Aeschylus: The Father of Tragedy and Soldier of Athens

Aeschylus is considered the father of tragedy during a period when Greek theater was still evolving from its roots as an elaborate form of dance. He was the first of classical Athens’ great dramatists, who raised the emerging art of tragedy to great heights of poetry and theatrical power.

The museum's garden located inside the archaeological site of Eleusis, Attica, Greece

Aeschylus was born in Eleusis into a wealthy family in 6th-century BCE (c. 525 - c.456/455 BCE, aged 70). It was a small town located just 30 minutes away from Athens’ city center, in the fertile valleys of western Attica, and one of the five sacred cities of Ancient Greece, along with Athens, Olympia, Delphi, and Delos.
According to the legend (geographer Pausanias, 2nd century CE), when Aeschylus was young and worked at a vineyard, the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of tragedy. That is how Aeschylus began to write a tragedy.
For the first time, he participated in a tragic contest between 499 and 496 BCE, when he was 26 years old, but won his first prize at the Dionysia in 484 BCE, when he was 41 years old.
The Dionysia was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, possibly established during the tyranny of Peisistratus in the 6th century BCE. It was the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BCE, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia.

Trophy of the Battle of Marathon

After the age of 35, his life was marked by wars and losses for a decade.
Aeschylus fought with the Athenian army at Battle of Marathon (490 BCE), where where his brother Cynegeirus died to defend Athens against the invading army of Darius I of Persia.
The Persian Wars played a large role in Aeschylus' life and career. Aeschylus was called into military service again, at the naval Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, , between an alliance of Greek city-states under Themistocles, and the Achaemenid Empire under King Xerxes; at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE.
Salamis holds a prominent place in his work The Persians, which was performed in 472 BCE and with which he won his second prize at the Dionysia, when he was 53 years old. Note: all of Aeschylus's extant tragedies are known to have won first prize at the City Dionysia.

Fleet of triremes based on the full-sized replica Olympias. About the Battle of Salamis, Herodotus reports that there were 378 triremes in the Allied fleet, and then breaks the numbers down by city state.

His experience as a soldier in the pivotal battle, where the vastly outnumbered Greeks repelled the Persian invaders, likely influenced his worldview and artistic approach. This battle formed the basis of his play The Persians, performed 18 years after the historic victory, making it one of the earliest examples of a war narrative in Western literature.
Unlike the earliest dramas, which were performed in honor of Dionysus and marked by revelry and excessive wine, Aeschylus’s works introduced a deeper focus on natural law and divine punishment, exploring his characters' roles within a larger, cosmic order.

Ancient Greek Theater in Syracuse

Aeschylus travelled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BCE, having been invited by Hiero I, tyrant of Syracuse, a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island. He produced The Women of Aetna during one of these trips (in honor of the city founded by Hieron), and restaged his Persians.

The road from Eleusis to Athens by Jacob von Falke

Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were an ancient cult of Demeter, the goddess of harvest and agriculture. The myth represents earth's fertility, regeneration and immortality. Many prominent men were initiated into them; Plato, Pythagoras, Pericles and the Roman Emperor Hadrian are only a few of them.
In fact, the word Eleusis means ‘arrival’ in Greek and comes from the verb eleftho, meaning ‘come’. In other words, the town was the place of arrival, that would call the pilgrims to come and experience revelation, defeat death. The Mysteries would take place every year and the holy procession would start from Kerameikos site in Athens and though the Sacred Way end in Eleusis, 23km away.
Aeschylus was also accused of asebeia (impiety) for revealing some of the cult's secrets on stage.

'The death of Aeschylus' illustrated in Denis Lebey de Batilly, Emblemata, Frankfurt, Theodor de Bry, 1596, by Jean Jacques Boissard

Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom became tragic poets. Euphorion won first prize in 431 BCE in competition against both Sophocles and Euripides.
A nephew of Aeschylus, Philocles (his sister's son), was also a tragic poet, and won first prize in the competition against Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.
In 458 BCE, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela, where he died in 456 or 455 BCE.
Aeschylus’s life, marked by both artistic achievement and personal involvement in key historical events, ended in a bizarre and legendary manner. According to Valerius Maximus (1st century CE), he was killed when an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a rock, dropped a turtle onto it, thus sealing his fate in one of history’s strangest deaths. Gaius Plinius Secundus (c. 23/24–79 CE, aged 55), called Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historiae, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object, but this story may be legendary and due to a misunderstanding of the inscription on Aeschylus' tomb which makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:

Despite this unusual end, his legacy as the father of Greek tragedy remains undiminished, his works continuing to influence and inspire generations of artists, writers, and thinkers.

Roman marble herma of Aeschylus dating to c. 30 BCE, based on an earlier bronze Greek herma, dating to around 340-320 BC

Aeschylus wrote c. 90/70 plays, but only seven have survived the passage of time and also several fragments. These are the earliest known Greek tragedies, and Aeschylus, alongside Sophocles and Euripides, is one of only three tragedians whose works have endured into the modern era. Among his surviving plays:

• The Persians are the first tragedy certainly datable among those preserved (472 BCE).
• Seven Against Thebes dramatizes a legendary battle where seven mythic heroes lay siege to the city of Thebes following the deaths of Oedipus’s sons.
• The Suppliants offers a more straightforward narrative, telling the story of the Danaids, the daughters of Danaus, who flee from forced marriages.
• The Oresteia is perhaps Aeschylus’s greatest legacy, a trilogy chronicling the tragic history of the house of Atreus, beginning with Agamemnon’s fateful return from the Trojan War. It continues to captivate audiences, inspiring countless adaptations and reinterpretations in modern times. But, the Oresteia (the three tragedies Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides) can be seen as one of the earliest horror stories, complete with supernatural elements that evoke themes of guilt, justice, and the inescapable consequences of transgression. The Furies, who hunt Orestes by tracking the scent of his mother’s spilled blood, embody the nightmarish concept of otherworldly justice exacting terrible vengeance — a motif that would resonate throughout centuries of horror literature and ghost stories.
• Prometheus Bound, but whose authorship is disputed.

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Last update: September 30, 2024

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