Eratosthenes and the Persian war tetralogy of Aeschylus

The starting point of this article is Alan Sommerstein’s proposal to consider Aeschylus’ 472 production as a linked tetralogy, based on the theme of the war against the Persians. The tetralogy comprised the tragedies Phineus, Persians, Glaucus of Potniae and the satyr drama Prometheus Pyrphoros. My paper discusses, in the light of Sommerstein’s reconstruction, the puzzling statements about the Sicilian production of Persians found in the scholia on Ar. Frogs 1028, which quote Eratosthenes of Cyrene and Herodicus of Babylon. In particular, when Eratosthenes stated that Persians was restaged by Aeschylus in Syracuse, he might have actually been discussing a restaging of the whole production and not of the single tragedy; the information we read in Herodicus about a version of Persians that included the battle of Plataea could derive from a misunderstanding of Eratosthenes’ statement.