Aeschylus

File:Eschyle.jpg

Aeschylus

Aeschylus (525 B.C.E.—456 B.C.E.; Greek: Αἰσχύλος) was a playwright of ancient Greece, who was the earliest of the three greatest Greek tragedians, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. As a result, Aeschylus is, along with his fellow tragedians, one of the seminal figures in the development of drama in the Western world.

If Sophocles is an author whose primary theme was Fate, Aeschylus' was the relation of the Gods to the lives of mortal men. Aeschylus was, moreso than the other tragedians, a deeply religious writer, in that the central concern in all of his narratives is the role of the divine, and the path to moral rectitude. This is not surprising when one considers Aeschylus' own turbulent and morally confusing times — the Athenian republic had just begun its experiment of democracy, and was constantly in danger of being usurped by local tyrants and foreign invaders. Aeschylus himself participated in this early chaos; he was wounded protecting Greece at the Battle of Marathon, and would later consider his achievements as a soldier, rather than a playwright, to be his greatest achievements.

Although he was the eldest of the major tragedians, Aeschylus was also one of the inventive and revolutionary in terms of his technique. He was the first playwright of ancient Greece to include scenes containing multiple actors. (Prior to him, all Greek plays consisted of a single actor and a chorus.) In this way, Aeschylus presaged the shift towards character and individual actors which would become the hallmark of modern theatre. His plays, moreso than those any of the other tragedians of his era, are striking specifically because they so closely resemble the modern conception of a play. Aeschylus, hence, is not only the "Father of Tragedy", as he has been called by many a critic; he is also the father of character-driven drama as a whole.

Biography

Born at Eleusis in western Attica, he wrote his first plays in 498 B.C.E., but his earliest surviving play is probably The Persians, performed in 472 B.C.E. In 490 B.C.E., he participated in the Battle of Marathon, and in 480 B.C.E. he fought at the Battle of Salamis. Salamis was the subject of The Persians, written eight years later; it is now generally accepted that The Suppliants, once thought to be Aeschylus's earliest surviving tragedy, and so the earliest complete Attic tragedy to survive, was written in the last decade of his life, making The Persians his earliest.

Aeschylus frequently travelled to Sicily, where the tyrant of Gela was a patron. In 458 B.C.E. he travelled there for the last time; according to traditional legend, Aeschylus was killed in 456 B.C.E. when an eagle (or more likely a Lammergeier), mistaking the playwright's bald crown for a stone, dropped a tortoise on his head (though some accounts differ, claiming it was a stone dropped by an eagle or vulture that likely mistook his bald head for the egg of a flightless bird).

The inscription on his gravestone may have been written by himself, but makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements. It read:

This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,

Euphorion's son and fruitful Gela's pride

How tried his valor, Marathon may tell

And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well

In Greek:

Αἰσχύλον Εὐφορίωνος Ἀθηναῖον τόδε κεύθει

μνῆμα καταφθίμενον πυροφόροιο Γέλας·

ἀλκὴν δ’ εὐδόκιμον Μαραθώνιον ἄλσος ἂν εἴποι

καὶ βαρυχαιτήεις Μῆδος ἐπιστάμενος.

P.W. Buckham writes that Aeschylus was considered philosophically a Pythagorean and this was evidenced in some of his works.¹ He also writes, quoting August Wilhelm von Schlegel, that Aeschylus was the inventor of tragedy, an attribution which was common in antiquity and which is still relatively sound, owing to the absence so far of any other tragedians discovered to have predated him. ²

(Anthologiae Graecae Appendix, vol. 3, Epigramma sepulcrale 17)

Works

Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis, concentrating on man's position in the cosmos in relation to the gods, divine law and divine punishment in the Oresteia trilogy. Besides the literary merit of his work, Aeschylus' greatest contribution to the theater was the addition of a second actor to his scenes. Previously, the action took place between a single actor and the Greek chorus]]. This invention was attributed to him by Aristotle.

Aeschylus is known to have written about 76 plays, only 6 of which remain extant:

• The Persians (472 B.C.E.) (Persai)
• Seven Against Thebes (467 B.C.E.) (Hepta epi Thebas)
• The Suppliants (463 B.C.E.?) (Hiketides)
• Oresteia (458 B.C.E.)
  • Agamemnon
  • The Libation Bearers (Choephoroi)
  • The Eumenides

In addition, the existing canon of Aeschylus' plays includes a seventh, Prometheus Bound. Attributed to Aeschylus in antiquity, it is generally considered by modern scholars to be the work of an unknown playwright. One theory is that it was written by Euphorion, one of Aeschylus' sons, and produced as his father's work. Its language is much simpler than that which Aeschylus usually utilises, without nearly as much complex metaphor and imagery, and is closer to Sophocles' style (though it is not at all suggested that Sophocles is its author); its hostility to the figure of Zeus is completely at odds with the religious views of the other six plays. Although still occasionally a point of debate, most scholars of Greek literature now agree that the attribution of the play to Aeschylus is tenuous at best.

Notes

• 
  ¹ P.W. Buckham, p.120, "In philosophical sentiments Aeschylus is said to have been a Pythagorean". cf. Cicero, Tusc. Disp., ii.9, "Veniat Aeschylus, non poeta solum, sed etiam Pythagoreus; sic eniam accepimus" — "Let us see what Aeschylus says, who was not only a poet but a Pythagorean philosopher also, for that is the account which you have received of him ..." Book II.10. [1]
• 
  ² P.W. Buckham, p.121., quoting from Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature by August Wilhelm von Schlegel. "Aeschylus is to be considered as the creator of Tragedy: in full panoplyshe sprung from his head, like Pallas from the head of Jupiter. He clad her with dignity, and gave her an appropriate stage; he was the inventor of scenic pomp, and not only instructed the chorus in singing and dancing, but appeared himself as an actor. He was the first that expanded the dialogue, and set limits to the lyrical part of tragedy, which, however, still occupies too much space in his pieces." [2]

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Buckham, Philip Wentworth, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
• Cicero, Tusculanae Quaestiones (Tusculan Disputations).
• Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur Wallace
  • Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy , 1927.
  • The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, 1946.
  • The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 1953.
• Schlegel, August Wilhelm, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 1809. [3]
• Sommerstein, Alan H., Greek Drama and Dramatists, Routledge, 2002
• Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane, Tragedy and Athenian Religion, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Wiles, David, The Masked Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance, 1991.

External links

• Selected Poems of Aeschylus
• Works by Aeschylus. Project Gutenberg
• Available by .pdf file at Textkit:
  • The Suppliants
  • The Persians
  • Seven Against Thebes
  • Agamemnon
  • The Libation Bearers
  • The Eumenides
• IMDB list of films based on Aeschylus
• Ethical Canons and War: Agamemnon in Contemporary Framework

Fragments

• Photo of a fragment of The Net-pullers

Prometheus Bound

• Prometheus Bound

Credits

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