argos, in view of this intended abduction. The king puts the question to the popular vote, and the demand of the suitors is unanimously rejected: the play closes with thanks and gratitude on the part of the fugitives, who, in lyrical strains of quiet beauty, seem to refer the whole question of their marriage to the subsequent decision of the gods, and, in particular, of Aphrodite.

    Of the second portion of the Trilogy we can only speak conjecturally. There is a passage in the Prometheus Bound (ll. 860-69), in which we learn that the maidens were somehow reclaimed by the suitors, and that all, except one, slew their bridegrooms on the wedding night. There is a faint trace, among the Fragments of Aeschylus, of a play called Thalamopoioi,—i.e. The Preparers of the Chamber,—which may well have referred to

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