AESCHYLUS
(ca. 525-456bc)

Reliable biographical details of Aeschylus' life are few. We know Aeschylus was born into a wealthy, well established family of Eleusis, and that his father's name was Euphorion. Aeschylus' home town was a suburb of Athens where the Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated. These gnostic rites may well have influenced Aeschylus' religious views. He fought in the Persian War at Marathon and a decade later at Salamis. The victory of the Athenians at Salamis marked the beginning of the Golden Age of Athens, establishing the city as the dominant force in Greece and launching her imperial ambitions, and Aeschylus was there. Aristophanes gives us, in the Frogs, a portrait of a thoughtful, kind man with a decidedly passionate--not to say querulous--nature that squares with other contemporary anecdotes of the dramatist. Georgias, for example, remarked that Aeschylus' plays were "full of Dionysos," lending credence to the popular notion that he wrote his plays while "under the influence."

He wrote over 80 plays (some say 90), and he won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484BC. He acted in and oversaw every detail of their production of his plays as well, clearly what we moderns would call a true regisseur. Only seven of his plays survive: the Persians; the Suppliant Maidens; the Seven Against Thebes; the Oresteia, a trilogy (the only complete extant Greek trilogy) consisting of the Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and the Furies; and the first play of another lost trilogy, the Prometheus Bound. His plays were the first to be preserved, and in subsequent generations, his plays were so highly regarded that a khoros was provided automatically for a revival of one of his plays. He was regarded by his contemporaries as the best writer of satyr plays. Toward the end of his life, he went into a self-imposed exile where he wrote his last play. After his death, his son Euphorion produced four tetralogies posthumously and won first prize.

Innovations attributed to Aeschylus:

*Introduction of the Second Actor. Judging from his earliest surviving plays, Aeschylus added a second actor at first not so much to increase conflict, as to advance the story (as opposed to the plot) by introducing new material while adding visual and aural variety to his plays. The messenger telling Atossa of the death of her son Xerxes in the Persians is thus the oldest extant "messenger speech." It clearly heightens the emotion, but creates involves no agon. The fellow who took the role of this "second" actor is, then, the first professional actor and we happen to know his name-Kleander (but, alas we know nothing else about him). This marks also the first stage of the decline of prominence of the khoros, a literary event that can be traced through Sophokles and Euripides and which was to have very far reaching consequences indeed.

*Spectacle. The anonymous (and perhaps unreliable) author of the ancient Bios Aischylou tells us, "He introduced scenic decorations-paintings, machinery, altars, tombs, trumpets, spirits, Furies-whose splendor delighted the eyes of the audience." Margarete Bieber asserts he "did not so much invent these things as improve fixed acult usages and establish them in the theater."

*Design of his own costumes, That same anonymous biographer tells us, Aeschylus "supplied the actors with sleeved and full-length robes and heightened the buskins to increase their stature." Margarete Bieber elaborates, "...He gave the players sleeves, a long robe with a train, and he increased their height by means of taller kothorni, buskins, and a high headdress (onkos). The Ancient history of Music adds that he introduced large and dignified masks."

*Choreography. Athenaeus (3rd C AD) tell us in his Deipnosophistai, Aeschylus "originated many dance-figures and assigned them to the members of his khoroses. For Chamaeleon says that Aeschylus was the first to give poses to his khoroses, employing no dancing-masters, but devising for himself the figures of the dance, and in general taking upon himself the entire management of the piece…" He must have been effective. His 2ndC anonymous biographer tells us (with some undoubted hyperbole): "When, at the performance of the Eumenides, Aeschylus introduced the khoros in wild disorder into the orchestra, he so terrified the crowd that children died and women suffered miscarriage."

*Possible invention of scene painting-skenographika . He may have commissioned Agatharcus to paint decorations on the front of the wooden skene (in the thyromata?).

The Plays:

Many hold that in Aeschylus' plays, characters embody aspects of a problem. The problem and the resulting argument (agon) are generally more important than the characterizations. According to this line of thought, his characters function as math symbols do in an argument rather than as examples of living, breathing human beings. This may be the case in the later plays (though I personally disagree), but the early plays clearly focus more on the emotional aspect of dianoia; E.F. Watling would call them more "oratorio" than drama, but their lyrical charms are not to be denied.

Aeschylus seems to have favored trilogies; each play stands alone, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Hybris is a frequent theme, e.g. Agamemnon, Prometheus in the Prometheia, Xerxes in the Persians, etc. .

