AESCHYLUS B.C.), Greek poet, the first of the only three Attic tragedians of whose work entire plays survive, and in a very real sense the founder of the Greek drama, was born at Eleusis in 525 B.C. His father, Euphorion, belonged to the "Eupatridae" or old nobility of Athens, as we know on the authority of the short Life of the poet given in the Medicean Manuscript (see note on "Authorities" at the end). According to the same tradition he took part as a soldier in the great struggle of Greece against Persia ; and was present at the battles of Mara thon, Artemisium, Salamis and Plataea, in the years At least one of his brothers, Cynaegirus, fought with him at Marathon, and was killed in attempting a conspicuous act of bravery ; and the brothers' portraits found a place in the national picture of the battle which the Athenians set up as a memorial in the Stoa Poecile (or "Pictured Porch") at Athens.
The vigour and loftiness of tone which mark Aeschylus' poetic work were partly inspired by the personal share he took in the great actions of a heroic national up rising. In the same way, the poet's brood ing thoughtfulness on deep questions—the power of the gods, their dealings with man, the dark mysteries of fate, the future life in Hades—though largely due to his turn of mind and temperament, was doubtless con nected with the place where his childhood was passed. Eleusis was the centre of the most famous worship of Demeter which was intimately connected with the Greek beliefs about the human soul and the underworld.
His dramatic career began in 499 B.C. when he first exhibited at Athens ; and his last work, the trilogy of the Oresteia, was exhibited in 458. The total number of his plays is stated by Suidas to have been go; and the seven extant plays, with the dramas named or nameable which survive only in fragments, amount to over 8o, so that Suidas' figure is probably based on reliable tradition. In the sth century each exhibitor at the tragic contests produced four plays; and Aeschylus must therefore have competed (between 499 and 458) more than 20 times. His first victory is recorded in 484, 15 years after his earliest appear ance on the stage; but in the remaining 26 years of his dramatic activity at Athens he was successful at least 1 2 times. Perhaps the most striking evidence of his exceptional position among his contemporaries is the well-known decree passed shortly after his death that whosoever desired to exhibit a play of Aeschylus should "receive a chorus," i.e., be officially allowed to produce the drama at the Dionysia. The existence of this decree, mentioned in the Life, is strongly confirmed by two passages in Aristophanes: first in the prologue of the Acharnians (acted in 425), where the citizen relates his great disappointment, when he took his seat in the theatre "expecting Aeschylus," to find that when the play came on it was Theognis; and secondly in a scene of the Frogs (acted 405 B.c.), where the throne of poetry is contested in Hades between Aeschylus and Euripides, the former complains (Fr. 866) that "the battle is not fair, because my own poetry has not died with me, while Euripides' has died, and therefore he will have it with him to recite"—a clear reference, as the scholiast points out, to the continued production at Athens of Aeschylus' plays of ter. his death.
The only other incidents recorded of the poet's life that de serve mention are connected with his Sicilian visits, and the charge preferred against him of revealing the "secrets of Demeter." This tale is mentioned by Aristotle (Eth. iii. 2), and Eustratius (r2th century) quotes from one Heracleides Pontius the following ver sion: The poet was acting in one of his own plays, where there was a reference to Demeter. The audience suspected him of revealing the inviolable secrets, and rose in fury; the poet fled to the altar of Dionysus in the orchestra and so saved his life for the moment. He was afterwards charged with the crime before the Areopagus; and his plea "that he did not know that what he said was secret" secured his acquittal. The commentator adds that the prowess of the poet (and his brother) at Marathon was the real cause of the leniency of his judges. In the above shape the story dates back to the 4th century; and as the main fact seems accepted by Aristotle, it is probably authentic.
