How The Frogs drew on The Persians
A documented line of influence: Aristophanes demonstrably engaged Aeschylus’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Persians
Aeschylus · 472 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Frogs
Aristophanes · 405 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
6/10
On The Frogs’s page
- When Aristophanes wants to caricature Aeschylean gravity, he reaches straight for The Persians
- Dionysus parodies its dirge over the dead Darius, the chorus's wailing and all — the joke only lands if you've felt how heavy that lament is
- Aeschylus's own boast here, that The Persians made Athens hungry for victory, is quoted back to him in the poets' contest
On The Persians’s page
- The tragedy Aeschylus is proudest of — and Aristophanes knew it
- In The Frogs, the dead Aeschylus invokes The Persians as his civic masterpiece, the play that "taught Athens to yearn to beat the enemy"
- Its great necromantic lament for King Darius ("O child of Darius, who is dead") becomes the very solemnity Aristophanes drags into the underworld to mock