However, Aeschylus appears to work into his Agamemnon a number of other secondary themes, at least one of which caught the attention of this first-time reader of the Greek tragedies. In several passages, the audience hears a distinct disapproval of warfare, in this case, of no less storied an instance of warfare than the Trojan War of Homeric myth. The chorus and characters never seem to rejoice in the Greek victory, but only lament the losses incurred in a war fought to retrieve Helen, the “willing whore” (Aeschylus, 1991, p. 20, line 82). The chorus sings of grief for both the Trojans and the Greeks, “An overture of breaking spears” (p. 11, l. 8). The chorus warns of “the double whip which War is fond of” (p. 18, l. 88), an apparent warning that war always harms the victor as well as the vanquished.

This apparent anti-war sentiment was initially surprising, at least to me, for a number of reasons. First, a high school reading of the Odyssey and later exposure to Greek history and references to Homer’s works left me with the impression that Homer had depicted war as a gruesome but glorious enterprise. As Homer's works were a fundamental text of ancient Greece, one would expect such a view of war to be reflected throughout ancient Greek culture. Indeed, war was an integral part of ancient Greek society during that period, defining the rights, responsibilities, and even the identities of the Greeks within the polis (Goldhill, 1992; Cartledge, 2000). Aeschylus himself was a renowned soldier, having fought at both Marathon and Salamis, two key battles that preserved Greek freedom from Persian dominance. Yet in Agamemnon, this veteran of his homeland’s greatest battles seems to be saying war is a terrible enterprise, and saying it in the most visible way possible at that time, in a tragedy at the City Dionysia.

Perhaps the notion of a war veteran becoming an active advocate of peace is not so far-fetched. Those men who have witnessed and participated in the horrors of war are arguably the most logical and authoritative opponents of war. Still, I wondered: is Aeschylus’s apparent anti-war sentiment unique to Agamemnon, merely commentary on the folly of the Trojan War specifically, or does that sentiment manifest itself in the playwright’s other works? Furthermore, to whatever extent Aeschylus might have been using his tragedies to oppose war, how did such expressions fit into fifth-century Athenian culture?

A further reading of the surviving works of Aeschylus reveals that the anti-war sentiment of Agamemnon is no fluke. In both The Persians and Seven Against Thebes, while acknowledging the possibilities for glory in war, Aeschylus focuses his dramatic attention on the grief inherent in armed conflict. Analyzing these tragedies, we find Aeschylus, if not entirely opposing war, then striving at least to temper the war-making urges of his more sanguine Athenian compatriots.

The Persians, Aeschylus’s oldest surviving play, was produced in 472, just eight years after the events on which it is based. The play describes King Xerxes’s return to Persia after his defeat at the hands of the Greeks at Salamis. The play is unique among the surviving Greek tragedies in dealing with a historical rather than mythical subject. It also seems unusual as a piece of post-war entertainment. One might expect Greek playwrights immediately after the victory over the Persian invaders to produce triumphal, patriotic plays and odes glorifying the victors and rubbing the noses of the enemy in their defeat. Contrary to idealized perceptions, the Greeks were known to taunt defeated opponents, in war and in sporting events (Crowther 1999). The newly enfranchised Athenians had great reason to celebrate: they had averted the destruction of their fledgling democracy and likely enslavement by the Persians. However, as Murray (1972) makes clear, The Persians is no such triumphal propaganda. Less than a decade after the defeat of the Persians, Aeschylus presents to an audience filled with fellow veterans an account of that fateful battle told entirely from the viewpoint of the vanquished. There is no villainizing or caricaturing of the Persians; Aeschylus offers an altogether human, even sympathetic portrayal of the very recent (and even then still threatening) enemy.

Make no mistake: The Persians is no revisionist play seeking to subvert Athenians’ pride in their victory. Various passages in the tragedy portray the Greeks favorably. For example, a dialogue between the chorus and the Persian queen (Aeschylus, 1952a, lines 230–247) gives a brief account of the Greek’s military strength, weaponry, wealth, and even their democracy. Entering battle, the Greeks issue “a great concerted cry” (401), answered in contrast by the “babel Persian tongues” (406), suggesting to the audience that the Greeks were more unified.

While acknowledging these justifications for the Athenians’ patriotic pride, Aeschylus aims to temper that patriotism by coupling it with a clear vision of their enemy as human beings worthy of respect and sympathy. Imagine the spectacle: Aeschylus places a herald before thousands of proud Greek citizens to declare the Persian fighters “Excellent in soul, and nobly bred to grandeur” (442). (If a modern analogy is possible, imagine an actor standing on stage before a large VFW meeting in 1953 and expressing admiration for the excellence and nobility of Japanese soldiers in the Philippine campaign of World War II.) Aeschylus dispatches his chorus to offer an admiring portrait of Xerxes’s father, King Darius (652–657). Aeschylus even presumes to let the chorus offer an account of the Persians’ past victories and the great expanse of their empire (859–906).

One could argue that Aeschylus is simply painting a grand picture of the Persians to make the Greeks seem even grander in having defeated them. That interpretation would not seem consistent, though, with other passages explaining the defeat and describing the Persians’ great suffering. Certain passages in the tragedy, while never denigrating the valor of the Greek soldiers, ascribe the Greek victory as much to the Greek terrain, which “starves to death excessive numbers” (794). The Persians lament being led into the war by deceitful gods (473–474, 725–726) and wicked advisors (752–758). Xerxes himself, as the tragic hero, shoulders the blame for the defeat stemming from his overreaching pride. However, Aeschylus brings the ghost of Darius (an old and successful soldier like himself) from the grave to point out his own son’s flaw: “Xerxes, my son, as young/ In age as sense, ignored my wisdom” (782–783). Murray (1972) notes that this criticism is not meant to contrast Persian with Greek, but merely young with old, prideful with wise, an admonition as applicable to the Greeks watching the play as the foreigners portrayed.

Aeschylus further humanizes the Persians in his portrayal of their suffering. The chorus laments the “Persians widowed vain,/ And mothers losing sons” (287–288). The audience is given the image of the Persian women, “Many with delicate hands/ Rending their veils,/ Drenching their breasts,/ Swollen with tears” (537–540). After the chorus recounts the past glory of the Persian empire, even as the Athenian audience basks in its current ascendancy, Xerxes enters and joins the citizens in the final lamentation (909–1078), timed as if to say to the Athenian audience, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen...and how you the mighty could yet fall.” Aeschylus seems determined to leave his fellow Athenians with at least an ambiguous feeling about their wars, expressed succinctly by Xerxes, who says of his people’s woe, “Painful to us, but to enemies joy” (1034). This presentation of the Greek triumph from the eyes of the defeated Persians may not be a call to lay down arms forever, but neither is it an exhortation to unbridled celebration of military conquest. The Persians is Aeschylus’s reminder to the Athenians that war always destroys, and that it can easily destroy the once-proud—and too-proud—destroyer.

Echoes of this theme can be found in Seven Against Thebes, staged first in 467. The tragedy focuses on Eteocles and Polyneices, brothers who, suffering under the curse of their father Oedipus, are fated to kill each other in civil war. As the tragedy plays out, though, the viewers receive more of Aeschylus’s commentary on war. As in The Persians, Aeschylus offers contrasting views of war. War at least "allows a man to exercise his most personal aspirations, to struggle for heroism and glory" (Rosenmeyer 1972, 61). Even the man who loses, like Eteocles, ultimately, has the benefit of quick death on the battlefield. They may be remembered with admiration, eulogized as the herald eulogizes Eteocles: "Fighting [Thebes's] enemies/ he found his death here. In the sight/ of his ancestral shrines he is pure and blameless/ and died where young men die right honorably" (Aeschylus, 1952b, 1008-1010).

Women, however, suffer immensely in war, and with a chorus representing Theban women in Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus gives women's complaints against war great voice. Writing with what Rosenmeyer (1972, 47) considers a sensitivity to women's thoughts and feelings rarely equaled by other ancient Greek writers, Aeschylus portrays the fears and torment of the women in war. With their men all gone to the front, the women who must remain at home have only the gods to turn to for support and protection (91-95). The chorus details the horrors of the murder, rape, and slavery the women face if the enemy overrun the city (322-368). Even if their soldiers win, the women grieve for the pain of those who will fall in battle, for their "friends" who must "look upon bloodshed/ of those we love, dying" (420-422). This chorus, as is normal in Greek tragedy, serves as a link between the action on stage and the audience. The chorus voices the thoughts and feelings toward which the playwright would guide his viewers. In Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus guides his audience to view war not so much through the eyes of the brave king or his soldiers as through the eyes of the chorus of frightened women.

