Aeschylus, Ancient Greek Playwright
Aeschylus (525/524 - 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the father of tragedy. Academics' knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived, and there is a long-standing debate regarding his authorship of one of these plays, Prometheus Bound, which some believe his son Euphorion actually wrote. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy; his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived.[8] At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is the only surviving classical Greek tragedy concerned with contemporary events (very few of that kind were ever written), and a useful source of information about its period. In 458 BC, he returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle which had mistaken his bald head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. LACMA/Gift of Mrs. Irene Salinger in memory of her father, Adolph Stern.
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