Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/123

 ^SCHYLUS. 105 The earliest extant play of ^schylus seems to have been the Persce. It is expressly stated that the tetralogy, to which it be- longed, and which consisted of the PMaeus, the Persce, the Glaucus Potnieus, and Prometheus Pyrcceus, was performed in the archonship of Menon, B.C. 472 The direct reference to the great events, which had taken place some seven years earlier, places the Persce in the same category with the ^likr]rov "AXcocrt? of Phrynichus ; but while the latter commemorated a grievous disaster, ^Eschylus celebrated glorious victories, and he was enabled, as we may infer from the names of the other plays in the Trilogy, to connect these topics of contemporary interest with a wide field of mythology and vaticination. The Phineus, who gave his name to the introductory drama, was the blind soothsayer, who predicted to the Argonauts the adventures which would befal them in that first attack upon Asia by the Greeks, and it would be easy for the poet to interweave with this a series of prophecies referring to the glorious overthrow of the counter-expedition of Xerxes. The scene of the extant play, which forms the center-piece of the Trilogy, is laid at Susa, where the Queen-dowager Atossa, prepared for coming disaster by an ominous dream, receives from a Persian messenger the details of the battle of Salamis, and of the retreat of the defeated army aCiOss the Strymon. After this the shade of Darius appears, and predicts the battle of Plata?a. The piece concludes with the appear- ance of Xerxes himself in a most unkingly plight, and he and the chorus pour forth a K6fjLfio<^ or dirge, deploring the sad consequences of his attempt to subjugate Greece. The third play was called Glaucus, and the didascalia states that it was the Glaucus Potnieus, There was also another play of ^schylus called the Glaucus Pon- tius, and some scholars have contended that this was the third Tragedy in the Trilogy under consideration^. We cannot recognize the necessity for such an alteration of the document as it has come do^-n to us: for there is no more difficulty in connecting the Glaucus Potnieus with the Persce, than there is in establishing a cor- respondence of plot between the latter and the Glaucus Pontius. It is sufficient to remark that the apparition of Darius was evoked for the purpose, as it seems, of predicting the battle of Platsea ^ Argument. Pers. : iirl Mevwvos Tpayudwv AiVxi^Xos ivcKa ^lu€7, Hepaais, TXavKO) UoTViei, UpO/X7]6€?. ^ Welcker, Tril. pp. 311 sqq. 471; Nachtrarj, p, 176; Mliller, Hist. Gr. Lit. i. P- 425.