Aeschylus

Aeschylus (Ancient Greek: Αἰσχύλος, Aischýlos; Eleusis, ca.525 BC-Gela, ca. 456 BC) was a Greek dramatist. A predecessor of Sophocles and Euripides, he is considered the first great representative of Greek tragedy.

Biography

He was born in Eleusis (Attica), a place where the Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated. He belonged to a noble and wealthy landowning family. In his youth he witnessed the end of the tyranny of the Pisistratids in Athens.

He fought against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), at Salamis (480 BC), and possibly at Plataea (479 BC).

Some of his works, such as The Persians (472 BC) and The Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), are the result of his war experiences. He was also a witness to the development of Athenian democracy. In The Supplicants (463 BC), the first reference made about the "power of the people" can be detected, and the representation of the creation of the Areopagus, court in charge to judge the murderers. In The Eumenides (458 BC), the reform of Ephialtes (462 BC) is supported, transferring the political powers of the Areopagus to the Council of Five Hundred.

Aeschylus was accused of having revealed the mysteries of Eleusis, for which he was tried and acquitted.

He traveled to Syracuse at the invitation of Hiéron, for whom he produced The Women of Etna in honor of the new city that that tyrant had founded, and staged The Persians again. i>. After the representation of the Oresteía (458 BC), he returned to visit Sicily, where he died in Gela, between 456 and 455 BC. c.

He had a son, Euphorion, who, like him, was a tragic poet.

Aeschylus wrote 82 pieces (some sources put them at 90), he achieved his first victory in dramatic composition in 484 BC. C., being his rivals Pratinas, Frínico and Quérilo. He alone was defeated by Sophocles, in the year 468 a. c.

The importance of Aeschylus's work is attested by the fact that his works were allowed to be performed and presented at the agon ("contest") in the years after his death, together with those of living playwrights; an exceptional honor, since it was customary that the works of deceased authors could not be presented to the agon.

Of all his work, only seven pieces survive, six of them awarded, and substantial fragments of many others.

Despite the importance of his work, in his epitaph he was not remembered as a poet or a playwright, but for his courage in the battle of Marathon:

¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü ¢Ü
μν receptorμα καταφθμενον πυροιοιον ↓λας·
・λκ ν δ’ ε δόκιμον εεποι
και βαρυχαιεις MILITARY CHALLENGES.

‘This grave hides the dust of Esquilo,
son of Euforio and pride of the fertile Gela
From his marathon value he witnessed,
and the long-sleeved medes, which had too much of it. ’

Anthologiae Graecae Appendix, vol. 3, Epigramma topulcrale 17

Legend about his death

About his death, a legendary anecdote circulated in Antiquity that was recorded by various authors such as Valerio Máximo, Pliny the Elder, Claudio Aeliano and the anonymous author of the Life of Aeschylus, in addition to the article on the author of the Suda. While he had retired to meditate or write on the outskirts of the city of Gela, Aeschylus would have died when he received the impact on his head of the shell of a tortoise that had been thrown by an eagle (or a lammergeier vulture, since this animal usually throws bones against the ground to break them and feed on them). The bird would have mistaken his bald head for a rock. Previously, an oracle had given him a prediction that a dart from heaven would kill him.

General characteristics

Aeschylus was very prone to condensing his works into linked trilogies, which dealt with a particular theme, although each part retained its full meaning and could be perfectly represented separately. The first three dramas of a sequence of four dramatized consecutive episodes of the same myth, and the satirical drama that followed contained a related story. In the dramatic contests, three tragedies were represented as well as a satirical drama, with which the public's tension was relaxed. After his time, the tie-in trilogy remained an occasional option, while a great many productions consisted of four stand-alone dramas.

The Persians (472 BC), The Seven Against Thebes and The Supplicants are dramas with two actors since Aeschylus was the one that introduced the second actor on stage, reducing the intervention of the choirs, making dialogue and dramatic action possible. The main dialogues are fundamentally between characters and chorus with a great variety of structural schemes and a rather slow pace of action. This is one of the main features of the archaism of the theater of Aeschylus.

