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The Persians and Other Plays
The Persians and Other Plays
Aug 10, 2025 10:08 AM

Author:Aeschylus,Alan H. Sommerstein,Alan H. Sommerstein

The Persians and Other Plays

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the final defeat of Persia in the battle of Salamis, through the eyes of the Persian court of King Xerxes, becoming a tragic lesson in tyranny. In Prometheus Bound, the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. Seven Against Thebes shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the cursed family of Oedipus, while The Suppliants relates the pursuit of the fifty daughters of Danaus by the fifty sons of Aegyptus, and their final rescue by a heroic king.

Reviews

The wealth of subsidiary narratives - all the impeccably crafted anecdotes and myths and allegories, stories large and small...produce a sophisticated reading experience and suggest a writer whose political view is amused and tart. They are so good, these stories, and so intelligently amusing, and they arrive so frequently, that we never have time to think of asking for more

—— Times Literary Supplement

Patricia Clancy's beautifully tuned ear has given us the full equivalent of Pennac's French humour, half erudite clowning and half absurdist whimsy. His style, seemingly offhand, is studiously exact and Clancy respectfully follows his precisely scripted convolutions

—— Guardian

His adult fiction retains a childlike quality, existing in an imaginary realm where childhood and adulthood blur; reminiscent of Italo Calvino

—— Daily Telegraph

A darkly comic meditation on life, death and the illusions of power

—— New Statesman

A quirky, original comedy

—— In Style Magazine
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