Aeschylus

Born circa 525 B.C. in Eleusis; died 456 in B.C. in Sicily. Greek dramatist.

Aeschylus came from an old aristocratic family. He fought in the Persian Wars. He won his first drama contest in 484 B.C., and subsequently won 12 more. Of the 80 or more dramatic works by Aeschylus known in antiquity, only seven have been preserved: The Persians (472); Seven Against Thebes (467); the trilogy Oresteia (458), which consists of Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, and The Eumenides; The Suppliants; and Prometheus Bound. There is no common agreement about the dates of the last two tragedies. Excerpts from his other tragedies, rarely exceeding five or ten verses, have been preserved, and relatively large fragments of the satyr plays The Net Haulers and The Pilgrims were published in editions based on discovered Egyptian papyri in 1933 and 1941.

Aeschylus’ works, written during the period of the flowering of Athenian democracy, reflect the ideological revaluation of the clan system. The hero of his tragedies is independent and responsible for his own actions. The essence of the tragic for Aeschylus is most clearly revealed in the Oresteia: Atreus’ curse on the house of Agamemnon is realized only because the members of the house—Agamemnon and Clytemnestra—are themselves guilty of serious crimes against divine and human law. The bloody series of vengeful crimes finally ends owing to the intervention of the Areopagus, whose decision is sanctified by the goddess Athena, symbolizing the victory of the democratic state system over the archaic law of the blood feud.

The triumph of patriotism and civic equality over barbaric despotism is the main theme of The Persians and is also reflected in Seven Against Thebes and The Suppliants. The humanist content of Aeschylus’ works is revealed with exceptional brilliance in the tragedy of Prometheus, whom Marx considered “the noblest saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Iz rannikh proizvedenii, 1956, p. 25).

Known as “the father of tragedy,” Aeschylus was an outstanding innovator in plot development. Choral and lyric parts played by actors were of the utmost importance in his tragedies. They charge the atmosphere with emotion and anxiety and lead the action toward its culmination. With the introduction of a second actor, Aeschylus greatly increased the significance of the individual characters, including such powerful heroes and heroines as Eteocles, Prometheus, and Clytemnestra. The tragedies of Aeschylus were well known in ancient Rome, and several of them served as prototypes for works by Ennius, Lucius Accius, and Seneca. The character of Prometheus was widely used in the literature and art of the new age.