Grade: 65, 2:1; Drama, Term 4 (2500 words)

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Tragedy is socially dramatized and linguistically undefined, positioning the polis¹ toward ‘arbitrary and sterile²’ definitions, with little effect. The contextualisation of human suffering is mimetically presented within Aeschylus Persians, as Greek interpretation strives to imitate Persian political atrophy and civic decimation within a framework of the Persian – Greco War. Herein, Steiners’ definition of ‘Tragedy’ presents a dualistic argument able to sustain the dialogic expressions of the characters, as grief is constructed within the narrative: “The intentional focus can be narrow and specific, as in ‘a tragic accident’ or undefinably spacious, as in the shopworn phrase ‘a tragic sense of life’³”. I aim to expand upon choral identity within a narrative framework alongside a corporeality present in lamentations to explicate a reconstruction of human suffering of Persians’ through a mimetic, Greek, tragedian perspective.  

Choral Identity and Vocalization 

Participation of the chorus in Aeschylus Persians is strategically abnormal. Vocal and dominant within the dialogue, the group of women defy a traditional placement that is commonly mollified by moral ideology or a modest collective commentary, seen within Euripides Medea or even, Aeschylus Agamemnon. The presentation of the choral identity begins within Aeschylus temporal, theatrical depiction, as his “[…] display of an Athenian chorus dressed as Persian males right at the opening of his 472 BCE play was a daring and, as far as we know, unparalleled gesture⁴”. Aeschylus challenge toward the presentation of a female-dominant role, negates an ancient theatrical structure, submerged in gender presentation, social power, and vocality. This (‘daring’) act exemplifies the bold nature of the tragedian, whose decisive linguistic conventions, posit his work outside social convention — as I later argue, to utilize as means to further potent representations of human suffering.  Additionally, it’s “fundamentally chora medium⁵” rejects enforced civic displays of public mourning, that which was “permitted, although in a controlled form⁶” and could not be re-enacted by “women under the age of sixty, other than close relations, [who] could enter the chamber of the deceased or follow the procession to the tomb⁷”. Aeschylus’ intent surpasses a Greek, social presentation of mourning, to depict a Persian pathos existing outside Athenian civic obligation, elucidating the dramatic within a cacophony of chants, wails, laments, and lacerations.  

To begin, I aim to construct a timeline of the Persian chorus to facilitate their progressive, polyphonic voice as it encounters a tragic framework of war. Before receiving word from the messenger, the Queen converses with the chorus on an omen she received with fear. The routine role of moral guidance is sustained within the response of the chorus, as they reply:  

Mother, we do not wish to say what would make you wither unduly fearful or unduly optimistic. You should approach the gods with supplications and ask them, if there is anything sinister in what you saw⁸. 

Yet, as the chorus immerses their voice within the Persian politic, “moments of ‘self-referentiality⁹” deconstruct their role within mediation, opting to dialogically employ pathea¹⁰ as means to draw the audience into the familiar condition of grief – an ‘integrated experience’ outlined by Carter. As the socio-political and economic life in the Persian city, Susa, bears transitional tension, the mimetic dramatized upon conditionally relies on Aeschylus knowledge on the Greek politic and legislation, to correctly divide the public and private sphere of potential suffering. The body of the chorus unflinchingly condemns Xerxes fatal actions, as the young king went to war with the Greeks: “Otototoi, you are saying / that the dead bodies of our loved ones / are floating, soaked and constantly buffeted by salt water, / shrouded in mantles that drift in the waves¹¹”, reconstructing a new temperament of the chorus, through the sheer evaluation of Persian bodies floating amongst the sea. Steiner’s broad sense of tragedy captures dream-filled omens and spacious declaration – “and < in every house / the woman left behind > howls for her young husband¹²” – while also targeting the dead bodies of (‘loved ones), (‘buffeted), (‘shrouded) and (‘floating’) amongst the sea thousands of miles away. The intentional narration, vocality, and tonality immersed in accusation the chorus fosters their eventual barbaric action within laments and public bouts of mourning. This vocality of anguish slightly shifts in its accommodation from the internal to external justification, as the chorus directs their speech to the public space before them: “O you god who has caused such toil and grief, how very heavily you have leaped and trampled on the entire Persian race!¹³” The act, formerly confined to dialogue of the Queen, Messenger, and Chorus, is unconsciously torn as the women turn their attention to the metaphysical, to a God with capability to proctor death fit for immense human suffering. Placating, questioning, blaming, and sadness, the liminal atmosphere of the chorus’ bargaining eventually commences full-bodied laments that harbor a collective anguish, turmoil, and anger of the (‘Persian race’).  

