Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 52

Nemesis indeed! Xerxes’ Queen Atossa was told the awful news of Salamis.

On that fateful day, continued the messenger, the whole sea was one din of shrieks and dying groans, till night and darkness hid the scene. If I should speak for ten days and ten nights, I could not tell you all that day’s agony. But know this: never before in one day died so vast a company of men.

It is believed that the playwright either saw or may even have participated in the battle, so moving was his description of this wholly factual account. In the theatre the audience would be totally engrossed with the emotion of the plot.

I read the last lines of the play, describing the aftermath of the battle and the resulting horror in Persia.

There, threshed by currents’ eddying motion,

Unsightly lie those well-loved forms,

Now feasted on by voiceless swarms,

The children of the untainted ocean.

Here, every house bewails a man,

And parents, childless now, lament

The troubles that the gods have sent

To end in grief their life’s long span.

Now fear no more shall bridle speech;

Uncurbed, the common tongue shall prate

Of freedom; for the yoke of State

Lies broken on the bloody beach

And fields of Salamis, which hide

The ruins of our Persian pride.

(Trans: The Persians Penguin Classics)

44