THE PERSIANS AND OTHER PLAYS

AESCHYLUS (born at Eleusis, near Athens, c. 525 BC; died at Gela, Sicily, 456 BC) was the dramatist who first made Athenian tragedy one of the world’s great art forms, though in his epitaph he (or his family) preferred that he should be remembered as one of those who fought the Persians at Marathon. In a career of more than forty years he wrote about eighty plays, and two-thirds of his productions won first prize in the City Dionysia tragic competition. Seven plays attributed to him have survived, one of which – Prometheus Bound – may actually be by his son. Aeschylus, who visited Syracuse more than once at the invitation of Hieron I, was recognized as a classic writer soon after his death, and special privileges were decreed for his plays.

ALAN H. SOMMERSTEIN has been Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham since 1988. He has written or edited more than thirty books on Ancient Greek language and literature, especially tragic and comic drama, including Aeschylean Tragedy (1996), Greek Drama and Dramatists (2002), and a complete edition of the comedies of Aristophanes with translation and commentary (1980–2003). For Penguin Classics he has also translated six plays by Aristophanes in the volumes Lysistrata and Other Plays (2002) and The Birds and Other Plays (1978).