The Undead Past in Aeschylus’ Persians

Richard E. Rader (Ohio State University)

How do we remember and reconstruct trauma? How do we select which events to include and which to leave out? From the Persian Wars to 9/11 artists wishing to represent a trauma face among other things the pressure of these critical questions. We have only one extant historical tragedy in Greek literature—Aeschylus’ Persians— depicting the trauma of the Persian Wars. Given the then-recent devastation to Athens and the historical precedent of Phrynichus’ ill-starred Sack of Miletus, perhaps we ought to be amazed that Persians won first place in 472. For the traumatic events of the wars and their subsequent staging were not that far apart. Part of the reason for Aeschylus’ victory, I suggest, is the “innocence” of his reconstruction of the trauma, which as critics have shown (most famously Hall [1989]) emplots a distinction between Greeks and Persians. By this reading the play becomes a referendum on the politics of ethnic representation. But the brilliance of Persians is that this innocent reconstruction of the trauma also opens consideration, more broadly conceived, of the politics of history and memory. In its depiction of the strained relationship between Darius and Xerxes, Persians asks: what is at stake in remembering the past the way we do (say, as a succession of events), and what is suppressed in doing so? Persians, I argue, evokes the living continuity between past and present, vitally reminding us that the experience of the past is always underway and that history is always changing.

This paper will consider first how Atossa, the chorus, and Darius romanticize and reify his past, closing it off to the vicissitudes of meaning and interpretation. Closure, however, is a function of narrative; reality is different. William Batstone has argued, for example, that the past is always imperfect, an even in motion, an inchoate, conative, continuous aspect looking for a story (Batstone [2006]). Thus this paper will then consider how in the contrasting depiction of Xerxes Aeschylus shows the impossibility and vanity of ever closing the past for good. I analyze some instances of memory (mnēmoneuei, alastōr, aeimnēston) to reveal the continuity they insist and depend upon between past, present, and future. Take alastōr in the messenger’s report (354) for example: the unforgettable thing accomplished by Xerxes (total destruction) is retrospectively cast as an “unforgetting” spirit and instigates the battle. Because neither the messenger, nor Atossa, nor the chorus claim any special relevance for vengeance or requital, the alastōr must then stand for the future-perfect result (defeat) of that very battle for which “requital” is necessary. It is as if the avenging spirit has come back in time to remember and to remind Xerxes of a “crime” he has yet to commit. Hence the messenger’s invocation of this alastōr in his reconstruction of the event evokes and depends upon the past, the present, and the future (perfect), collapsing them into the same moment. His memory captures both its finalized figuration as a thing of the past and its future anteriority.

Persians, I argue, illustrates that the past is “always awaiting tomorrow to become what it will have been” (Batstone). Aeschylus resurrects the dead facts of history as vital traces of a much broader sense of meaning in the past and for the future. In the context of something as traumatic for the Athenians as the Persians Wars, this is a bold move by Aeschylus, embedded as it is in the most famous play about cultural difference and given expression in the tragic story of one of the most feared and hated men, Xerxes.

Select Bibliography

Batstone, William. 2006. “The Point of Reception Theory” in Classics and the Uses of Reception (Martindale and Thomas, eds. [2006])

Hall, Edith. 1989. Inventing the Barbarian: Greek self-definition through Tragedy. Oxford