DESC: The second and only remaining tragedy from an otherwise lost tetralogy, "The Persians" is an early play based loosely on the Persian Wars. Rather than accurately dramatizing the war, Aeschylus decided instead to focus on the tragic demise of the Persian empire, the folly of Xerxes that brought about the downfall, and the lamentation of Xerxes' father, Darius, who appears as a ghost to declaim the ruin of his once-great empire.