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Introductory Note
Introductory Note
Of the life of Aeschylus, the first of the three great masters of Greek
tragedy, only a very meager outline has come down to us. He was born at
Eleusis, near Athens, B.C. 525, the son of Euphorion. Before he was twenty-
five he began to compete for the tragic prize, but did not win a victory for
twelve years. He spent two periods of years in Sicily, where he died in 456,
killed, it is said, by a tortoise which an eagle dropped on his head. Though a
professional writer, he did his share of fighting for his country, and is
reported to have taken part in the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea.
Of the seventy or eighty plays which he is said to have written, only
seven survive: "The Persians," dealing with the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis;
"The Seven against Thebes," part of a tetralogy on the legend of Thebes; "The
Suppliants," on the daughters of Danaus; "Prometheus Bound," part of a
trilogy, of which the first part was probably "Prometheus, the Fire -
Bringer," and the last "Prometheus Unbound"; and the "Oresteia," the only
example of a complete Greek tragic trilogy which has come down to us,
consisting of the "Agamemnon," the "Choephoroe" ("The Libation-Bearers"),
and the "Eumenides" ("The Furies").
The importance of Aeschylus in the development of the drama is immense.
Before him tragedy had consisted of the chorus and one actor; and by
introducing a second actor, expanding the dramatic dialogue thus made
possible, and reducing the lyrical parts, he practically created Greek tragedy
as we understand it. Like other writers of his time, he acted in his own
plays, and trained the chorus in their dances and songs; and he did much to
give impressiveness to the performances by his development of the accessories
of scene and costume on the stage. Of the four plays here reproduced,
"Prometheus Bound" holds an exceptional place in the literature of the world.
As conceived by Aeschylus, Prometheus is the champion of man against the
oppression of Zeus; and the argument of the drama has a certain correspondence
to the problem of the Book of Job. The Oresteian trilogy on "The House of
Atreus" is one of the supreme productions of all literature. It deals with the
two great themes of the retribution of crime and the inheritance of evil; and
here again a parallel may be found between the assertions of the justice of
God by Aeschylus and by the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. Both contend against the
popular idea that the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children`s teeth
are set on edge; both maintain that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. The
nobility of thought and the majesty of style with which these ideas are set
forth give this triple drama its place at the head of the literary
masterpieces of the antique world.
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