He who learns must suffer.
—Aeschylus, in Agamemnon
The founder of tragedy, Aeschylus (c. 525–c. 455 BC) is one of the earliest playwrights whose work has survived into modern times. Written at the dawn of democratic Athens, Aeschylus’s plays are both the starting point of Western drama and a window into the culture of the ancient Greeks.
Born in Attica, the region that surrounds Athens, Aeschylus served in the Athenian army and fought at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC and again at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. The two victories, both against the Persian Empire, preserved the independence of Athens and provided the historical basis for Aeschylus’s oldest surviving play, The Persians (472 BC).
The play is somewhat unusual in that Aeschylus attempts to tell the story of the war from the Persian perspective, rather than from the standpoint of the victorious Greeks. It takes place in Susa, the Persian capital, and portrays the Persian defeat as a tragedy caused by the hubris, or pride, of King Xerxes (519–465 BC). Xerxes, in Aeschylus’s depiction, had incurred the wrath of the gods by building a bridge across the Hellespont, an action that led to his defeat.
The Oresteia, a trilogy of plays about Agamemnon, a legendary king of Argos, dates to about 458 BC. Like The Persians, the three tragedies revolve around fatal flaws in their heroes that eventually bring about their ruin. The Oresteia also introduced several famous characters in Western literature, including Cassandra, who had the gift of prophecy but was doomed to be ignored or disbelieved. Aeschylus’s tragedies established many of the conventions of Greek drama and would have a major influence on later Greek playwrights such as Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) and Euripides (c. 484–406 BC).
Little else is known about Aeschylus’s life. He won a number of theatrical contests in Athens, and the total number of plays he wrote is estimated at more than ninety, but only seven remain in existence. He died while visiting the island of Sicily, where, according to legend, a bird dropped a tortoise on his head, killing him.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- A play thought to have been written by Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, was the inspiration for the epic poem Prometheus Unbound (1820) by English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).
- In ancient Athens, no violence could be performed onstage. As a result, the copious violence in Aeschylus’s plays all takes place offstage and is left to the viewer’s imagination.
- Many of Aeschylus’s plays debuted at the Theater of Dionysius in Athens. The ruins of the theater, which held about 17,000 spectators, are located on the south side of the Acropolis.