Furthermore, the mimetic performance rests upon an historic reality, which eliminates the prepotent of the mythic, until it becomes a“[…] kind of lamentation more shocking, for the audience is encouraged to compare what they see with their own funerary practices¹⁴”. The funerary procession is noncorporal, the bodies of the soldiers cannot be returned to Susa, leaving Xerxes in worn out attire, and a weeping chorus to fulfill a memorial of the lost men. Specifically, the function of the chorus as a collective, capable of anguished re-enactment, yet fundamentally immersed in Greek mimicry to feasibly represent the Persian individual concurrently encountering a personal, vivid suffering.  

In comparison, Alice Oswald’s, Memorial, captures the similar literary essence of dedication amongst a funerary procession, developing an oral cemetery for the lost bodies: 

DEMUCHUS 

LAOGONUS 

DARDANUS 

TROS 

MULIUS 

RHIGMOS 

LYCAON 

MYDON¹⁵ 

Aeschylus’ Persian eulogy exacerbates the role of the chorus – their demands target the power dynamic between citizen and King, dismissing civic hierarchy to emphasize the suffering the women unconsciously feel. Language becomes a weapon of distrust, commencing verbal accusations against Xerxes through the use of (‘you’), while also suggest the young king is neither (‘brave’) and (‘nobly-born) due to his fatal actions. Before the lamentations proceed, the chorus bemoans stanzas of notable soldiers lost from this encounter, crying out: “Where did you leave Pharnuchus, / yes, and the brave Ariomardus? / Where is the lord Seuacles / or the nobly-born lilaeus, / Memphis, Tharybis and Masistras, / Artembares and Hystaechmas?/ I ask you this again¹⁶”. Mirroring Oswald’s declaration, the constructed voice of the once mediating chorus is left to return the dead amongst Persian lands by a verbal eulogy, leaving the group of women to unconsciously redefine their capabilities to a role of mourners.  

Corporeality and Lamentations 

Correspondingly, the two distinguished laments of the chorus, (l.255-59) and (l.908-1077) redefine characteristic responses to suffering, as Aeschylus shifts from the internal (private) to the external (public), within his displays of anguish. Yet, this shift into a public sphere, orients the mourning into the political, defining the act of laments indecent, unqualifiable, or unnecessary through representative measures of class, gender, and age. Paul Kottman expands upon the mimetic within a philosophical framework, denoting the theatrics to hold political qualities, allowing for the expansion into the role of the chorus: “[…] like the praxis it imitates – is also pre-political, for it is precisely the interaction that adheres in speaking and action among a plurality that opens the space for the polis¹⁷”. The Persian (‘polis’) is intertextual and heavily reliant on Aeschylus interpretation of the Greeks socio-economic, politic, and literary convention, simply due to the representative nature of mimesis. Therefore, Greek tragedies like The Fall of Miletus¹⁸ contrive anecdotes of tragic pathos Athenians experienced, whose substantially vivid baseline of grief, becomes a unification of meaning and significance, that would be pertinent to its application in Persian suffering¹⁹.  

Within the tragedy, I aim to touch upon the severity of the laments exercised by the Chorus and the furthered incitement of verbal encouragement of the young king, Xerxes. Aeschylus’ stage directions signal a shift within the vocality of the chorus, alluding to an exacerbated tonal shift of anguish: “[They shift from chant to song] / The land laments its native youth / killed by Xerxes, who crammed Hades with Persians²⁰”. The accusatory tone is projected within a unified, collective manner, yet a polyphonic²¹ structure surrounds the notion of ‘chant’ (i.e it necessitates a crowd to project in a unison manner) and produces a vivid spectacle of voice to demonstrate public suffering. Even further, the utilization of the body to endure laceration and physical punishment within a lamentation, is mimetic – representative of women in Greek processions of mourning: “[…] women displayed their mourning […] by beating, and sometimes baring, their chests, by loosening and tearing their hair, by crying and wailing, by tearing their robes and by scratching their cheeks²²”. Persian suffering, therefore, rest upon the intertextual conceptions and assumption of character, alongside Aeschylus framework and personal encounter of war. 

Ultimately, the expansion of corporal identity within the chorus expands to adjust to the demands of Xerxes, and crucially the lack of recovery toward the bodies of the soldiers:   

Xerxes 

and Chorus 

Ototototoi! 

Chorus 

And mixed in with my groans will be – 

oi! – black, violent blows. 

