The supplicants (Aeschylus)

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The supplicants ( Greek  Ἱκέτιδες Hiketides , Latin supplices ) is a classic Greek tragedy by Aeschylus .

action

The fifty daughters of Danaos flee from Egypt, because they are to marry the sons of Aegyptus , their own cousins, there. Why they refuse to marry remains unclear. Pursued by the unwanted suitors, they reach Argos , the homeland of their family, where they plead with King Pelasgos for acceptance and protection. This gets into a moral-political conflict. According to his conscience and for legal reasons, he has to give shelter to the women because of their Argentinian descent, politically he risks a war with the homeland of the abandoned husbands.

Staging

Hiketides begins directly with the entry of the choir and not, as was customary later, with a prologue in iambic trimeters (the prologue consists either of a speech by an actor or a dialogue between two actors). Danaos , wearing the costume of a seafarer, enters with the choir . The fifty girls are wrapped in unusual clothes, white robes with headscarves. You are dark-skinned. The choir leader explains the concern of the Danaids, protection in the land of Danaos. It begins with looking up at Zeus and then leads to an invocation of all the gods and the ancestors who became god.

Importance of the work

The piece is Aeschylus' least known work. It is unclear whether the piece is part of a Danaid trilogy or tetralogy; equally controversial is whether it was listed first or second. What is remarkable is the unusual position of the choir, which is not just a simple companion here, but also a carrier of the action. Due to the style of the play, it was assumed that it is the oldest work by Aeschylus and thus the oldest traditional Greek play at all. However, a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchos shows that Sophocles also took part in the agon at which Aeschylus won with the supplicants . Since Sophocles first attendance for 468 BC. Is documented and the same was victorious in that year, Aeschylus 467 BC. BC won the contest with seven against Thebes , the pleading for protection can only be heard in 466 BC at the earliest. Have been performed.

In 2013 Elfriede Jelinek used Aischylos' piece as the basis and starting point for her work Die Schutzbefohlenen , which thematizes the inhumane accommodation of refugees in Austria based on a protest camp in the Vienna Votive Church in 2012.

expenditure

• Aeschylus: Tragedies and Fragments. Translated and with explanations and an essay "Understanding the Works", edited by Oscar Werner . Series Rowohlts classics of literature and science , published by Grassi, Ernesto in collaboration with Hess, Walter. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1966, ISBN 7-389-64013-8 .
• Aeschylus, suppliant women . Ed. by Anthony Bowen . Oxbow Books, Oxford 2013.

literature

• Susanne Gödde : The Hikesie's Drama. Ritual and rhetoric in Aeschylus' Hiketiden. Aschendorff, Münster 2000, ISBN 978-3-402-05414-7 .
• Wolfgang Schadewaldt : The Greek tragedy. Tübingen Lectures Volume 4, with the participation of Maria Schadewaldt, edited by Ingeborg Schudoma. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1996³, ISBN 3-518-28548-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Schadewaldt : The Greek tragedy. Tübingen Lectures Volume 4. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1996³, p. 116 f.