biography
pronunciation:
[eeskilus]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (c.525–c.456 BC)
|
| biography:
| Playwright, known as ‘the founder of Greek tragedy’, born in Eleusis, near Athens, Greece. He served in the Athenian army in the Persian Wars, and was wounded at Marathon (490). The first and gravest of the great dramatists (winning the victory in 485 BC), he increased the number of characters in the action and introduced new staging. He won 13 first prizes in tragic competitions, before being defeated by Sophocles in 468. This may have induced him to leave Athens and go to Sicily. Out of some 60 plays ascribed to him, only seven are extant: Persians (472), Seven against Thebes (467), Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, and the trilogy of the Oresteia (458), three plays on the fate of Orestes, comprising Agamemnon (perhaps the greatest Greek play that has survived), Choephoroe, and Eumenides. Aeschylus' pivotal contribution to the structure of Greek tragedy was the introduction of a second actor, where there had previously been only one actor and the chorus, and the subordination of the chorus to the dialogue of the actors. |
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