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This story rests on the authority of Phanias of Lesbos, who was a man of education, and well read in history. XIV. As for the numbers of the Persian fleet, the poet Aeschylus, as though he knew it clearly, writes as follows in his tragedy of the Persae: "And well I know a thousand sail That day did Xerxes meet, And seven and two hundred more, The fastest of his fleet."
Thus, when the Tragedy of the Persae of AEschylus was being performed, the depth of the stage opened, to show in the distance the blue sea on which a recent victory had taken place, with the rocky isle of Salamis bathed in the tints of the Eastern setting sun. A thrill of the most lively emotion ran instantly through the whole crowd of spectators.
AEschylus' tragedy of the "Persae" is, in this respect, true to nature, and represents with accuracy the real habits of the nation. The Persian was a stranger to the dignified reserve which has commonly been affected by the more civilized among Western nations.
When they reached the house, the Squire said, 'I looked up the passage in the Persae that occurred to me yesterday. Will you come and take it down? They went into the library together. The Squire walked up and down with a text of the Persae in his hand.
The distinction of these works lay in the presentation to the conquering State of a great victory as a tragedy in the life of the vanquished. The cry in the Persae, "+ôpaides hellénôíte+", still echoes with singular fidelity across 3,000 years in the war-song of modern Greece: "+deúte paides ton hellénôn+."
And with a piece of bread and butter in one hand, from which he took occasional hurried bites, and the other raised in appropriate varying gesticulation, Fritzing read portions of the Persae of Æschylus to her, first in Greek for the joy of his own ear and then translating it into English for the edification of hers.
Though he selects a Greek story, he is still a modern who narrates he can never make himself a Greek any more than Aeschylus in the "Persae" could make himself a Persian. But this is still more the privilege of the poet in narrative, or lyrical composition, than in the drama, for in the former he does not abandon his identity, as in the latter he must yet even this must has its limits.
The dramas of the Attic stage, with one or two exceptions, are based on myth and legend, not on history, and even in the Persae, grounded on contemporary events, AEschylus introduced the ghost of Darius, not vouched for by "exact history." Let us conceive Shakespeare writing Macbeth in an age of "exact history." Hardly any of the play would be left. Fleance and Banquo must go.
Grey was meditating a visit to Brighton, her son was dreaming of the gulf of Salamis. The spectre in the Persae was his only model for a ghost, and the furies in the Orestes were his perfection of tragical machinery.
Lysand. Aeschyl. Persae. Ibid. Herod., l. 6., c. xii. Plut. in Vit. Aristid. Roos hespera. Aristoph., Vesp 1080. Justin, lib. ii., c. ix. According, however, to Suidas, he escaped and died at Lemnos. This incident confirms the expressed fear of Miltiades, that delay in giving battle might produce division and treachery among some of the Athenians.