Chapter Two looks at the tragedians Aeschylus and Phrynichus and their dramatizations of the Wars on the Athenian public stage. In Aeschylus, we can see the origins of the image of the Persian as "Other" and the development of a view of Athenian superiority that was based on the city's role in the defeat of the Persians.
The next two chapters examine a revival of the theme after the Wars had ceased to be discussed by contemporaries. The epic poet Choerilus of Samos (Chapter Three) was the first poet to revisit the theme. His decision to take up this unusual topic seems to be connected with his desire to find novelty at a time when the genres of the late fifth century seem to have been played out: in addition to treating a topic that had long been out of fashion, he composed in the form of epic poetry, a genre that had not been used for some time. Timotheus of Miletus (Chapter Four) had a similar interest in poetic novelty, adapting the emergent style of the New Music to the old theme.
I examine these accounts to determine the effect of the genre on the poet's approach to the Wars, the debt of the treatments to their poetic predecessors, and the place of each account within its historical circumstances.
Chapter One treats the lyric and elegiac accounts of Simonides and Pindar, who were among the first to compose poetic praise of the victors and consolation for the fallen. The narratives of Simonides, written for Spartan and panhellenic audiences, offer a useful counter-balance to the primarily Athenian accounts in the other authors. For the most part, the works of Simonides, which were composed shortly after the Wars for performance at venues intended to commemorate the victories, are concerned with consoling the survivors, whereas other poets tend to concentrate on the victories themselves.
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