Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/263



drama, founded upon the Persian War, and produced only seven years after its termination (B.C. 472), is invested with peculiar interest, not only as the earliest Æschylean drama which has come down to us, but also as our earliest extant Greek history, the first recorded recitation of Herodotus having taken place at the great Panathenæa at Athens (B.C. 446). It exhibits, moreover, the same principles of dramatic art, and the same conceptions respecting the divine government which characterise the purely imaginative productions of the "warrior-bard." For its full appreciation we must endeavour to realise the magnitude of the struggle which it commemorates, together with the momentous consequences to Hellas and to the world which resulted from the Hellenic victory.

About eighty years before the battle of Salamis (fought B.C. 480) the Persians had made their first appearance in history, when, under their leader, Cyrus, they overthrew the empire of the Medes (B.C. 559). Within this comparatively brief interval they had brought under subjection not only the native peoples of Asia, but also large areas of Europe and