[Previous] [Next] [Up] [Top] [Index]
Aeschylus
(c 525-456 B.C.)
Although
no contemporary writers or biographers provide much reliable information
about the life of Aeschylus as it actually unfolded, it has been possible
to reconstruct, from later ancient chroniclers and historians, a tentative
outline. Aeschylus was born around 525 B.C.E at Eleusis, a town west of
Athens and famous home of the cult of Demeter, a mystery cult which,
through various rituals, prepared Greek souls for their transition into
the afterlife.
His
father was named Europhion and there is documentation of a brother who was
later killed at the Battle or Marathon. The playwright matured under as
the Athenian democracy regained power after a period of tyranny and sought
to hold it against both internal and external threats. Significantly, his
adolescent years saw the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Pisistratid family
and establish the first democracy. The tension between democratic ideals
and tyranny would eventually find its way into his plays, including
Agagmemnon. Moreover, the ancient writer Pausanias wrote that Aeschylus'
tombstone made no mention of drama's such as the Oresteia, but proclaimed
his participation as a soldier in those famous Athenian military victories
against the Persians at Salamis and Marathon which contributed to much to
the growth of Athenian confidence and power. Athens returned the favor,
since it regarded Aeschylus as one of the main representatives of its
Golden Age, before the Peloponnesian War and the teaching of the Sophists
had weakened traditional Athenian society.
Aeschylus is known to
have fought with his brother for Greece against Persian invaders at
Marathon in 490. It was the first successful major repulsion of the
Persians by Greeks; Aeschylus was around thirty-five years old at the
time. He went to war again at Salamis and Artemisium in 480 and possibly
the next year at Plataea. By this time, however, his career as a dramatist
was already well underway.
Aeschylus is thought
to have written his first plays around the year 500, for the legendary
dramatic competition, the Great Dionysa, at the Festival of Dionysus in
Athens, where they were performed. The competition, held in the annually
in the spring, drew the most talented playwrights from around Greece for
several decades. Plays were composed in trilogies, three lofty tragedies
in unsequential arrangement or on a common theme, and one satyr play, or
burlesque comedy. They were then judged according to high aesthetic
criteria as well as the approval of the general audience. Aeschylus won
his first victory in 484 and went on to win twelve more after that. In
total, Aeschylus wrote approximately ninety plays, the titles of about
eighty of which are known. However, only seven tragedies of the prodigious
playwright's works survive.
His earliest existing
play is The Persians, presented in 472. A historical tragedy about the
Battle of Salamís, set in Persia at the court of the mother of King
Xerxes I, the play drew an invitation from Hieron I, tyrant of Syracuse,
to performance before his court. It is highly probably Aeschylus drew on
his own experiences at Salamis with the Persians, who had again invaded
Greece around 480, in creating the famous play. Although Aeschylus was
the undisputed champion of the competition at Athens for most of his
illustrious career, he suffered a memorable defeat in 486 to a young
Sophocles. There were not to be two in a row, for the next year Aeschylus
produced his Oedipus trilogy of which Seven Against Thebes is the only
survivor. The Oresteia, Aeschylus' masterpiece and his only intact
trilogy, was writen in 458. Shortly after presenting it, the playwright
traveled to Sicily for a second time. It was there also, in Gela, that
Aeschylus died in 455-6 B.C.E. His son Europhion was a prominent dramatist
in his own right, stealing victory from Sophocles and Euripides in a
subsequent round of the competition his father had once dominated for so
many years.
Aeschylus's
innovations in the ancient dramatic form were fundamental. Chiefly, he was
responsible for the introduction of a second actor. Whereas, previous to
Aeschylus, plays had been more like recitations between a single actor and
a chorus, the use of a second actor increased immensely the possiblities
for flexible dramatic action and dialogue. He also expanded the
presentation of drama by means of more elaborate costuming, stage
machinery, and scenery. Majesty, profundity, and loft of language and
theme are characteristic of the grand style of the so-called "Father of
Tragedy."
[Previous] [Next] [Up] [Top] [Index]
|
|
|