[Greek2017] bios

[Mark Casey]

Hi All,

Thanks for the interesting and fun discussion yesterday. I had to drop off
with 15 minutes to go due to some urgent child care duties, so sorry if
this point is redundant, but we talk much about the issue of freedom versus
slavery (or at least servitude to a king)? I thought it came up in
interesting ways throughout the play.

There was the dream of the two bridled women, for example, one of whom
"gloried in the bit," and the other of whom didn't, and destroyed the
chariot in her outrage at it.

Then there was that question about how is it possible for the Greeks to
fight if they don't have a king.

And then there was the weeping at the end by Atossa about how if the Greeks
destroyed the Persian king or kingship, how the members of the Persian
empire would now no longer have to pay tribute, and would finally be
allowed to say what was on their minds. Atossa described these as though
they were great losses, and of course they were to her as part of the royal
family, but from the Athenian point of view they would have been blessings.

Atossa's cluelessness about how some people might prefer living freely to
being subject to the king caused me to lose a lot of my empathy for her and
for the Persian royal family. It's not as though the King sacrificed the
lives of his subjects for a noble cause of some kind. The first Persian war
was almost entirely about conquest, it seems, and the second was about
conquest and revenge. (How dare those people fight off our attempts to
resist them?)

Also somewhat sad is the fact that probably almost no one in the Persian
army was able to make a free choice as to whether to participate in that
army or not. Was there anyone in the Persian empire other than the king who
could truly act as a free person?

Bottom line, for a while there I felt a bit bad for the Persians, but as
Atossa revealed ever greater degrees of cluelessness and lack of empathy
for the Greeks, the less empathy I ended up feeling for the Persians. That
said, I didn't end up feeling totally cold towards them, because there is
something inherently tragic in succumbing to the hubris that we all seem
vulnerable to as part of human nature.

Mark



On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 7:03 PM Andre Stipanovic <AStipanovic at hockaday.org>
wrote:

> Great discussion tonight, and thank you for your input and questions.  I
> am looking forward to next month’s discussion already.
>
> I have attached a list of short bios from you all so far.  If you would
> like to introduce yourself, it is not too late.  Please reply to all and
> tell us about yourself.  I will add you to the list and resend later in the
> week.
>
> In the meantime, please send your questions about The Persians or about
> next month’s reading to the group via email.  We can chew on these
> questions in the meantime and start listing our questions for next time.
> Sarah Ruden will be on the call with us then, so think about what we would
> like to ask her about.  She has translated much in Greek and Latin.
>
> Andre
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