As to his foreign travel, the suggestion has been made that certain descriptions in the Persae, and the fact that he wrote a trilogy on the story of the Thracian king, Lycurgus, seems to point to his having visited Thrace. This, however, remains at best a conjecture. For his repeated visits to Sicily, on the other hand, there is conclusive ancient evidence. Hieron the First, tyrant of Syracuse (478-467), who invited to his court famous poets and men of letters, had founded a new town, Aetna, on the site of Catana. About 476 Aeschylus was entertained by him, and at his request wrote and exhibited a play called The Women of Aetna in honour of the new town. He paid a second visit about the year in which he had produced the Persae at Athens; and the play is said to have been repeated at Syracuse at his patron's request. Hieron died in 467, the year of the Seven against Thebes; but after 458, when the Oresteia was exhibited at Athens, we find the poet again in Sicily for the last time. In 456 he died, and was buried at Gela; and on his tomb was placed an epitaph in two elegiac couplets saying: "Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian, who perished in the wheat-bear ing land of Gela; of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, or the long-haired Persian who knows it well." The Life says this epitaph was inscribed on his grave by the people of Gela, while Athenaeus and Pausanias attribute it to Aeschylus. Probably most people would agree that only the poet himself could have praised the soldier and kept silence about the poetry.
Of the marvellous traditions which gathered round his name little need be said. Pausanias' tale, how Dionysus appeared to the poet when a boy and bade him write a tragedy—or the account in the Life, how he was killed by an eagle letting fall on his head a tortoise—clearly belong to the same class of legends as the story that Plato was son of Apollo. Less super natural, but hardly more historical, is the statement in the Life that the poet left Athens for Sicily in consequence of his defeat in the dramatic contest of 468 by Sophocles; or alternatively because Simonides' elegy on the heroes slain at Marathon was preferred to his own. Neither story fits the facts; for in 467, the next year after Sophocles' success, we know that Aeschylus won the prize of tragedy with the Septem; and the 'Marathon elegy must have been written in 490 about 14 years before his first visit to Sicily.
Tragedy grew out of the old choric song to Dionysus, to which was added first a spoken interlude by the chorus-leader, and later one actor (at first the poet), whom the mask enabled to appear in more than one part. But everything points to the fact that in the development of the drama Aeschylus was the decisive inno vator. The two things that were important, when the 5th century began, if tragedy was to realize its possibilities, were (I) the disentanglement of the dialogue from its position as an interlude in an artistic and religious pageant that was primarily lyric ; and (2) its general elevation of tone. Aeschylus, as we know on the express authority of Aristotle (Poet. iv. 13), achieved the first by the introduction of the second actor; and though he did not begin the second he gave to it the decisive impulse and consum /nation by the overwhelming effect of his serious thought, the stately splendour of his style, his high dramatic purpose, and the artistic grandeur and impressiveness of the construction and presentment of his tragedies.
As to the importance of the second actor no argument is needed. The interacting personal influences of different char acters on each other are indispensable to anything that can be called a play, as we understand the word ; and, without two "personae dramatis" at the least, the drama in the strict sense is clearly impossible. The number of actors was afterwards in creased; but to Aeschylus is due the essential step; and therefore, as was said above, he deserves, in a very real sense, to be called the founder of Athenian tragedy.
Of the seven extant plays, Supplices, Persae, Septem contra Thebas, Prometheus, Agamemnon, Choephoroe and Eumenides, five can be dated with certainty, as the archon's name is pre served in the Arguments ; and the other two approximately. The dates rest, in the last resort, on the didaskalia, or the official records of the contests, of which Aristotle (and others) com piled catalogues ; and some actual fragments have been recovered. The order of the plays is probably that given above; and cer tainly the Persae was acted in 472, Septem in 467, and the trilogy in 458. The Supplices is generally regarded as the oldest ; and the best authorities tend to place it not far from 490. The early date is strongly confirmed by three things : the extreme simplicity of the plot, the choric (instead of dramatic) opening, and the fact that the percentage of lyric passages is 54, or the highest of all the seven plays. The chief doubt is in regard to Prometheus, but the very low percentage of lyrics (only 2'7, or roughly a quarter of the whole), and still more the strong characterization, a marked advance on anything in the first three plays, point to its being later than any except the trilogy, and suggest a date somewhere about 46o, or perhaps a little earlier. A few com ments on the extant plays will help to indicate the main points of Aeschylus' work.
