Aeschylus

Aeschylus was born around 525 BC at Eleusis, the town west of Athens famous for the mysteries of Demeter, into an old landowning family. He began competing in the tragic contests of the Dionysia around 499 BC and won his first victory in 484; in all he took first prize thirteen times. But the event that defined his life, and the only one his epitaph mentions, was the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, where he fought in the Athenian line and where his brother Kynegeiros was killed. He very probably fought at Salamis ten years later as well: his description of the sea battle in the Persians reads like a report from the deck.

He travelled at least twice to Sicily at the invitation of the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse, writing a play for the founding of the city of Aetna. In Athens he was once accused of revealing secrets of the Eleusinian mysteries on stage and was acquitted; the story goes that he had not realised they were secret.

He died at Gela in Sicily in 456 BC. A later legend says an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head, mistaking it for a rock. The Athenians honoured him with a unique decree: his plays could be restaged at the festivals after his death, competing against living poets. His sons Euphorion and Euaion also wrote tragedies.

Aristotle credits Aeschylus with adding the second actor, which made dialogue, and therefore drama, possible; he also cut back the role of the chorus and used costume, masks and stage machinery for spectacular effects. His language is grand and dense, full of compound adjectives and bold images, and his plays ask one question above all: how does divine justice work across generations?

The Πέρσαι (Persians, 472 BC) shows the defeat at Salamis from the Persian side, through the grief of Xerxes' mother and the ghost of Darius; Pericles paid for the production. Επτά επί Θήβας (Seven against Thebes, 467) ends with the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, killing each other at the gates. The Ικέτιδες (Suppliant Women) follow the fifty daughters of Danaus fleeing forced marriage.

His masterpiece is the Ορέστεια (Oresteia, 458 BC): in Αγαμέμνων Clytemnestra murders her husband on his return from Troy; in Χοηφόροι (Libation Bearers) their son Orestes avenges him by killing her; in Ευμενίδες the Furies hunt Orestes to Athens, where Athena founds the first court and the cycle of blood is replaced by law. Προμηθεύς Δεσμώτης (Prometheus Bound), the Titan chained for giving fire to humans, has come down under his name, though many scholars now doubt he wrote it.

The Oresteia is staged almost every summer at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus, and a production of the Persians there is a rite of passage for Greek directors. His home town, now Elefsina, holds the annual Αισχύλεια festival in his honour and celebrated him when it was European Capital of Culture in 2023. Greeks still say πάθει μάθος, 'learning through suffering', a phrase from the Agamemnon, and the cry from the Persians, ὦ παῖδες Ἑλλήνων ἴτε, is quoted on national anniversaries. For a learner, the readings on this site retell Prometheus, Orestes, Clytemnestra, the Furies and the brothers Eteocles and Polynices in Modern Greek; read them, then look for the original lines.

• His epitaph, said to be his own, mentions only that the grove of Marathon and the long-haired Persian know his valour; not a word about his plays.
• The Persians (472 BC) is the oldest surviving play in world theatre and the only surviving Greek tragedy about a historical event rather than a myth.
• After his death the Athenians allowed his plays to be restaged in the contests, an honour given to no other poet of his generation.
• He reportedly wrote some eighty to ninety plays; seven survive, and titles of most of the rest are known only from lists and quotations.