ABSTRACT
The long catalogue of the Persian war dead in the Messenger’s speech is similar in form to what is known to epigraphers as the Athenian casualty lists. A few who have considered the form of the Messenger’s speech suggest a similarity to an epic catalogue of dead warriors. This chapter examines the similarities between this speech and the formal features of the casualty lists to show how the poetry of Aeschylus incorporates yet also transforms these features. The casualty list may well have been familiar to the audience, and especially to Aeschylus himself, who fought at Marathon. The fallen Persians of Marathon received the most cursory of burials, and in the tragic casualty list of Aeschylus’ Persians, the fallen Persians of Salamis are left with no burial at all. Aeschylus’ framing of the contemporary events at Salamis belongs, of course, to tragedy and not to the discourse of the casualty lists or their associated ceremonies.
