The Persians

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Aeschylus’s The Persians is set during the aftermath of the Second Persian War, fought in 480-79 BCE. Why was this war fought? What was its outcome? Why was it so significant?

Teaching Suggestion: Students should review or be introduced to the First (490 BCE) and Second (480-79 BCE) Persian Wars before beginning this play. These wars were fought between the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the Greek city-states; both ended in a Greek victory. These wars are important because they put the Greek city-state of Athens on the map: By leading the charge against Persia, Athens was able to increase its power and even build a small sea-based empire of its own. The victory over the Persians also sparked a period of massive cultural and economic growth in Greece and especially in Athens. If students’ background knowledge of the Second Persian War is limited, they might address a more general task, such as listing 6-8 facts or suppositions about the time period, daily life in ancient times, or ancient Greek drama in order to connect with the play before learning more about the conflict through these or similar resources.

• This 14-minute video produced by the World History Encyclopedia provides a brief introduction or refresher to the Persian Wars.
• This National Geographic article discusses the ancient Greek warship known as the trireme, which the Athenians began perfecting at the time of the Persian Wars. (Subscription may be needed to view.)

2. Aeschylus’s The Persians is the only surviving Greek tragedy that dramatizes a historical event rather than a mythical story. What is the difference between myth and history? Why do you think Greek tragedies were usually about myths rather than history?

Teaching Suggestion: Distinguishing between myth and history can be surprisingly challenging, especially since the ancient Greeks did not always think of this distinction in the same way that we do. Students will benefit from discussion of the origins and characteristics of Greek tragedy, including the festival contexts at which tragedies were usually performed and important literary devices such as irony and reversal. Most tragedies were dramatizations of myths, traditional stories about the remote past typically involving gods, heroes, and other supernatural beings. The Greeks themselves regarded their myths as true, but even they seem to have recognized that there was a difference—epistemologically and qualitatively speaking—between the mythical narratives of the very distant past and the historical narratives (usually backed up by eyewitness accounts) of their more recent past. During the fifth century BCE, the Greeks were already beginning to record narratives of the recent past, and it was during this period that the Greek writer Herodotus coined the term “history” (historie in Greek). These details supply important context to Aeschylus’s The Persians, which is unusual in that it is the only surviving tragedy that is based on a historical event rather than myth.

• In this 7-minute video, Classics Professor Edith Hall gives an introduction to Greek tragedy.
• This famous passage from Aristotle’s Poetics (1451a-b) discusses the difference between tragedy, myth, and history

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

The Persians broaches the idea of the development of Greek nationalism and the emergence of a unified Greek identity being born from the conflict with the Persians. How do you define your identity? What kind of nationalistic, communal, sociocultural, religious, or familial identities are important in your life? What are some events that were crucial in defining your identity?

Teaching Suggestion: Students might be encouraged to think deeply not only about their own identity but about how we often construct our own identities through difference—that is, through differentiating between ourselves and a hostile “other.” In Aeschylus’s The Persians, we see a Greek author defining Greek identity by exploring it in contrast to the Persian “other.”