XERXES. Alas, the triple banks of oars and those who died thereby! CHORUS. Pass! I will lead you, bring you home, with many a broken sigh!
Xerxes sees the impact of his hubris, religion and fate are used as aids to feel better about mortal actions.
17 Matching Annotations
- Apr 2022
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- Mar 2022
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Ah woe to us, ah joy to them who stood against our pride!
Fate as a tool to describe hubris' consequences
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With plashing tears our sorrow’s tale, Lamenting for the loved and lost!
truth bending, expanding on fate
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For Persia’s honour, pass’d away, For glory and heroic sway Mown down by Fortune’s hand to-day! Hark, how the kingdom makes its moan,
Bending the truth, fate as a tool
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On Persia’s land what power of Fate Descends, what louring gloom of hate?
Political consequences, using fate as a tool instead an end in itself.
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Zeus lours in wrath, exacting the account.
Zeus equated more toward idea of power than directly.
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There is it fated for them to endure The very crown of misery and doom, Requital for their god-forgetting pride! For why? they raided Hellas, had the heart To wrong the images of holy gods, And give the shrines and temples to the flame!
Shame for evil punished, like flood in EoG, except here, the consequences are directed at political defeat instead of death.
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Trusting random counsellors and hare-brained men of nought,
The Persian reason for fighting is stupidity and foolishness, another Greek virtue (modesty) broken.
EoG-no one is really punished for stupidity, but only concretely evil acts.
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GHOST OF DARIUS.
The only acting immortal here is the voice of a ghost and description of gods as more ideas than main characters (EoG-main characters were part gods themselves)
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O Earth, and Hermes, and the king Of Hades, our Darius bring!
Greek gods used by Persians?
Also, gods seem to represent ideas rather than play a central role in the story. In EoG, the supernatural is directly addressed, such as when Gilgamesh crosses the lake of death to save Enkidu.
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Spirit of Fate, too heavy were thy feet,
EoG-concept of fate introduced; shows Aeschylus building on it to prove a seperate point.
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Who heretofore held lightly of the gods, Now crouched and proffered prayer to Earth and Heaven!
Appealing to deities as a result of mortal actions. While EoG characters also try to appeal to gods, it's in more a a fantastic realm than here. This signifies more of a differentiation between humans and gods than before.
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Dead, sayest thou? by what fate overthrown?
Builds on description of death's inevitability seen in EoG, but expanded to illustrate a point rather than using the story itself to make it. Also, Aeschylus uses the idea of fate to mark the effects of a more culturally relevant sin (hubris) than to show fate itself.
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And by thee let Darius’ soul be wistfully implored—
In EoG, sin is described more concretely to do evil, but in TP, this idea evolves into the central issue becoming a certain kind of sin (hubris), more ideological
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Darius, in the old time, by aid of some Immortal,
Darius not immortal himself
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See, yonder comes the mother-queen, Light of our eyes, in godlike sheen, The royal mother of the king!— Fall we before her! well it were That, all as one, we sue to her, And round her footsteps cling!
Also possibly emphasized the Persian importance on an absolute ruler (which may have been established in EoG) contrasted with an army of strong, democratically-backed individuals.
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Masistes, Artembáres passed: Imaeus too, the bowman brave, Sosthánes, Pharandákes, drave— And others the all-nursing wave Of Nilus to the battle gave; Came Susiskánes, warrior wild, And Pegastágon, Egypt’s child:
Emphasis on mortal characters' strengths as Athens or those supporting Athens build support for democracy. Aeschylus may have known and fought alongside people with similar personalities, strength of individual mortals also emphasized (unlike one divine, absolute ruler in EoG).
Further, while EoG represents the rise of good to conquer evil, The Persians shows how one bad ruler (out of hubris and greed) of an otherwise good kingdom can become an antagonist -more complex setup than EoG
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