Aeschylus

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.^3,1 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.^9,1 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).^31,11 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