Who was the first Superhero? Part 3
Welcome back to the Superhero world. So far we have sought to arrive at the earliest Superheroes in multiple ways — the first ‘hero’ in history and the earliest Greek Heroes, as the Greeks bore the concept of Heroes. In an attempt to continue building my non-cinematic universe, I came across another definition of the ‘first Superhero’ that must be explored.
“a chief character in a book or play, identified with good qualities, and with whom the reader is expected to sympathize.”
As we’ve explored superheroes in books (the legend of Gilgamesh, or affectionately, Gilly), I wanted to investigate their appearance in ‘plays’ a bit more. The origin of plays or theatre is fairly disputed, in that people aren’t sure what to call ‘theatre’. If one includes tribal dancing and religious rituals as theatre, then origins can be traced back to over 8500 years ago. Theatre has evolved through the ages — from dances, to storytelling and even tributes to Gods. However, the Greeks are credited for pioneering the modern version of theatre, along with christening the art-form (Theatron: “a place to behold”). Their relatively modern styles birthed structured forms of drama and led to the earliest play competition called City Dionysis, in around 500 BC (in honour of Dionysus — the God of wine and fertility).
Now, granted that we’ve seen Spiderman take stage on Broadway more recently, but seeing a superhero in the Amphitheatre in 500 BC must have been quite a challenge. But never underestimate the Greeks. They were clever enough to come up with stories of Heroes, they are certainly clever enough to create a spectacle on stage. To kick off our exploration of superheroes in plays, let’s go back to the Father of Tragedy — Aeschylus.
The Tragedian
Aeschylus was first among great Greek Tragedians. He introduced a number of inventive elements in plays including, (and behold) a second person! It is believed that plays were mostly single person shows, but in came Aeschylus’s introduction of a second actor, and later, even a third, which enhanced the forms’ ability to showcase intense drama. He won the City Dionysis competition a number of times and mostly wrote tragic trilogies or tetralogies (a trilogy of tragedies followed by comic satire, or ‘satyr’ in Greek). He is estimated to have written almost 90 plays, but sadly only 7 survive today — including the famed Oresteia trilogy that could inspire any number of Law and Order episodes. Those 7 plays are some of the oldest plays that have survived the passage of time and of them, ‘The Persians’ holds the chronological medal for being ‘Earliest’. From Aeschylus’ catalogue we know that ‘The Persian’ was the second play in a trilogy sequenced — ‘Phineus’, ‘ The Persians’ and ‘Glaucus’. Though Phineus and Glaucus were never retrieved, our interpretations from their name and the times can shed light on our question at hand. But first, a quick look at the earliest play, as the earliest of most things deserve a look.
The Persian
The Persian is based on the Battle of Salamis, which you might remember from the movie “300: Rise of an empire”. Aeschylus, himself a participant in the battle, could have used those heroic acts to dramatise the Greek victory; instead, he went down a different, but interesting, path.
The Persian is set in Susa, one of the Persian capitals, where Xerxes’ mother Atossa hears of her son’s defeat and gets anxious. She gets the ‘Chorus of Old Men’ to call on the spirit of Darius, her late husband and king of Persia, to inform him of the loss. Darius’ reaction to this might very well have been one of the earliest “disappointed father” speeches in history. In his poltergeist form, Darius complains to Atossa about how terrible her son is at military strategy. He goes so far as to prophesize another defeat for the Persians, before heading back to the afterlife in a huff.
On the face of it, there were no real superheroes in this story, but there was a reference to the Heroism of the Greeks (as it is written by a Greek). So, maybe not the most satisfactory appearance of Superhero effort, especially since battles have been fought a-plenty in history and many heroes have emerged from them.
The Confusing Glaucus
Now Glaucus is confusing in that historians could never figure out if the name referred to Glaucus Pontius or Glaucus Potnieus. Glaucus Pontius, if the avid reader of my blog my recall was Bellerophon’s father and is mainly known to have died a violent death at the hands of horses cursed by Aphrodite. Glaucus Potneius was a man who became a Sea-God after eating some magical herb so he is disqualified straight away as I don’t include Gods as Superheroes.
Phineus
The first play in the trilogy however, might conclude our search for the first superhero — if we stretch our imagination a bit. This play was titled Phineus, which presumably refers to the tale of Jason and the Argonauts rescuing the blind King Phineus of Salmydessus from the Harpies. There are many versions of how Phineus lost his sight. In one, he was punished by Zeus for revealing the future of mankind (which is weird because, as a seer, that was his exact job-description). In another version, Phineus gets his own stepsons killed off, and gets to pick his punishment from Zeus — death or blindness. Phineas picked blindness, claiming he was happy not ever seeing the Sun again. This apparently angered Helios, the Sun God, who sent the Harpies to destroy all his kingdom’s food.
Side note: The Harpies were large ugly birds with women’s faces and were often the personifications of strong winds. Aeschylus gave the best (and grotesque) description for Harpies in another play:
“Before this man an extraordinary band of women [i.e. harpies] slept, seated on thrones. No! Not women, but rather Gorgons I call them; and yet I cannot compare them to forms of Gorgons either. Once before I saw some creatures in a painting, carrying off the feast of Phineus; but these are wingless in appearance, black, altogether disgusting; they snore with repulsive breaths, they drip from their eyes hateful drops; their attire is not fit to bring either before the statues of the gods or into the homes of men. I have never seen the tribe that produced this company, nor the land that boasts of rearing this brood with impunity and does not grieve for its labor afterwards.”
– Pythian Priestess of Apollo (Aeschylus)
Going back to the ‘story, in the course of a separate quest, Jason and his Argonaut crew — which was mostly made up of Greek Heroes (including the likes of Heracles) end up in Salmydessus when looking for a way to get the Golden Fleece from Colchis. In very Sholay fashion, when Jason hears of King Phineus’ plight, he comforts him with the promise of getting rid of the Harpies. In one version of the story, the Argonauts simply killed the Harpies when they arrived. In a more interesting version though, two Argonauts — Calais and Zetes, together known as Boreads (wind brothers), chased the Harpies when they came towards Phineus. Iris, the divine messenger and sister to the Harpies, came to her sister’s protection by bargaining with the Boreads for the Harpies’ lives. She argued that if the Boreads killed the Harpies, it might anger the gods who put them there. Iris instead promised that the Harpies would leave the old blind man alone if the Boreads turned back. Deal struck, and job done, the Boreads went back to King Phineus with the happy news.
As a big thanks to Jason and his crew, Phineus told them about the location of Colchis. He also revealed the trick to pass the Clashing Rocks (Symplegades) that were known to crush anything trying to pass through. And the rest as they say, is mythology.
Verdict
So, as it seems, there are a few candidates from these plays for the Superhero spot. There were the Greek Naval generals who fought valiantly against the Persians, but again, they didn’t really take stage, and hence don’t fit the bill. One of the Glaucus’ was a God (disqualified) and the other was meh. But Jason and his crew — they were already a certified hero. In fact, Calais and Zetes actually chased away creatures of torment that had a God’s blessing. If I had to pick one, based on an act on stage alone — I’d bestow the title of the first Superheroes on stage to Calais and Zetes. They weren’t the biggest names in the Hero or Superhero world, but they did most of the heavy flying in this story and their journey with Jason was pretty epic.
I hope that was fun for you. I had a great time researching ancient plays and play-writers. A big shout out to Roman play-writers whom I couldn’t include in this. My next piece will be back to demystifying design tools. Till next time — cheers!
