Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy.
25 Facts About Aeschylus
2.
Aeschylus was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy.
3.
In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power.
4.
Aeschylus fought at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC.
5.
Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, an ancient cult of Demeter based in his home town of Eleusis.
6.
Aeschylus took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus.
7.
Aeschylus was acquitted, with the jury sympathetic to the military service of him and his brothers during the Persian Wars.
8.
Aeschylus produced The Women of Aetna during one of these trips, and restaged his Persians.
9.
Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom became tragic poets.
10.
Aeschylus' work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death his tragedies were the only ones allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions.
11.
The inscription on Aeschylus' gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:.
12.
The first competition Aeschylus would have participated in involved three playwrights each presenting three tragedies and one satyr play.
13.
Aeschylus entered many of these competitions, and various ancient sources attribute between seventy and ninety plays to him.
14.
The Oresteia is the only extant example of this type of connected trilogy, but there is evidence that Aeschylus often wrote such trilogies.
15.
Aeschylus seems to have written about Odysseus' return to Ithaca after the war in a trilogy consisting of The Soul-raisers, Penelope, and The Bone-gatherers.
16.
Aeschylus continued his emphasis on the polis with The Suppliants in 463 BC.
17.
Aeschylus then enters the palace knowing that she cannot avoid her fate.
18.
Aeschylus makes his way to the temple of Apollo and begs Apollo to drive the Furies away.
19.
Aeschylus renames the Furies The Eumenides, and extols the importance of reason in the development of laws.
20.
The theatre was just beginning to evolve when Aeschylus started writing for it.
21.
Aeschylus added a second actor, allowing for greater dramatic variety, while the chorus played a less important role.
22.
Aeschylus is sometimes credited with introducing skenographia, or scene-decoration, though Aristotle gives this distinction to Sophocles.
23.
Aeschylus is said to have made the costumes more elaborate and dramatic, and made his actors wear platform boots to make them more visible to the audience.
24.
Aeschylus' popularity is evident in the praise that the comic playwright Aristophanes gives him in The Frogs, produced some 50 years after Aeschylus' death.
25.
Aeschylus appears as a character in the play and claims, at line 1022, that his Seven against Thebes "made everyone watching it to love being warlike".