Aeschylus

Biography

Aeschylus (525 BC/524 BC – 456 BC/455 BC) was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict among them; previously, characters interacted only with the chorus. No more than seven of the estimated seventy plays written by Aeschylus have survived into modern times.

Many of Aeschylus' works were influenced by the Persian invasion of Greece, which took place during his lifetime. His play The Persians remains a quintessential primary source of information about this period in Greek history. The war was so important to Greeks and to Aeschylus himself that, upon his death around 456 BC, his epitaph included a reference to his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon but not to his success as a playwright.

Source:
Wikipedia contributors, "Aeschylus," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aeschylus&oldid=182403059 (accessed January 7, 2008). [Read More...]

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