Ziggy and Xerxes

Themistocles, leader of the Greek naval forces at Salamis. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

"For pride will blossom; soon its ripening kernel is
Infatuation; and its bitter harvest, tears."

A common image of Greek tragedy is one that El Cabrero likes to think of as the Ziggy Stardust interpretation. I am referring to the David Bowie song in which the title character "took it all too far/but boy could he play guitar"--i.e., he was someone brought down by excess.

That doesn't work for all tragedies but it fits Aeschylus' The Persians pretty well. In it, the Persian ruler Xerxes plays Ziggy. Master of a huge land empire and incredible wealth, he wasn't content with what he had but planned a massive invasion of Greece.

For Aeschylus, Herodotus, and many others, Xerxes was the embodiment of hubris and excess, which was also impiety--the pagan equivalent of blasphemy--against the gods.

One example of this impiety as far as the Greeks were concerned was Xerxes' audacity in building a bridge of ships across the Hellespont, the narrow body of water between Asia Minor and Europe. This was seen as the attempt to shackle the sea itself. When a storm damaged this project, he was said to have ordered the sea to be flogged.

In biblical language, this is the pride that goeth before a fall. And the fall comes fast in the tragedy.

It begins with the anxiety of the Persian court and Xerxes' mother Atossa over the army's fate. It gets worse. A messenger arrives with news of the total defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis. It gets so bad that Atossa consults the shade of her dead husband and former emperor Darius, who is appalled by the excess and loss. (Note: not to be nitpicky, but the real Darius planned to do the same thing but died before he could do it.) By the end of the play, a chastened and humbled Xerxes slinks home.

The play can be interpreted as Athenian triumphalism but it seems to me that it was also a warned to a confident city-state and budding empire to avoid making the same kind of mistakes. Too bad it was a warning not taken.

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"...man is mortal and must learn to curb his pride"

Persian Xerxes, by way of wikipedia.

"...Let no man
Scorning the fortune that he has, in greed for more
Pour out his wealth in utter waste. Zeus, throned on high,
Sternly chastises arrogant and boastful men."

Nearly all Greek tragedies are about mythological events. The one exception is The Persians by Aeschylus, which is the earliest surviving tragedy of the earliest tragic writer.

The play is set in the Persian royal city of Susa and it portrays the royal family and court when the news of their disastrous defeat by the Greek navy at Salamis arrives by messenger. Produced only eight years after the event by a veteran of that war, it is the earliest account we have of that decisive conflict.

Perhaps surprisingly, Aeschylus did not demonize his former foes. The Persian nobles are portrayed with respect and a degree of sympathy. As the French writer Albert Camus wrote in The Rebel, "The Greeks never made the human mind into an armed camp, and in this respect we are inferior to them."

The roots of the conflict were the efforts of Athenians to aid Greek colonies that had fallen under Persian rule. The Persian ruler Darius vowed to punish Athens and attempted a punitive expedition in 490 BC which resulted in the Greek victory at Marathon. Darius vowed a major invasion using all the resources of his empire but died before he could carry it out.

That task was left to Xerxes, who is portrayed by Greek sources such as Herodotus and Aeschylus as arrogant and full of hubris. The war began in earnest in August 480 when the Spartans inflicted heavy losses and died to the last man at the pass of Thermopylae. The naval battle at Salamis occurred a month later. Under the leadership of Themistocles, the Persian navy was basically destroyed as an effect force. A land army remained, only to be repelled the following year.

Tomorrow: the play itself.

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