Aeschylus | Introduction
Aeschylus 525 b.c.-456 b.c.
(Also transliterated as Aischylos)
INTRODUCTION
The earliest of the principal dramatists of the Golden Age of Athens, Aeschylus is widely regarded as the father of tragedy because he established the paradigm for that genre in Western literature. His tragedies, exemplified by such works as Persians, Prometheus Bound, and the Oresteia trilogy, have been universally respected as reflective, profoundly moving translations of religious and ethical concerns into the sublime language of poetry.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Little is known for certain about Aeschylus's life, but, according to ancient biographies, he was born at Eleusis, near Athens, in 525 b.c. and was descended from an aristocratic family. He took part in the Persian Wars, fighting in the battle of Marathon in 490 b.c., and probably at Salamis a decade later. While the young Aeschylus experienced the immediate Persian threat to Athens, his maturity coincided with the city's Golden Age, which witnessed the triumph of early Greek democracy and the consolidation of political and cultural power. Aeschylus probably began to write in his youth; some scholars date his first production, Persians, as early as the year 499 b.c. He entered the annual Athenian drama contest, the Dionysia, twenty times and was the victor on thirteen occasions. Legend has it that at some point in his career, he was prosecuted (but never convicted) for divulging the mysteries of the Eleusian religious cult during a theatrical performance. Aeschylus made several visits to Sicily at the invitation of its ruler, Hieron I, and it was at Gela in Sicily that he died in 456 b.c. According to a popular myth he was killed by an eagle who dropped a tortoise's shell on the dramatist's bald head, believing it to be a stone. The Athenian government honored Aeschylus posthumously by granting the use of a chorus to anyone who wished to produce his dramas, thereby bestowing special status on the playwright and his works.
MAJOR WORKS
Aeschylus composed more than eighty tragedies and satyr plays, seven of which survive in their entirety, while references to others are found in papyrus fragments and other ancient writings. Aeschylus's earliest play, Persians, is
Many Aschylean dramas concern humanity's unwillingness to bend to divine authority. In the first play of his Prometheus trilogy, Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus recounts the heroic efforts of Prometheus, Zeus's cousin, to save humanity from the god's decision to punish human disrespect by total annihilation. Because of his opposition to Zeus's tyranny, Prometheus is chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus. The trilogy—parts two and three (Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer) of which survive only in fragments—ends with Prometheus's liberation and reconciliation with Zeus. The same theme pervades Suppliants. Here, the fifty daughters of Danaus defy Aphrodite by refusing to wed their Egyptian cousins. Although the other two plays that formed this trilogy have been lost, scholars surmise that the cycle most likely concluded with the daughters being reunited with Aphrodite by overcoming their aversion to marriage. Another drama concerned with human freedom and divine compulsion is Seven against Thebes, the last of a trilogy recounting the story of the royal house of Thebes. It concerns the siege of Thebes, in which the two sons of Oedipus, fighting on opposite sides, kill each other, thereby carrying out a divine curse and bringing to an end the horrors of the house of Laius which began when Laius defied the gods.
CRITICAL RECEPTION
Scholars have lauded the clarity, grandeur, and surpassing beauty of Aeschylus's language and have found his spare, unencumbered linear narratives the ideal vehicle for the dramatic depiction of human catastrophe. Aeschylus consistently interwove the colloquial Greek of his time with the formal poetic diction of such earlier writers as Hesiod and Solon; he was especially indebted to the works of Homer, and, as Greek scholar Athanaeus recounted, Aeschylus "used to say that his tragedies were slices from Homer's great banquets." Fascinated by Aeschylus's extraordinary command of the resources of the Greek language, commentators have admired his inventive use of compound words, lavish epithets, and bold metaphors to fashion panoramic battle scenes and moments of excruciating human anguish. Strong images recur in his plays, with symbols like the eagle, the net, and the snake growing in significance through repetition, Critics have observed that Aeschylean characters are drawn simply; usually they are not individually delineated but, rather, are universal archetypes serving as embodiments of ethical principles or ideals. The hero Prometheus, for instance, represents the phenomenon of an individual's self-sacrifice for a group's benefit. Aeschylus's choruses of eager elders, fiery virgins, and vengeful Furies likewise function to explain the importance of dramatic events at hand. One notable exception is the poet's last work, the Oresteia, where such characters as Clytemnestra and Cassandra are distinctive individuals depicted in all their frenzy and pathos. While many of Aeschylus's contemporaries decried his style as bombastic, pretentious, weighty, and dated, modern critics have extolled the lyrical elegance of his verse, praising his dramas as masterpieces of detailed imagery, intense emotion, and intellectual exploration.
Aeschylus's tragedies, particularly his treatments of human destiny and the myths of Prometheus and of Agamemnon's family, are counted among the greatest dramas ever written. He has influenced the entire history of Western drama, providing a technical and literary frame of reference for generations of playwrights. Aeschylean characters such as Prometheus, Clytemnestra, and Orestes have remained appealing and intriguing to the widest variety of readers throughout the history of Western civilization. As critics and dramatists agree, Aeschylus's oeuvre endures because it constitutes a singularly powerful view of the most profound universal human concerns.
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