Comprehensive information and links about Aeschylus

) was a playwright of ancient Greece. Aeschylus was the earliest of the three greatest Greek tragedians, the others being Sophocles and Euripides.

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Biography

Born in Eleusis, a district of Athens, he wrote his first plays in 498 BC, but his earliest surviving play is possibly i, written in approximately 490 BC. That same year, he participated in the Battle of Marathon, and in 480 BC he fought at the Battle of Salamis. Salamis was the subject of his play i his earliest surviving play.

Aeschylus frequently travelled to Sicily, where the tyrant of Gela was a patron. In 458 BC he travelled there for the last time; according to traditional legend, Aeschylus was killed in 456 BC when an eagle (or more likely a Lammergeier), mistaking the playwright's bald crown for a stone, dropped a tortoise on his head (though some accounts differ, claiming it was a stone dropped by an eagle or vulture that likely mistook his bald head for the egg of a flightless bird).

The inion on his gravestone was written by himself before his death, and makes no mention of his theatrical renown. He chose to commemorate his military achievements only. It read:

"This gravestone covers Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, from Athens, who died in fertile Gela. The field of Marathon will speak of his bravery, and so will the longhaired Mede who learnt it well."

In Greek: "Αισχύλον Ευφορίωνος Αθηναίον τόδε κεύθει μνήμα, πεπνυμένον πυροφόροιο Γέλας. Αλκήν δ' ευδόκιμον μαραθώνειον άλσος αν είποι και βαθυχαιτήεις Μήδος επιστάμενος"

Works

Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis, concentrating on man's position in the cosmos in relation to the gods, divine law and divine punishment in the Oresteia trilogy. Besides the literary merit of his work, Aeschylus' greatest contribution to the theater was the addition of a second actor to his scenes. Previously, the action took place between a single actor and the Greek chorus. This invention was only attributed to him by later tradition, however.

Aeschylus is known to have written about 90 plays, only 7 of which remain extant:

. Attributed to Aeschylus in antiquity, it is generally considered by modern scholars to be the work of an unknown 4th century BC playwright, quite possibly Ion, Aeschylus' son. Its language is much simpler than that which Aeschylus usually utilises, without nearly as much complex metaphor and imagery, and is closer to Sophocles' (though it is not at all suggested that Sophocles is its author); its hostility to the figure of Zeus is completely at odds with the religious views of the other six plays.

In the early 1990s fragments of another Aeschylean play, which had been mentioned in ancient sources, were discovered in the wrappings of a mummy in Egypt. The play, i