Victory at Salamis in 480 BC was a hugely triumphant moment for Athens and all Greece. A small city-state had beaten the greatest super-power in existence at that time. Not surprisingly this victory soon became a subject for the theatre.

The playwright Aeschylus submitted his tragedy The Persians for competition in the annual dramatists competition in 472 BC - eight years after the dramatic events it describes. The aristocrat who financed his production was Pericles, then in his twenties.

The Persians is the oldest surviving play from Classical Athens and tells the story of the Persian defeat from the perspective of the vanquished Persians themselves. Xerxes is portrayed as a king led astray by his own hubris, or foolhardy pride, who offends the gods with his arrogance and nearly looses his entire empire in the process.

The spirit of Xerxes' father, Darius, also appears as wise and just ruler reprimanding his son for the military disaster (despite his own defeat at Marathon being the cause of the troubles in the first place!). It is Darius who reminds his son that future tragedy can be avoided only if Xerxes learns to respect the natural limits of his power i.e. the border with Greece.

Most surprising of all is Aeschylus' generally sympathetic treatment of the Persians. After all, the war had claimed many Athenian lives and had taken place less than ten years before.