Two Plays by Aeschylus

[Final Note: August 8, 2006: I have yet to tidy this post up, apart from one typographical error in the first paragraph. Better, more focussed blog posts on other Euripidean works appear on my new blog, Seoul Hero. (Search for "Ion," "Iphigenia," and "Helen" to find the posts in question written to date.)]

I decided I'm going to post a few reflections on what I'm reading. I had intended to do so with both Hardy and the Poetic Edda, but left it until it was too late. This time, I'm not going to write an essay; I will only offer a few observations, something that is quite suited to the nature of blogging, I think.

Well, for approximately $6 CDN I purchased a Penguin Classics edition of a few plays by Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound and Other Plays. Like Jude the Obscure, I read most of it on the subway, making my reasonably short commute seem even shorter. Prometheus Bound I consider to be one of the most important texts in Western Civilization's history. As I read that play before, I began with the second playThe Suppliants, a story about 50 women who have fled Egypt for Argos, in an attempt to avoid forced marriage with their cousins, who are barbaric and mean-spirited. There are a few choice lines, for example "People are quick to be censorious of those who speak with a foreign accent." As a foreigner, I'd have to agree that this can be true at times. At the same time, it's great that it is far less true than it could be. Both my old country, and the place where I am now a sojourner are civilized places where racism rarely results in violence.

One line which struck me, particularly, was about the purposes of Zeus:

For him all things shine clear, though he hides them in black darkness from the eyes of men that perish.

This is much like the descriptions of Yahweh or his purposes in the Bible (cf. Ps. 18:11; 97:2; 139:12). And of course it's always worth noting that both Zeus and Yahweh were storm deities.

An interesting title of Zeus occurs in the play also: "Zeus, the All-Seeing Father." It's true that Yahweh is not often referred to as Father in the Hebrew Bible, but he does see all, according to that corpus. I'm also reminded of Odin/Othin/Woden, however you want to spell that Norse deity's name.

There was also a standout line, from a comparative perspective, in Seven Against Thebes. The context is that of a metaphor and comparison of an annual sailing venture celebrating the destruction of the Minotaur, and something else:

That sacred ship with black sails and no wreaths of flowers [goes] To the land Apollo may not tread
That welcomes all alike,
Where no sun lightens the gloom.

This is exactly like some of the poetic descriptions of Sheol that we find in Job and the Psalms and the other poetic material of the Hebrew Bible. The character of Job, in particular, lays stress on the equality of the realm of death, and the fact that the sun does not shine there. It's interesting to note, although one must be careful with these sort of things, that Apollo had an association with the number 7; of course, 7 was a climactic number all over the ancient Near East. Yahweh also was associated with 7. There is actually extant a mosaic floor from a synagogue of Bet Alpha showing Yahweh depicted in the iconography of Apollo, driving his throne chariot across sky. But, unfortunately, this isn't the time to go into the remnants of solar worship in the Bible, something my old professor J. Glen Taylor and others have looked into extensively. There does seem to be agreement that both Zeus and Yahweh had little presence in Hades/Sheol, a topic that has always interested me.

That takes me up to the last play in the book, The Persians, which like the others, is fascinating in every respect, in addition to being interesting from a comparative standpoint. There are some Persian words and names thrown in by Aeschylus to give a sense of realism, a nice touch.