From The Persians"Defeat is impossibleDefeat is unthinkableWe have always been the favorites of fate.Fortune has cupped usIn her golden palms.It has only been a matterOf choosing our desire. Which fruitTo pick from the nodding tree."This chilling passage is from Ellen McLaughlin’s new adaptation of The Persians by Aeschylus, the earliest surviving play in Western literature, an elegy for a fallen civi-lization and a warning to its new conqueror. As Margo Jefferson wrote in the New York...
