The Suppliants

The Suppliants (also known as the Supplices or The Suppliant Women) is a Tragic play originally written in Greek by the playwright Aeschylus (525 - 456 BCE). Aeschylus was a prolific playwright in antiquity today however, only five of his plays survive. Notably, Aeschylus in his youth also served as a soldier for the city-state of Athens in the Persian Wars which scholars argue influenced his writing as his work often revolves themes of war, its aftermath and violence.

• This play heavily references the myth of Io which I will briefly recount: Before the events of the play the god Zeus had an affair with a priestess of Hera named Io. Hera, Zeus's wife is furious about the affair and turns Io into a cow as revenge. Zeus transforms himself into a bull so that he can still see Io this enrages Hera even more. Hera creates a gadfly to injure and chase Io, and Io is chased around the world until she leaps across the ocean into Egypt. Upon reaching Egypt, Zeus instantly kills the fly, turns Io back into a human and impregnates her .
• Io’s great-grandchildren are two brothers Danaus who has fifty daughters and Aegyptus who has fifty sons. The sons, the Aegyptoi, want to marry their cousins, the Danaids but, the women do not consent to these marriages and they flee Egypt with their father. They soon arrive in Argos the homeland of their great-great grandmother and plead with Argos's king Pelasgus, to protect them from the Aegyptoi. 
• Pelasgus is hesitant to protect the women, but the Danaids threaten to hang themselves from the statues of the Gods which would bring their ire to Argos. This forces Pelasgus into protecting them.
• In the final moments of the play the Aegyptoi arrive in Argos, they send their herald to collect the Danaids. Pelasgus true to his word rebuffs the herald which sets off a war. 

• The Suppliants shows both instances of racial difference and exoticism however, it also shows us how these differences in identity can be bridged. 
• However, the play is also heavily biased against the Egyptians and hints to the idea that there are some barriers of difference that cannot be culturally transgressed. This is evidenced by the fact that although the Danaids and Aegyptoi are from the same place and share the same ancestors, the men are described as beastly and lusty while the women are almost, readily accepted in Argos.

Pelasgos: "Foreigners, where are you from? I greet a gathering splendid in robes and headdresses such as no Argive wears, or any woman of Greece. ".

Pelasgos: "Strangers, your tale beggars belief. How can you be Argive? To me, you look like Libyan women, not our native stock, or maybe spawn of the fertile Nile. Cypriot craftsmen stamp their coins with images like yours. You might be nomads such as I have heard saddle the ungainly camel and cavalcade across some African landscape. If you had bows, I'd take you that tribe of husbandless hunters, the flesh-eating Amazons".

Danaos: "Now I see sailors, black limbs glistening against white tunes now other vessels- a whole fleet carrying troops to do their masters' bidding.".

Chorus: "But the men are full of blood lust, treacherous, impure of heart, ravens eager to defile an altar".

Chorus Leader: "This is a raging, lustful beast, an unholy terror. We must protective ourselves!".

Chorus: "The spawn of Aigyptos pursue me with ruthless male pride, swaggering, howling their lust, storming this refuge to take me by force. But your hands holds the balance; men achieve nothing except you will it so.".

1. How does gender influence the interpretation of the Danaids in contrast for the Aegyptoi for a Greek audience?
2. What can this text tell us about Greek ideas of shared cultural heritage?

• Suppliant - a person making a humble plea to someone in power or authority
• Strophe - a stanza composed of two or more lines repeated as a unit; or the first part of an ode in Greek tragedy 
• Antistrophe - the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in response to the strophe.

The translation used for this guide was the 1991 translation written by  Peter Burian,  an Emeritus Professor of Classics at Duke University. Burian specializes in Greek literature, specifically in drama and also works on the theory and practice of translation. For this translation of The Suppliants, Burian wanted to better highlight the inherent, lyric poetry in Aeschylus's writing that is most prominent in The Suppliants.

 Michael Halleran, The Classical Review 

• “ Burian has a good ear and the English reads well, often capturing the rich and bold language of the original.”. 
• “But there are many examples of words left untranslated, rhetorical structures ignored, and changed metaphors where the reason for the omission or alteration is unclear”.

 Peter Smith, Theatre Research International 

• “It is in reflecting these poetic qualities of the tragedy that Burian has truly excelled.”. 
• “Even more impressively, he has managed in the choral odes to maintain exact syllabic responsion between strophe, antistrophe, enabling the reader to see, hear, and feel the balance between matched lyric stanzas.”

Header Image: Danaides, John William Waterhouse, British, 1903, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection