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The MouseionAeschylus

Aeschylus

7 works in the library, 7 with an English translation.

Ancient Athenian playwright, born at Elefsina. From Wikidata; Wikipedia.

Lived
6th–5th c. BC
Kinds of writing
Tragedy (7)
Dialect
Attic
Analysed
48,248 words

The 7 works

First the work Aeschylus is best known for; then the works here with a translation and the most familiar vocabulary: the fewest rare words to look up. That is vocabulary only; grammar, dialect and ideas may still be demanding.

The road of the text

Follow the text from Aeschylus's own day to the book in your hands. The gaps are the long silences between one mark and the next.

Before you read. Little numbers like 1 are footnotes. Tap one and it jumps to the source at the bottom of the page, so you can check us. Ancient tradition / legend This is what ancient writers told; it may not be what happened. Debated among scholars The evidence allows more than one reading, and specialists disagree. No label? Then the sources simply state it as fact.

  • The author
  • Readers
  • Copies
  • Print and editions
  1. c. 525 BCThe authorBorn at Eleusis, in Attica, about 525 BC1
  2. about 30 years later499 BCThe authorFirst competes as a playwright, aged 261
  3. 9 years later490 BCThe authorFights at Marathon, where his brother Cynegeirus is killed1,3
  4. 6 years later484 BCThe authorFirst victory at the Dionysia1
  5. 4 years later480 BCThe authorFights at sea off Artemisium and at Salamis2
  6. 8 years later472 BCThe authorPersians wins first prize; Pericles pays for the production1,4
  7. 4 years later468 BCThe authorBeaten by the young Sophocles; leaves for Sicily6
  8. 1 year later467 BCThe authorSeven against Thebes and its trilogy win first prize7
  9. about 4 years laterc. 463 BCThe authorThe Suppliants and its trilogy, probably in 4638
  10. about 5 years later458 BCThe authorThe Oresteia wins first prize9
  11. about 2 years laterc. 456 BCThe authorDies at Gela, in Sicily (456 or 455 BC)1
  12. about 50 years later405 BCReadersAristophanes' Frogs wins first prize, with Aeschylus as a character11,31
  13. about 70 years laterc. 336 BCCopiesIn the years of Lycurgus (in charge of the city's money from 336 BC) a law has official copies of the three tragedians kept; actors must not depart from them14,30
  14. about 1,310 years laterc. AD 975CopiesThe Medicean manuscript (M), with all seven plays, is written in the late tenth century or about AD 100016,27
  15. about 450 years later1423CopiesM arrives in Florence16
  16. 95 years later1518Print and editionsFirst printed edition (Aldine press, Venice): six plays, with the Agamemnon and Libation Bearers run together18
  17. 34 years later1552Print and editionsRobortello's Venice edition separates the two plays for the first time18
  18. about 400 years later1952Print and editionsA papyrus published this year re-dates The Suppliants to the 460s8

Life and work

Checked against sources · 30 September 2026

Aeschylus was born about 525 BC at Eleusis, a small town some 27 km from Athens, and he fought for Athens against Persia.1 In 490 BC he and his brother Cynegeirus stood in the line at Marathon.1 Herodotus tells how Cynegirus son of Euphorion died there, his hand cut off with an axe as he took hold of a Persian ship to stop it getting away.1,3 Aeschylus fought again ten years later, at sea, off Artemisium and at Salamis.2

When he came to write his own epitaph, he left out the plays. Pausanias says he recorded only his name, his father's name and his city, and “that he had witnesses to his valor in the grove at Marathon and in the Persians who landed there”.2

He first competed in 499 BC, when he was 26, and won his first victory in 484.1 He wrote an estimated 70 to 90 plays, and seven survive; the ancient Life of Aeschylus says he took first prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times.1

His Persians won first prize in 472 BC, with Pericles paying for the production as choregos.1,4 It is the oldest Greek play that survives, and the only surviving tragedy about events of its own day: the Persian Wars.4 It was a risky subject. Some twenty years earlier Phrynichus had staged The Fall of Miletus; the whole theatre wept, and the Athenians fined him a thousand drachmas “for bringing to mind a calamity that affected them so personally”.5

In 468 BC he lost to a newcomer, the young Sophocles, and Plutarch says he took it so hard that he soon left Athens for Sicily.6 He had been there before, invited by Hieron of Syracuse in the 470s.1 Back in Athens, Seven against Thebes and its trilogy won first prize in 467.7 The Suppliants was long taken to be his earliest play; a papyrus published in 1952 showed it was one of his last, probably staged in 463.8 In 458 the Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides) won first prize. It is the only complete trilogy of Greek plays that survives, and of Proteus, the satyr play that followed it, only fragments are left.1,9 He died at Gela, in Sicily, in 456 or 455 BC.1

Ancient tradition / legend Valerius Maximus has a stranger ending: an eagle, looking for a rock to crack a tortoise on, dropped it on the poet's head.1

What he changed

Aristotle says Aeschylus “first raised the number of the actors from one to two”; he cut down the chorus and gave the leading part to the dialogue. Sophocles then added a third actor and painted scenery.10

His words were famous for their size. In Aristophanes' Frogs, which won first prize in 405 BC, half a century after his death, the character of Euripides mocks him: halfway through a play he would come out with «ῥήματʼ ἂν βόεια δώδεκʼ εἶπεν», “a dozen ox-sized words” (our translation).11,31 He could also play with a name until it rang like a bell. The chorus of the Agamemnon sings that Helen was named truly, «ἑλένας, ἕλανδρος» and the rest: in Smyth's English, “a Hell she proved to ships, Hell to men, Hell to city”.12

Debated among scholars He was also said to have given away something he should not have. Aristotle, explaining how a man can do wrong without knowing it, mentions people who say “they were not aware that the matter was a secret, as Aeschylus said of the Mysteries”.13 Aristotle says no more. The story is usually told as a charge of impiety, for revealing some of the secrets of the Mysteries on stage.1

After his death his plays were honoured in a way no one else's were: his were the only tragedies allowed to be staged again at the competitions.1

How the words reached us

Manuscripts & transmission

Passed from hand to hand

From Athens to Alexandria. Athens itself kept an official text. A law of the statesman Lycurgus, who ran the city's finances from 336 BC,30 had the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides written out and kept in a public archive; the clerk of the city read them to the actors, and it was “unlawful to depart from the authorized text in acting”.14

Ancient tradition / legend Galen tells what happened to those copies. Ptolemy III of Egypt borrowed them against a deposit of fifteen talents, had fine copies made, sent the copies back, and kept the originals, letting Athens keep the money.15

One book in Florence. In 1423 a manuscript arrived in Florence that had been written about AD 1000: the Medicean manuscript, called M, now Laurentianus 32.9. It holds all seven plays, including the Libation Bearers (though its beginning is lost) and The Suppliants.16 The same book holds Sophocles and Apollonius of Rhodes.27 Those two plays, the Libation Bearers and The Suppliants, exist only in M and its copies.16

Three plays for school. In Byzantine times a smaller selection was read: Prometheus, Seven against Thebes and Persians, the “Byzantine triad”. Of about 150 manuscripts of Aeschylus, almost all contain only these three.16

The Agamemnon. Besides M and its copies, the Agamemnon and Eumenides survive in three other manuscripts, at least one of them the work of the fourteenth-century scholar Demetrius Triclinius.16 For a large part of the Agamemnon two of these manuscripts (called Tr and F) are the only basis for the text.17

Print. The first printed edition came from the Aldine press at Venice in 1518. It has only six plays: its manuscripts had fused the Agamemnon and the Libation Bearers, leaving out lines 311–1066 of the Agamemnon. The error was first put right in 1552, in Francesco Robortello's edition at Venice.18

Textual variants

Where the copies disagree

A lost opening, saved by a joke. The Libation Bearers has lost its opening in M, the Medicean manuscript in Florence.16 Its first lines are known because Aristophanes quotes them in the Frogs, where “Euripides” picks at them: «ἥκω γὰρ ἐς γῆν τήνδε καὶ κατέρχομαι» “I have come to this land and I return”, he says, is saying the same thing twice.19 In the reader's Greek text of the play these opening lines are printed as the editor's additions, with gaps where words are still missing.20

Debated among scholars Is Prometheus Bound his? No one doubted it in antiquity. Since the nineteenth century scholars have questioned it on grounds of language, metre, vocabulary and style; Mark Griffith (1977) made the case at length, and Martin West suggested it could be the work of Aeschylus' son Euphorion, also a playwright. The question is still argued.21

Debated among scholars A new ending for Seven against Thebes. The play ends with a herald announcing that Polynices must not be buried, and Antigone saying she will bury him anyway (from line 1011 in the reader's text).22 Many think this ending was written about fifty years after Aeschylus died, because Sophocles' Antigone had made the story popular.7

Actors' changes. Lycurgus' law forbade actors to depart from the official text, which suggests they had been doing so.14

Books to read it in

  • H. W. Smyth, Aeschylus, 2 vols (Loeb Classical Library, 1922–26).23 The Greek text and the English translation of the plays in the reader are Perseus's copies of Smyth's.
  • A. Sidgwick, Aeschyli Tragoediae (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1902).23 The reader's second Greek text of each play.
  • Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon.23 The reader's second English Agamemnon, from The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (London, 1889).
  • D. L. Page, Aeschyli Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoedias (Oxford Classical Texts, 1972).24
  • M. L. West, Aeschyli Tragoediae (Teubner, Stuttgart, 1990).25
  • A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylus, 3 vols (Loeb Classical Library 145, 146 and 505, 2008).26 The third volume holds the fragments of the lost plays.
  • S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 3: Aeschylus (Göttingen, 1985).28 The standard edition of the fragments.
  • E. Fraenkel, Aeschylus: Agamemnon, 3 vols (Oxford, 1950).29 A famous commentary on one play.

Where this comes from

Sources (31)
  1. Wikipedia, Aeschylus (his life, the plays, victories, Sicily, the Mysteries, restaging after his death)
  2. Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.14.5, in the reader (the epitaph; Artemisium and Salamis)
  3. Herodotus, Histories 6.114, in the reader (Cynegirus at Marathon)
  4. Wikipedia, The Persians (472 BC, Pericles, the oldest surviving play)
  5. Herodotus, Histories 6.21.2, in the reader (Phrynichus fined)
  6. Plutarch, Cimon 8, in the reader
  7. Wikipedia, Seven Against Thebes (467 BC; the rewritten ending)
  8. Wikipedia, The Suppliants (Aeschylus) (the papyrus of 1952 and the date)
  9. Wikipedia, Oresteia (458 BC; the only surviving trilogy; Proteus)
  10. Aristotle, Poetics 4.16, in the reader
  11. Aristophanes, Frogs 924, in the reader
  12. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 685–690, in the reader
  13. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, in the reader
  14. Plutarch (attributed), Lives of the Ten Orators: Lycurgus, in the reader
  15. Wikipedia, Library of Alexandria (Galen's story of Ptolemy III and the Athenian copies)
  16. Roger Pearse, Notes on the transmission of Aeschylus (after T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Art of Aeschylus, 1982)
  17. Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2025.07.38, review of Edith Hall, Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Liverpool, 2024)
  18. Wikipedia, Editio princeps (Aeschylus, Venice 1518; Robortello 1552)
  19. Aristophanes, Frogs 1126–1174, in the reader
  20. Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 1–5, in the reader
  21. Wikipedia, Prometheus Bound (the authorship question)
  22. Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 1011, in the reader
  23. Perseus's copies of Aeschylus shown in the reader: each file's header names its edition (Smyth, Heinemann 1922 and 1926; Sidgwick, Clarendon Press 1902; Browning, Smith, Elder 1889)
  24. Oxford University Press, Aeschylus, Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoediae (Page, Oxford Classical Texts)
  25. The Classical Review 42.2 (1992), “The New Teubner Aeschylus”: review of M. L. West, Aeschyli Tragoediae (Stuttgart, 1990)
  26. Harvard University Press, Aeschylus I: Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound (Sommerstein, Loeb Classical Library 145, 2008)
  27. Biblissima, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 32.9 (tenth century; Sophocles, Aeschylus, Apollonius Rhodius)
  28. The Classical Review, review of S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 3: Aeschylus (Göttingen, 1985)
  29. The Classical Review, “Fraenkel's Agamemnon”: review of E. Fraenkel, Aeschylus: Agamemnon, 3 vols (Oxford, 1950)
  30. Wikipedia, Lycurgus of Athens (his years in charge of the finances; the law on the tragedians)
  31. Wikipedia, The Frogs (Lenaia, 405 BC, first prize)

We checked every statement above against these sources on 30 September 2026. Where they disagree, we say so. What we could not confirm, we left out.

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