SOURCE: "Aeschylus: The Suppliant Maidens, in The Poetry of Greek Tragedy, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1958, pp. 11-27.

In the essay below, Lattimore examines how Aeschylus creates dramatic action out of the static situation presented in Suppliants (here translated as The Suppliant Maidens).

Io, daughter of Inachus and princess of Argos, was loved by Zeus and hated by Hera. Transformed into a cow and harried by the stinging fly which was the ghost of the herdsman Argos, she fled across the world to Egypt. There Zeus stroked her with his hand, and she conceived and bore a son, Epaphus (meaning "born of the touch"). From him, three generations later, were descended Danaus and Aegyptus. The fifty sons of Aegyptus desired to marry the fifty daughters of Danaus. These refused them and with their father fled across the sea, pursued by their suitors, to Argos. Here they took up a...