Trying to get caught up on everything I mean to post, and feeling frustrated and tired about running into old problems about posting comments on other blogs…

A semi-quick comment on Aeschylus’ use of actual events (instead of mythic stories) in The Persians. You usually see a comment about the poet/playwright Phrynichus when there is discussion about the rarity of using real events in these ancient Greek tragedies. He wrote (probably) two plays that used actual events instead of mythic stories, neither of which is extant. One was called The Phoenician Women, which dealt with the defeat of Xerxes’ troops at Salamis and judged by many scholars as the basis for Aeschylus’ The Persians.

The more famous real-life tragedy was called The Capture of Miletus (or The Fall, or The Sack), dramatizing the Persian destruction of Miletus during the Ionian revolt. A quick review from Herodotus (although some find his account problematic, see George L Cawkwell’s chapter “The Ionian Revolt,” Appendix H in The Landmark Herodotus): a Persian satrap (governor) of an area in Ionia decides to flex his muscles against the neighboring island of Naxos. He fails miserably, and in order to hopefully avoid removal by the Persian king decides to fan the flames of revolt against Persian rule in all of Ionia. At the beginning of the Ionian Revolt (lasting 499-493 BCE), Athens received pleas to help out those fighting against Persia. Because of close ties to several Ionian cities, Athens sends a fleet of ships to help. The initial result is that the rebellion is successful and the Persian city of Sardis is burned to the ground with the help of these Athenian troops.

A few years later in 494 BCE, Persian troops sack the city of Miletus, central to the rebellion. Most (if not all) of Miletus’ men were slaughtered, its women and children sold into slavery, with the male children probably castrated. Why Phrynichus thought it a good idea to stage a play reminding Athenians about their fallen allies may never be known, although Matthew Wright in The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy Volume 1: Neglected Authors posits that Themistocles, a choregos (backer/funder) of at least one of Phrynichus’ plays, may have had some influence in its production.

The outcome of Phrynichus’ play is generally accepted as what is reported by Herodotus:

The Athenians reacted differently than the Sybarites [to the fall of Miletus], for the Athenians clearly expressed their profound grief over the capture of Miletus in many ways, but one in particular deserves mention: when Phrynikos composed his play on the capture of Miletus and produced it on stage, the audience burst into tears, fined him 1,000 drachmas for reminding of their own evils, and ordered that no one should ever perform this play again. (The Histories, 6.21.2, translation by Andrea L. Purvis)

From what I’ve found, a laborer’s pay was roughly a drachma a day, so this was the equivalent of about three year’s pay for the working class. A talent is listed as being 6,000 drachma, so for those thinking big it’s one-sixth of a talent. However you look at it, the fine was not a minor inconvenience for producing a play on a realistic topic.