Performing Aeschylus's Persians

Abstract

Abstract:

The antistrophic pairs of the choral odes of Aeschylus’s Persians are frequently marked by close verbal and thematic parallels in a symmetrical fashion. This “strophic bonding” permits more precise speculation about the possible performative relation between strophic pairs in the choral odes of a play that culminates in the explicit display of parallel lamenting gestures in the concluding strophic pairs of the exodos. The repeated themes, sounds, gestures, images, and phrases in the play’s strophic pairs serve as well to define and perform the changing relation between Persian royal leaders and their choral subjects in the play as a whole.