Supplices.—Theexceptional interest of the Supplices is due to its date. Being nearly 20 years earlier than any other extant play, it furnishes evidence of a stage in the evolution of Attic drama which would otherwise have been unrepresented. It prob ably resembles in general structure the lost works of Choerilus, Phrynichus, Pratinas and the 6th century pioneers of drama.
The plot is briefly as follows : the 5o daughters of Danaus (who are the chorus), betrothed by Aegyptus (their father's brother) to his 5o sons, flee with Danaus to Argos, to escape the marriage. They claim the protection of the Argive king, Pelasgus ; and he (by a pleasing anachronism) refers the matter to the people, who agree to protect the fugitives. The pursuing fleet of suitors is seen approaching; the herald arrives, orders off the cowering Danaids to the ships and finally attempts to drag them away. Pelasgus interposes with a force, drives off the Egyptians and saves the suppliants. Danaus urges them to prayer, and the grateful chorus pass away to the shelter offered by their pro ctors.
It is clear that we have here the drama just developing out of the lyric pageant. The interest still centres round the chorus. Character and plot—the two essentials of drama—are both here rudimentary. The play is a single situation. It should not be forgotten, indeed, that the play is one of a trilogy—an act, there f ore, rather than a complete drama. But we have only to com pare it with those later plays of which the same is true, to see the difference. Even in a trilogy, each play is a complete whole in itself, though also a portion of a larger whole.
Persae.—The next play that has survived is the Persae, the only extant Greek historical drama. The plot is still severely simple, though more developed than that of the Supplices. The opening is still lyric, and the first quarter of the play brings out, by song and speech, the anxiety of the people and queen as to the fate of Xerxes' huge army. Then comes the messenger with the news of Salamis, including a description of the sea fight itself which can only be called magnificent. The play is not a tragedy in the true Greek sense ; its real aim is not the "pity and terror" of the developed drama ; it is the triumphant glorification of Athens, the exultation of the whole nation gathered in one place, over the ruin of their foe ; and one effective inci dent is the raising of Darius's ghost, and his prophecy of the disastrous battle of Plataea. But in the ghost's revelations there is a mixture, of audacity and naivete, characteristic at once of the poet and the early youth of the drama.
The Seven against Thebes is the last play of its series; and again the plot is severely simple. Father and grandfather have both perished miserably ; and the two princes both claim the kingdom. Eteocles has driven out Polyneices, who fled to Argos, gathered a host under seven leaders (himself being one), and when the play opens has begun the siege of his own city. The king appears, warns the people, chides the clamour of women, appoints seven Thebans, including himself, to defend the seven gates, departs to his post, meets his brother in battle and both are killed. The other chieftains are all slain, and the enemy beaten off. The two dead princes are buried by their two sisters, who alone are left of the royal house.
Various signs of the early drama are here manifest. Half the play is lyric ; there is no complication of plot ; the whole action is recited by messengers; and the predicted mutual slaughter of the princes is brought about by no accidental stroke of destiny, but by the choice of the king, Eteocles himself. On the other hand, the opening is no longer lyric (like the two earlier plays) but dramatic ; the main scene, where the king appoints the seven defenders, must have been an impressive spectacle. One novelty should not be overlooked. There is here the first passage of dianoia, or general reflection of life, which later became a regu lar feature of tragedy. Eteocles muses on the fate which involves an innocent man in the company of the wicked so that he shares unjustly their deserved fate (Theb. 597-608). The whole part of Eteocles shows a new effort of the poet to draw character, which may have something to do with the rise of Sophocles, who in the year before (468) won the prize of tragedy. There remain only the Prometheus and the Oresteia, which show such marked advance that (it may almost be said) when we think of Aeschylus it is these four plays we have in mind.
