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The Imagery of the Persians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Michael Anderson
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Extract

‘If, almost a hundred years ago,’ writes the critic Martin Esslin, Walter Pater could sum up the then prevailing trend in his famous epigram, “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”, the dominant tendency of our own age might be described as an aspiration of all the arts to attain the condition of images' Certainly it is true that the study of imagery has been a fashionable method of literary criticism for some time and, employed with the proper blend of caution and imagination, has proved itself of service in the interpretation of a number of poets, most notably perhaps Shakespeare. It has long been recognized that Aeschylus is a poet who often works through ‘key’ or ‘dominant’ images; indeed, I suspect that classical scholarship may take some modest pride in having been the first in this field of study, even if it has yet to reach the dizzy heights (and sometimes the excesses) achieved by the Shakespearians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , October 1972 , pp. 166 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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References

page 166 note 1 See for instance Spurgeon, Caroline, Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us (Cambridge, 1935)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clemen, W. H., The Development of Shakespeare's Imagery (London, 1951)Google Scholar; and the work of WilsonKnight, G., in particular Chapter I of The Wheel of Fire (Oxford, 1930).Google Scholar Martin Esslin is quoted from his introduction to Günter Grass, Four Plays (London, 1967).Google Scholar

page 166 note 2 In 1887 Verrall's edition of the Seven Against Thebes drew attention to the recurring metaphor of the storm-tossed ship (commentary on 747, 751–6, 780–3, 1069); Headlam, 's ‘Metaphor, with a Note on Transference of Epithets’, CR xvi (1902), 434–42Google Scholar, is packed with brilliant observations; Sheppard, J. T., Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1911)Google Scholar has a good appreciation of The Persians. The subject was treated to a full-length if sometimes mechanical study in Dumortier, Jean, Les Images dans la poésie d'Éschyle (Paris, 1935).Google Scholar Among more recent work, I am indebted to Haldane, J. A., ‘Musical Themes and Imagery in Aeschylus’, JHS lxxxv (1965), 33–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 167 note 1 Schütz, ‘Excursus I ad Persas’ in his complete edition of the plays; Else, The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 87Google Scholar; Broadhead, H. D., The Persae of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1960), xvi f.Google Scholar The impatient critic is Alan Brien, writing in the Sunday Telegraph (25 Apr. 1965) on Karolos Koun's production of the tragedy.

page 168 note 1 φρεν⋯ν, interpreted as ‘wits’ by Broadhead, who takes it to refer to ‘the initial madness of conceiving the expedition’. For a contrasting view of the extent to which Atossa and the Messenger are fully aware of the divine purpose at this point in the play, cf. Fraenkel, on Ag. 757–62Google Scholar (whom Broadhead follows), with Rose on Pers. 362Google Scholar and Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (California and Cambridge, 1951), 39.Google Scholar On the question of whether Xerxes' hybris or the envy of the gods is the prime mover of the action, Snell, Bruno remarks: ‘Der Zirkelschluss ist unlösbar. Hybris, Torheit, Schicksal stehen am Anfang des Unheils. Bins begründet das andere.’ (Aisch. u. das Handeln im Drama [Philologus, Supplementband xx, Heft 1], (Leipzig, 1928), 71.)Google Scholar

page 169 note 1 If Broadhead's conjecture κενώσας Σουσίδ' for κονίσας οὗδας (163; see Supplementary Notes ad loc.) is accepted, then Atossa's anxious words reflect this theme.

page 170 note 1 By contrast the Athenians, Atossa learns from the Chorus, have a fount of silver stored beneath their land (238).

page 171 note 1 θούριος (73, 718, 754).

page 171 note 2 Broadhead, xxiii. Textual evidence for the spectacular nature of Atossa's first entry is offered only by her words ἄνευ τ' ⋯χημάτων χλιδ⋯ς τε τ⋯ς πάροιθεν (607 f.) when she next enters—proof, if any were needed, that Aeschylus does not always reinforce significant use of spectacle with explicit verbal reference. (For the opposite view, cf. Fraenkel, on Agamemnon's entry, Ag. ii. 370.)Google Scholar

page 171 note 3 Broadhead ad loc. argues that the reading πλαγκτοῖς ⋯ν διπλάκεσσιν is unsound; but the words offer such a startling and yet appropriate image of the ruined Persian splendour that I am reluctant to reject them.

page 173 note 1 The notion of the spoiling of fine garments is foreshadowed by the Chorus's reference to the mourning of the womenfolk (125), and perhaps by πλαγκτοῖς ⋯ν διπλάκεσσιν (277; cf. p. 171 n. 3 above).

page 174 note 1 Agamemnon is an infinitely more complex play than The Persians, but an interesting comparison of the dramatic roles of Xerxes and Agamemnon might be made. Both are kings returning from a campaign in which they have earned the anger of the gods for sacking cities and overturning altars—the one already crushed by defeat and the other triumphant in his ignorance of what the gods have in store for him—and in both plays the wanton abuse of costly fabrics is a theatrical image reflecting the greater impiety that lies at the heart of the dramatic action. If Lloyd-Jones is right in arguing that Agamemnon commits his crimes after Zeus has sent an Ate to take away his wits, the parallel between the two becomes more remarkable (cf. Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘The Guilt of Agamemnon’, CQ xii [1962], 187–99).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 174 note 2 It has often been observed that Atossa and her son, the two main characters of the tragedy, never meet; and although such a comment betrays a misunderstanding of Aeschylean dramaturgy, the presence of Darius during this scene would make it necessary for the same actor to take the roles of Atossa and her son and confirm what is so often the case, that Aeschylus is using the resources of his theatre to the full, but not in the way that we, with our modern notions of the dramatic, should expect.