Aeschylus

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) is often called the father of tragedy. Our knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and what we understand about earlier Greek tragedy comes mostly from inferences drawn from his surviving plays. Aristotle noted that Aeschylus increased the number of characters onstage and introduced conflict between them; before him, characters only interacted with the chorus. He wrote an estimated 70 to 90 plays, but only seven survive complete. Scholars debate whether one of these, *Prometheus Bound*, was actually written by his son Euphorion. Fragments of other plays survive in quotations, and more are still being found on Egyptian papyri. Aeschylus was probably the first to present plays as a trilogy, and his *Oresteia* is the only ancient example that still exists. At least one of his plays was shaped by the Persian invasion of Greece in 480–479 BC. That work, *The Persians*, is one of the few known classical Greek tragedies about contemporary events and the only one that survives. The Persian Wars mattered so much to Aeschylus that his epitaph mentions his service at Marathon but says nothing about his plays.

Aeschylus was born around 525 BC in Eleusis, a small town northwest of Athens. Some scholars think his birth date was calculated by counting back 40 years from his first victory at the Great Dionysia. His family was wealthy and well established. His father, Euphorion, was said to be a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica, though this may have been invented later to explain the grandeur of Aeschylus’s plays. As a youth, he worked in a vineyard. According to the 2nd-century AD geographer Pausanias, the god Dionysus visited him in a dream and told him to focus on tragedy. He wrote his first tragedy immediately, and his first performance was in 499 BC, when he was 26. He won his first victory at the Dionysia in 484 BC.

In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power. Cleisthenes’s reforms emphasized the deme over family tradition. By the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family lived in the deme of Eleusis. The Persian Wars shaped his life and career. In 490 BC, he and his brother Cynegeirus fought at the Battle of Marathon against Darius I. The Athenians won, and Cynegeirus was killed trying to stop a Persian ship from retreating; his countrymen hailed him as a hero. In 480 BC, Aeschylus served again, with his younger brother Ameinias, against Xerxes I at the Battle of Salamis. He also fought at Plataea in 479 BC. Ion of Chios confirmed Aeschylus’s war record and his role at Salamis. Salamis is central to *The Persians*, his oldest surviving play, performed in 472 BC, which won first prize at the Dionysia.

Aeschylus was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult of Demeter based in his hometown. According to Aristotle, he was accused of impiety for revealing some of the cult’s secrets onstage. Other sources say an angry mob tried to kill him, but he fled. Heracleides of Pontus claims the audience tried to stone him. Aeschylus took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. At his trial, he pleaded ignorance and was acquitted; the jury was sympathetic because of his and his brothers’ military service. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, his brother Ameinias helped acquit him by showing the jury the stump of a hand he lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. In truth, the award for bravery at Salamis went to Ameinias of Pallene, not Aeschylus’s brother.

Aeschylus traveled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BC, invited by Hiero I, tyrant of Syracuse. He produced *The Women of Aetna* during one trip and restaged *The Persians*. By 473 BC, after the death of his rival Phrynichus, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite at the Dionysia, winning first prize almost every time. In 472 BC, he staged the production that included *The Persians*, with Pericles as choregos.

Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both tragic poets. Euphorion won first prize in 431 BC against Sophocles and Euripides. A nephew, Philocles (his sister’s son), also a tragic poet, won first prize against Sophocles’s *Oedipus Rex*. Aeschylus had at least two brothers, Cynegeirus and Ameinias.

In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting Gela, where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle.