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Aeschylus
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Aeschylus was the only man of his age, or indeed of any age, who can compare with the great master of the modern drama in sublimity of conception and grandeur of poetic imagery. As to the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries and his immediate posterity there is sufficient evidence, and first in the Frogs of Aristophanes, who there describes his temper as proud, stern and impatient; his sentiments as pure, noble and warlike; his genius inventive, magnificent and towering; his style lofty, bold and impetuous, full of gorgeous imagery and ponderous expressions, while in the dramatic arrangement of his pieces there remained much of ancient simplicity and somewhat of uncouth rudeness. Dionysius of Halicarnassus lauds the splendor of his talents, the propriety of his characters, the originality of his ideas and the force, variety and beauty of his language. Longinus speaks of the bold magnificence of his imagery, though condemning some of his conceptions as rude and turgid and his expressions as sometimes overstrained. Quintilian ascribes to him dignity of sentiment, sublimity of ideas and loftiness in style, yet often overcharged in diction and irregular in composition. Such, as seen through the eyes of antiquity, was the Shakespeare of the Greeks.
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Aeschylus's masterpiece is the Oresteia, the only extant trilogy from Greek drama. The three plays - Agamemnon, The Choephori, and The Eumenides - though they form separate dramas, are united in their common theme of dikeμ, or justice. King Agamemnon returns to his home in Argos after the Trojan War only to be murdered by his scheming wife, Clytemnestra, in collusion with her paramour, Aegisthus. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, is in exile; he is enjoined by Apollo to wreak vengeance on his mother and Aegisthus. Orestes' sister Electra assists him in carrying out the vengeance. For the killing of his mother Orestes is pursued by the blood deities, the Furies.
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Aeschylus, whose mature life covered the first half of the fifth century B.C.E. , composing and presenting plays in Athens, Syracuse, and other cities of the Greeks, laid the foundation of the idea of “tragedy” in Western civilization. He won first prizes for sets of tragedies at Greek dramatic festivals over a period of nearly thirty years. Of about seventy tragic plays Aeschylus is believed to have written, only seven survive, and of those, the Oresteia is the only complete trilogy. The three plays—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides—were presented first in Athens in 458 B.C.E. , only two years before Aeschylus’ death; they were among his last.
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The last three tragedies of Aeschylus compose the only extant ancient trilogy, called the Oresteia, a history of the House of Atreus, with which the poet won first prize in 458. The three plays are Agamemnon, The Choëphoroe (The Libation Bearers), and The Eumenides; in each play three actors are used—an innovation borrowed from Sophocles. Because of its scope, complexity, and the profundity of its themes (the significance of human suffering and the true meaning of justice), the Oresteia as a whole is considered by many to be the greatest Attic tragedy. Browning's Agamemnon is a poetic translation of the first play, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra is an American reworking of the trilogy. The translation by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore in The Complete Greek Tragedies is one of many English translations of his plays.
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Aeschylus is thought to have written his first plays around the year 500, for the legendary dramatic competition, the Great Dionysa, at the Festival of Dionysus in Athens, where they were performed. The competition, held in the annually in the spring, drew the most talented playwrights from around Greece for several decades. Plays were composed in trilogies, three lofty tragedies in unsequential arrangement or on a common theme, and one satyr play, or burlesque comedy. They were then judged according to high aesthetic criteria as well as the approval of the general audience. Aeschylus won his first victory in 484 and went on to win twelve more after that. In total, Aeschylus wrote approximately ninety plays, the titles of about eighty of which are known.
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Aeschylus, the father of Greek tragedy, was born at Eluesis, the town of the Mysteries, near Athens, around 525 B.C.. The first attempts at tragedy had been made by Thespis; and there were older contemporaries of Aeschylus, with whom he contended. He fought for Athens in the Persian Wars, and was wounded at Marathon. His first victory as a poet come in 485; and, having won thirteen first prizes in tragic competitions, he was hurt at being defeated by Sophocles in 468. This may have forced him to leave Athens and go to Sicily, where he produced a new edition of The Persians. His trial before the Areopagus on charges of divulging the Eluesian Mysteries is ... stated as a cause of his departure.
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Aeschylus