Prometheus.—ThePrometheus-trilogy consisted of three plays : Prometheus the Fire-bringer, Prometheus Bound, Pro metheus Unbound. The two last necessarily came in that order; the Fire-bringer is probably the first of the trilogy. That Prome theus sinned against Zeus, by stealing fire from heaven ; that he was punished by fearful tortures for ages; that he was finally reconciled to Zeus and set free—all this was the ancient tale indisputably. Those who hold the Fire-bringer (1Ivpcb6pos) to be the final play, conjecture that it dealt with the establishment of the worship of Prometheus under that title, which is known to have existed at Athens. But the other order is on all grounds more probable; it keeps the natural sequence—crime, punishment, reconciliation, which is also the sequence in the Oresteia. And if the reconciliation was achieved in the second play, no scheme of action sufficing for the third drama seems even plausible.' The play that survives is a poem of unsurpassed force and impressiveness. Nevertheless, from the point of view of the 'The Eumenides is quoted as a parallel, because there the establish ment of this worship at Athens concludes the whole trilogy ; but it is forgotten that in Eumenides there is much besides—the pursuit of Orestes, the refuge at Athens, the trial, the acquittal, the conciliation by Athena of the Furies ; while here the story would be finished before the last play began.
development of drama, there seems at first sight little scope in the story for the normal human interest of a tragedy, since the actors are all divine, except Jo; and between the opening where Prometheus is nailed to the Scythian rock, and the close where the earthquake engulfs the rock, the hero and the chorus, action in the ordinary sense is ipso facto impossible. This is just the opportunity for the poet's bold inventiveness and fine imagina tion.
Oceanus, the well-meaning palavering old mentor, and Hermes, the blustering and futile jack-in-office, gods though they be, are vigorous, audacious and very human character-sketches; the soft entrance of the consoling nymphs is unspeakably beautiful ; and the prophecy of Io's wanderings is a striking example of that new keen interest in the world outside which was felt by the Greeks of the 5th century, as it was felt by the Elizabethan English in a very similar epoch of national spirit and enterprise 2,000 years later. Thus, though dramatic action is by the nature of the case impossible for the hero, the visitors provide real drama.
Another important point in the development of tragedy is what we may call the "balanced issue." The hero is both a victim and a rebel. He is punished for his benefits to man; but though Zeus is tyrannous, the hero's reckless defiance is shocking to Greek feeling. As the play goes on, this is subtly indicated by the attitude of the chorus. They enter overflowing with pity. They are slowly alienated by the hero's impiety; but they decline, at the last crisis, the mean advice of Hermes to desert Pro metheus ; and in the final crash they share his fate. _ Oresteia.—The last and greatest work of Aeschylus is the Oresteia, which also has the interest of being the only complete trilogy preserved to us. As in Prometheus, the plot, at first sight, is such that the conditions of drama seem to exclude much development in character-drawing. The gods are everywhere at the root of the action. The inspired prophet, Calchas, has demanded the sacrifice of the king's daughter, Iphigeneia, to ap pease the offended Artemis. The inspired Cassandra, brought in as a spear-won slave from conquered Troy, reveals the murderous past of the Pelopid house, and the imminent slaughter of the king by his wife. Apollo orders the son, Orestes, to avenge his father by killing the murderess, and protects him when after the deed he takes sanctuary at Delphi. The Erinnyes ("Furies") pursue him over land and sea ; and at last Athena gives him shelter at Athens, summons an Athenian council to judge his guilt, and when the court is equally divided gives her casting vote for mercy. The last act ends with the reconciliation of Athena and the Furies; and the latter receive a shrine and wor ship at Athens, and promise favour and prosperity to the great city. The scope for human drama seems deliberately restricted by such a story so handled. Nevertheless, the growth of charac terization is not only visible but remarkable. Clytaemestra is one of the most powerfully presented characters of the Greek drama. And there is one other noticeable point. In this trilogy, Aeschylus, for the first time, has attempted some touches of character in two of the humbler parts, the watchman in Agamemnon, and the nurse in the Choephoroe. These two are veritable figures drawn from contemporary life; and though both appear only once, the innovation is most significant, and especially as adopted by Aeschylus.
One specially noteworthy point in the Agamemnon is his ex plicit repudiation of the common Hellenic view that prosperity brings ruin. In other places he seems to share the feeling; but here (Ag. 73o) he goes deeper, and declares that it is not 6X0os but always wickedness that brings about men's fall. All through there is a recurring note of fear in his view of man's destiny. In one remarkable passage of the Eumenides (517-525) this fear is extolled as a moral power which ought to be enthroned in men's hearts, to deter them from impious acts or from the pride that impels them to such sins.