Aeschylus presents his view of the ambiguities in war in two other important ways in Seven Against Thebes. Among those attacking Thebes, Eteocles's messenger identifies Amphiaraus, "a most modest man" (568) and prophet of whom both the messenger and Eteocles speak with admiration. Eteocles laments that war claims honest men like Amphiaraus as well as "impious wretches" (597-598). While he portrays the other attackers of the city as braggarts, Aeschylus cannot wholly demonize the enemy. The enemy, after all, is led by Eteocles's brother, Polyneices. Aeschylus presents two brothers fighting and dying at each other's hands, a spectacle that, regardless of the particulars of the conflict, is necessarily tragic. In both the specific portrayal of a good man among the enemy and the general theme of the tragedy of Oedipus's warring sons, Aeschylus presents his audience with more reason to grieve for the victorious Thebans than to feel satisfied with their triumph.

These sentiments against war, expressed so boldly on the Athenian stage before a massive audience of veterans and patriotic citizens, is not out of place in the Greek spirit of the time. Indeed, Athens was deeply militaristic throughout the fifth century, with the Assembly voting themselves to war nearly every year and no two successive years passing without a military campaign (Goldhill, 1992, 10). This apparent eagerness to make war could be one manifestation of the general and ferocious competitive spirit of the Greeks of this era (Brinton, 1959, 77). However, that competitiveness expressed itself as naturally and as passionately in the Greeks’ practice of democracy in the polis. They engaged in public debate about all issues, especially matters as significant as warfare. Tragedy itself was part of that discourse, an opportunity for playwrights like Aeschylus to put democratic ideals and the policies of the polis under public scrutiny (Goldhill, 1992, 17). Even amidst the civic pride of an Athens ascendant in the Aegean and the martial spirit of its citizens, it is perfectly in character for an Athenian to say to the polis, “Wait a minute—is war really so great? What of the death, the suffering, the destruction visited upon both sides?” The responsible Athenian would express his pride in his homeland by challenging any smug assumption that war would always serve the interests of Athens or that they would always emerge victorious.

Pericles, who funded the 472 production of The Persians (Murray, 1972, 29), said of the Athenian democracy, “...we are the only people who think him that does not meddle in state affairs—not indolent, but good for nothing” (Pericles, 1973). Aeschylus lives up to this expectation of participation in political life in his tragedies. In expressing a clear anti-war sentiment in The Persians and incorporating that theme in later tragedies like Seven Against Thebes and Agamemnon, Aeschylus uses his ethos as a veteran of Marathon and Salamis to actively participate in open debate about warfare and the policies of the Athenian democracy.

Aeschylus (1952a). The Persians. Benardete, S., translator. In The complete Greek tragedies, volume 2: Aeschylus II. New York: Random House.

Aeschylus (1952b). Seven Against Thebes. Grene, D., translator. In The complete Greek tragedies, volume 2: Aeschylus II. New York: Random House.

Aeschylus (1991). Agamemnon. MacNeice, L., translator. In Allison, A. W., Carr, A. J., and Eastman, A. M. (Eds.), Masterpieces of the drama (6th ed.). New York: Macmillan.

Brinton, C. (1959). A history of Western morals. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.

Cartledge, P. (2000). "The wars of the ancient Greeks and their invention of Western military culture / A history of ancient Greece / The Greek achievement: the foundation of the Western world" (book review). History Today, 50-3, 58–59.

Crowther, N. (1999). "Sports, nationalism and peace in ancient Greece." Peace Review, 11-4, 585-589.

Goldhill, S. (1992). Aeschylus: The Oresteia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Murray, G. (1972). "The Persae." In McCall, M. H., Jr. (Ed.), Aeschylus: a collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (Original work published 1940.)

Pericles (1973). "Funeral oration." In Copeland, L., and Lamm, L. W. (Eds.). The world’s great speeches (3rd ed.). New York: Dover. (Original speech delivered 431 BC.)

Rosenmeyer, T. G. (1972). "Seven Against Thebes: the tragedy of war." In McCall, M. H., Jr. (Ed.), Aeschylus: a collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. (Original work published 1962.)

Read The Persians (Robert Potter translation), Seven Against Thebes (EDA Morshead translation), and Agamemnon (EDA Morshead translation) at The Internet Classics Archive at MIT.