Xerxes 

Beat your breasts too, and accompany the action with a 

Mysian cry. 

Chorus 

Painful, painful! 

Xerxes 

Now, please, ravage the white hairs of your beard²³. 

The (‘black, violent blows’) composed alongside the beating of the breast, produce a gendered, physical, and an aggressive tone defined by (‘groans’) and the (‘Mysian cry’). The suffering surpasses the emotional, liminal boundary to reassign the chorus as a witness and a narrator to their own grief. The collective identity of the chorus merges the private individual of the women to an uncontrollable entity, encouraged to experience the (‘painful’), fatal disposition of the Persian soldiers. Aeschylus continuation of mimetic narratives within a Greek understanding, situates Persian suffering past individual fatality to a unified, collective identity of civic collapse.  

Thus, the ‘living memory²⁴’ of Aeschylus and Athenians alike, constitute a relation to a ‘mimetic performance²⁵’ that can support, characterize, and develop a theatrical performance of human suffering outside a cultural context. Aeschylus’ Persians interacts within a theoretical framework of polyphonic and mimetic analysis, expanding Steiners’ dichotomy of tragedy to a vivid corporeality and unique narration of a Persian chorus.  

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Footnotes:

[1] See, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, definition of polis. In this paper, I will be referring to Oswyn Murray’s definition listed: The polis is the characteristic form of Greek urban life; its main features are small size, political autonomy, social homogeneity, sense of community and respect for law.

[2] Steiner 2004: 2.

[3] Steiner 2004: 1

[4] Hopman: 58.

[5] Hopman: 59.

[6] Foley 2003: 25.

[7] Foley 2003: 23.

[8] Aeschylus 2008: l. 215-17.

[9] Carter 2011: 247.

[10] Utilized within a plural sense of pathos.

[11] Aeschylus 2008: l. 274-77.

[12] Aeschylus 2008: l. 12-13.

[13] Aeschylus 2008: l. 515-6.

[14] Swift 2010.

[15] Oswald 2012: 12.

[16] Aeschylus 2008: l. 967-73.

[17] Kottman 2003: 82.

[18] Kottman produces the account of Athenians watching the performance of The Fall of Miletus within the writing of Herodotus. I have taken an excerpt for reference of suggest claims above to articulate a baseline for Greek suffering. “The audience in the theater burst into tears, and the author was fined a thousand drachmae for reminding them of a disaster which touched them so closely. A law was subsequently passed forbidding anybody ever to put the lay on stage again” (Kottman 2003: 83.)

[19] Further information is sourced from Steinby 2013: 2. Excerpt follows as such: “The unit of the world in aesthetic seeing is not a unity of meaning or sense – not a systematic unity, but a unity is concretely architectonic”

[20] Aeschylus 2008: l. 923-26.

[21] Polyphony in this context is was derived from Steinby 213: 10. The definition used is ‘polyphony’ arises from persons with different world views encountering each other in the concrete events of life”.

[22] Hurschmann 2006: Brill.

[23] Aeschylus 2008: l. 1052-56.

[4] Kottman 2003: 97.

[25] Ibid.

Citations: 

Αἰσχύλος., et al. Aeschylus. Edited by Alan H. Sommerstein, Harvard University Press, 2008. 

Carter, D. M. Why Athens?: A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics. Oxford University Press, 2011. 

Hurschmann, R. (. (2006). Mourning. In Brill’s New Pauly Online. Brill. https://doi-org.bris.idm.oclc.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e1219110  

Kottman, P. A. (2003). Memory, “Mimesis,” Tragedy: The Scene before Philosophy. Theatre Journal, 55(1), 81–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25069181 

Murray, O. (2012). polis. In The Oxford Classical Dictionary.: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 25 Mar. 2025,  

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199545568.001.0001/acref-9780199545568-e-5162.

Oswald, Alice. Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad. Faber and Faber, 2011. 

Steinby L. Bakhtin and Lukács: Subjectivity, Signifying Form and Temporality in the Novel. In: Steinby L, Tintti T, eds. Bakhtin and His Others: (Inter)Subjectivity, Chronotope, Dialogism. Anthem Press; 2013:1-18. 

Steiner, G. (2004). “Tragedy,” Reconsidered. New Literary History, 35(1), 1–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057818&nbsp;

Swift, L. A., ‘7 Thrēnos and Ritual Lament’, The Hidden Chorus: Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford, 2010; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 May 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577842.003.0008, accessed 25 Mar. 2025.