Of the poetic qualities of Aeschylus' drama and diction, both in the lyrics and the dialogue, the briefest word must here suffice. He is everywhere distinguished by grandeur and power of con ception, presentation and expression, and most of all in the latest works, the Prometheus and the Trilogy. He is pre-eminent in depicting the slow approach of fear, as in the Persae; the immi nent horror of impending fate, as in the broken cries and visions of Cassandra in the Agamemnon (1072-1177), the long lament and prayers to the nether powers in the Choephoroe (315-478), and the gradual rousing of the slumbering Furies in the Eumenides 017-130. The fatal end in these tragedies is foreseen; but the effect is due to its measured advance, to the slowly darken ing suspense which no poet has more powerfully rendered. Again, he is a master of contrasts, as when the floating vision of con soling nymphs appears to the tortured Prometheus (115-135) or the unmatched lyrics which tell (in the Agamemnon, 228-247) of the death of Iphigeneia ; or the vision of his lost love that the night brings to Menelaus (410-426). And not least noticeable is the extraordinary range force and imaginativeness of his dic tion. One example of his lyrics may be given which will illus trate more than one of these points. It is taken from the lament in the Septem, sung by the chorus and the two sisters, while fol lowing the funeral procession of the princes. (Sept. 854-860) :— Nay, with the wafting gale of your sighs, my sisters, Beat on your heads with your hands the stroke as of oars, The stroke that passes ever across Acheron, Speeding on its way the black-robed sacred bark,— The bark Apollo comes not near, The bark that is hidden from the sunlight— To the shore of darkness that welcomes all ! (A. Sr.) BilmocRAPHY.—Authorities: The chief autho'rity for the text is a single ms. at Florence, of the early 11th century, known as the Medicean or M., written by a professional scribe and revised by a contemporary scholar, who corrected the copyist's mistakes, added the scholia, the arguments and the dramatis personae of three plays (Theb., Agam., Earn.), and at the end of the Life of Aeschylus and the Catalogue of his dramas. The ms. has also been further corrected by later hands. In 1896 the Italian Ministry of Public Instruction published the ms. in photographic facsimile, with an instructive preface by Signor Rostagno. Besides M. there are some eight later mss. (13th to 15th century), and numerous copies of the three select plays (Sept., Pers., Prom.) which were most read in the later Byzantine period. These later mss. are of little value.
Editions.—The three first printed copies (Aldine, 1518; Turnebus and Robortello, 1552) give only those parts of Agamemnon found in M., from which ms. some leaves were lost ; in 1557 the full text was restored by Vettori (Victories) from later mss. After these four, the chief editions of the seven plays were those of Schutz, Porson, Butler, Wellauer, Dindorf, Bothe, Ahrens, Paley, Hermann, Hartung, Weil, Merkel, Kirchhoff and Wecklein. Editions of separate plays, special studies, etc. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Enger, Conington, Blaydes, Cobet, Meineke, Madvig, Ellis, W. Headlam, Davies, Tucker, Verrall, Haigh and Hoernle. The Fragments have been edited by Nauck and also by Wecklein. The Aeschylean staging is discussed in Albert Miiller's Lehrbuch der griechischen Biihnenalterthiimer; in "Die Biihne des Aeschylos," by Wilamowitz (Hermes, xxi.) ; in Smith's Dict. of Antiquities, art. "Theatrum" (R. C. Jebb) ; in Di rpfeld and Reisch (Das griechische Theater), Haigh's Attic Theatre, and Gardner and Jevons' Manual of Greek Antiquities. English verse translations: Agamemnon, Milman and R. Browning; Oresteia, Sup pliants, Persae, Seven against Thebes, Prometheus Vinctus, by E. D. A. Morshead; Prometheus, E. B. Browning; the whole seven plays, Lewis Campbell. Oresteia by G. Murray, by R. C. Trevelyan, by G. M. Cookson ; prose translation by W. G. and C. E. S. Headlam.