Vinci: Artaserse (Artaxerxes)
some perspectives vis-à-vis ancient Persian history
Those of you who followed this blog at it its beginning stage would have heard of this rather obscure opera, which was put on stage by a complete cast of countertenors on stage in France in 2014. The story recounts the accession of the Persian throne of the King Artaxerxes I “the Longhanded”, fifth King of the Achaemenid Dynasty and the third son of Xerxes I “the Great”. The succession of the throne was a clot of messy murders, both in history and in the opera.
So who is Artaxerxes (in Italian, Artaserse) and all those funny names? This would date to Ancient Egypt, where the massive pyramids came from. But these events all happened around two millennia after those pyramids were built, in the Late Period, when Egypt wasn’t ruled by Egyptians anymore but by a stream of foreign rulers. The Egyptian priest Manetho who made relative archaeological datings in Egyptology possible with a rather comprehensive kings list gave a few Persian kings credit for their rule in Egypt (Depuydt, 2006). Artaxerxes was one of them, but Manetho also down another name before Artaxerxes and after his dad Xerxes (Serse): Artabanus (Artabano), attesting Artabanus’s historical significance despite conflicting accounts and fragmentary evidence.
As in the opera, Artabanus killed Xerxes. That was not disputed at all, but the Greeks differ in their narratives about the chronology towards Xerxes’s murder: Ctesias, the physician of Artaxerxes’s grandson (Artaxerxes II), claimed that Xerxes was killed first and Artaxerxes’s brother, Crown Prince Darius was accused of killing his own father, for which he was executed. But Aristotle said that Artabanus killed Darius first and, at the fear of being avenged by the king, killed Xerxes first. Regardless of the dating, it is clear that Artabanus contributed to the deaths of both Xerxes and Darius. It was rather apparent that Metastasio based Artaserse on Ctesias’ Persicas and Darius didn’t even show up in the play (as an absent character, i.e. mentioned in passing but not as an onstage character), probably a way to downplay his significance in the narrative and exemplify his brother Artaxerxes I’s eventual clemency for the bad guys. Ctesias, on the other hand, was considered unreliable by some modern historians (Brown, 1955).
One peculiar detail in the opera was that the real Artaxerxes, upon knowing BOTH his brother and father died in Artabanus’s hands, did not condemn him at all. Perhaps Metastasio had access to other Persian artifacts or sources when he was writing this libretto, but there was this rather ambiguous emotion from Artaxerxes when Artabanus was persuading Artaxerxes to kill the Crown Prince. It was understandable at some point, though, because were it not for Darius’s death, he would never have gotten on the throne (he was the third son, and the Persian way of succession was by the eldest son as well). Hence, while Artaserse was the merciful king, he was definitely not just a merciful king but was willing to take on his brother(s)’ lives for the Persian throne.
In Manetho’s kings list, Artabanus did reign as a king for around 7 months, and some sources like Ptolemy of Alexandria’s Canon put him on the kings list as well. In any case, Artaxerxes’s clemency in the opera certainly did not last long in reality though, because it was recorded that he slain Artabanus after a few months of his accession. Moreover, there was another real character in the opera besides the mains: Megabyzus. Some few years after his succession, Artaxerxes got a rebellion in Egypt. The borderline-comedic while actually evil general chasing after Semira (?Semiramis) in the opera named Megabise was referring to Megabyzus. In the opera Megabise revolted and was killed by Artaserse’s friend Arbace, but in history Megabyzus was the general that quelled a revolt during Artaxerxes’s reign. I also put Semira’s suspected ‘real’ Persian name after an interrogation because the original Semiramis was supposed to be a female Persian ruler at least 400 years before Artaxerxes’ time — just something interesting to consider as well.
References
- Brown, T. S. (1955). The Reliability of Megasthenes. The American Journal of Philology, 76(1), 18–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/291703
- Depuydt, L. (2006). Saite and Persian Egypt, 664 BC–332 BC (Dyns. 26–31, Psammetichus I to Alexander’s Conquest of Egypt). In E. Hornung, R. Krauss, and D.A. Warburton (Eds.) Ancient Egyptian Chronology (pp. 265–283). https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047404002_018
Cite as: Bachmanov, G. (December 27, 2023). Vinci: Artaserse (Artaxerxes): some perspectives vis-à-vis ancient Persian history. Opera of the Day. https://operaoftheday.medium.com/vinci-artaserse-23b49ba2bb0d
