Aeschylus, << EHS kuh luhs >> (525-456 B.C.), was the earliest writer of Greek tragedy whose plays exist in complete form. He wrote more than 80 plays, of which seven survive. These seven plays reveal a deeply patriotic and religious artist who brought Greek tragedy to maturity. Before Aeschylus, tragedies had a single actor who could only respond to the questions or suggestions of the chorus. Aeschylus increased the number of actors to two, which created dialogue that permitted interaction between characters.
Aeschylus’s plots are simple. Most of them center on a conflict between an individual’s will and the divine powers that rule the world. Aeschylus wrote tragedy in the grand manner, with a richness of language and complexity of thought that only the English playwright William Shakespeare has rivaled. Aeschylus’s greatest work is the Oresteia (458 B.C.), which consists of three plays forming one drama. They are Agamemnon, Choephori (The Libation Bearers), and The Eumenides (The Furies). In these plays, Aeschylus presented a story about the reconciliation of human suffering with divine power. Aeschylus’s other surviving plays are The Persians (472), Seven Against Thebes (467), The Suppliants (463?), and Prometheus Bound, which was probably written late in Aeschylus’s life. Aeschylus was born into a prominent family in Eleusis, near Athens.
See also Drama (Greek drama); Euripides; Oresteia; Sophocles.