The Persians (Persae, produced in 472BC) was the second play in a tetralogy of which we have only a few extant fragments. The first and third tragedies were the Phineus and the Glaukos Potnieus, and the satyr play Prometheus Pyrkaeus. (The disparate titles of this group seem to give the lie to those who assert that Aeschylus wrote only unified tetralogies, but perhaps he unified them in matters of theme.) Aeschylus' military experiences are reflected in the Persians, called by some his Henry V for its patriotic earnestness. It was performed a mere eight years after naval victory at Salamis and much of the play recounts the details of the battle which must have been familiar to his audience, many of whom no doubt had been there. And it is an eye-witness account of sorts since, after all, Aeschylus was there. Told from the Persian's point of view, it ends with the Persian king Xerxes returning to his court literally in rags, the hybristic monarch brought down by the democratic Athenians. The Persians is more than mere jingoism, it is also a decidedly political play in that it praises Aeschylus' friend, the decidedly unaristocratic Themistocles, who, as commander of the Athenian fleet, was instrumental in winning the battle at Salamis. Barely a year after his victory, Themistocles was exiled through the efforts of his political enemies in the aristocratic class.

Some time later, Aeschylus wrote the Supplice (Suppliant Maidens, the exact date of production is in dispute, but the earliest possible date is probably 467BC. It seems much simpler than the Persians and so may have been composed earlier.), with a khoros of which is, in every respect, the central character of the piece. The play highly praises the people of Argos who had taken in his exiled friend Themistocles! This was a not uncourageous act, since four years earlier, another playwright, Phrynichus who wrote The Capture of Miletus in defense of Themistocles was assessed a large fine.

The Septem (Seven Against Thebes) is the last play in a trilogy on the Oedipus legend, the first two lost plays being the Laios and the Oedipus. (The accompanying satyr play had the intriguing title of Sphinx.) As the Septem opens, Eteocles, determined to retain total control of the crown, states his intentions and calls on Zeus to defend him against the coming attack by his brother. A scout comes in with news of the approach of Polyneices' forces. The khoros, made up of Theban Women, enters in a panic at the impending battle. Eteocles upbraids them and in a section resembling stichomythia, the description of the sounds of the arrival of a mighty force build the tension to a high level while strengthening Eteocles resolve to defend the crown. The scout returns and reports, one by one and in detail, on the six attackers who have come to help Polyneices claim his due. Eteocles ceremonially dispatches six of his own champions to meet the gathering threat. The seventh attacker is Polyneices himself, and Eteocles recognizes that he himself must meet his foretold destiny and engage his brother. It is in this moment that Eteocles rises to the level of a true tragic hero saying:

The khoros tries to dissuade him from defending the seventh gate, but he goes forth to embrace his fate saying, "Ill which the gods have sent thou canst not shun!" The khoros recounts the series of curses that brought on this calamity. The scout rturns with news of the prophecied end of Polyneices and Eteocles at each others hand, and the khoros prays a series of prayers and laments "the grievous fate/That attends upong wrong..." A herald announces that Eteocles is to be buried with honors and the traitorous Polyneices is to be left "ignobly in the maw of kites..." Antigone enters and vows to bury her brother. The exodus of the khoros praises Eteocles as they go to give him proper burial, commenting as they go, "The crowd may sway, and change, and still/Take its caprice for Justice' will!"

The Agamemnon is the first play in the Oresteia trilogy, which as a whole deals with a curse on the house of Atreus. It won first prize at the City Dionysia in 458BC. (See Background for the Oresteia.) The Trojan War is over, and Argos awaits the return of its king. The queen Klytemnestra, angry over the sacrifice of her daughter Iphegenia, has taken Thyestes' only surviving son Aegisthus as her lover. Both have ample motive to murder the king, and have made plans to kill him on his arrival. They induce him to step onto a red carpet (in what some critics see as an act of hybris--as if that is needed to justify the killing of the daughter-murderer.) Aristotle's disdain for spectacle notwithstanding, this use of color and pomp surely tells the story as well as any thousand words might. He is followed by Kassandra whom he has taken as his paramour and who, true to her nature, sees the truth and wails out her prophetic lament which no one believes. Klytemnestra and Aegisthus ensnare him in a net (a metaphor if ever there was one) and summarily kill Agamemnon. Klytemnestra exults in her success; the khoros upbraids Aegisthus for his cowardice: "Thou womanish man, waiting till the war did cease,/Home-watcher and defiler of the couch..." Klytemnestra steps in at the last, arrogantly assuring her lover, "Heed thou not too highly of them--let the cur-pack growl and yell./ I and thou will rule the palace and will order all things well." And the play ends as the khoros withdraws in silence.

The Choephori is the second play of the trilogy, and is unique in the extant canon for being one of three surprisingly different plays based on the same episode of the story of the House of Atreus by each of the three great dramatists.