In the Orestiade (Agamemnon, The Coephoras, and The Eumenides), Aeschylus has skené, ekkyklema, mechane and a third actor, as we see in the scene from Agamemnon in which they appear in an agon Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, being present, in silence, Cassandra.

The central interest of Aeschylus' dramas is found mainly in the situation and its development, rather than in the characters. However, it is considered that the character that has been most worked on by the author is Clytemnestra, particularly in the tragedy Agamemnon , where necessity stimulates her ability to pretend. This, along with her versatility, makes her one of the most outstanding characters in all Greek tragedies.

Shear choirs almost always have a strong and peculiar personality; his words, together with the music and dance, help draw attention to the deep themes of Aeschylus' theater, setting the tone of the entire drama. Shear choruses are often of substantial importance to the action. The Danaides and the Erinyes are, in fact, the main protagonists of their dramas.

Aeschylus' lyrical style is clear but with a strong tendency towards the archaic and with homeric traits. They excel by presenting models of language and images, metaphors, similes, certain semantic fields, elaborating them down to the smallest details and maintaining them throughout the entire drama or trilogy.

Another peculiar characteristic is tragic decorum: the protagonist has to express himself as what he is; for example, in the case of Agamemnon, he must speak as a tragic hero would.

He is also bold, and gifted with a great imagination when it comes to exploiting the visual aspects of his dramas: the contrast between the dress of the Persian queen as she enters her chariot and Xerxes returning dressed only in rags; the chaotic entrance of the choir in The Seven Against Thebes; the exotically dressed, African-looking Danaides, their confrontation with the Egyptian soldiers; the purple carpet that will carry Agamemnon to his death; The Erinyes on stage; the procession with which the Orestiada concludes, etc., demonstrate his mastery of theatrical technique and set design.

Fundamental themes and elements

Human suffering is the main theme in shearing theatre, a suffering that leads the character to knowledge (remember the maxim of páthei máthos, knowledge through of suffering) and that it is not at odds with a strong belief in the final justice of the gods. In the production of Aeschylus, human suffering is always directly or indirectly caused by an evil or senseless action that leads to the misfortune of the protagonists but which may have been inherited by them. In this regard, the force of genos is fundamental, of the inheritance of guilt and blood ties, which causes the faults of the ancestors to be inherited by the current mythical protagonists, as is the case with the confrontation between Atreus and Thyestes, which tarnishes the lives of Agamemnon, Aegisthus and, later, Orestes. Therefore, sometimes they are indirect victims who sometimes incur a greater or lesser fault themselves, but of which many are completely innocent.

A key element in the shearing theater is the substitution, in the final scene, of violence by persuasion, as we see in the Orestiad. Most of the time, the gods are stern and implacable, and mortals find themselves imprisoned, without hope, despite the fact that they can choose how to face their own destiny. In Aeschylus' latest productions, a different concept of divinity stands out, as occurs in the Orestiade, in which the divinities known as the Coephoras become Eumenides, responsible and affectionate protectors of mortals they deserve it

Aeschylus is very interested in the communal life of the polis, and all of his surviving works have overtly political aspects. It seems to be a great opponent of democracy (in The supplicants , the king's decision is delayed because of the referendum, which poses a great risk to the survival of his people), a world whose Elements first appear in The Supplicants. In all of Aeschylus' dramas there is the contrast between the powerful individual dedicated to his interests and control of the state, and whose often irresponsible acts threaten to ruin it, and the community, which should be in control of itself and whose collective actions ensure general salvation.

Works

Aeschyli Tragoediae septem, 1552

According to the Byzantine encyclopedia Suda, Aeschylus would have composed 90 tragedies, of which only seven complete ones have survived. The Codex Mediceo (also known as Codex Laurentianus 32-39), the oldest manuscript of Aeschylus's work, dating from the second half of the 10th century and currently housed in the Laurentian Library in Florence, transmits a catalog in which the titles of 73 works by Aeschylus appear in alphabetical order, although this is incomplete. Indeed, indirect transmission has made us aware of a total of 82 titles, a figure that is far from both the titles listed in the catalog and the news of the Suda, a matter for which scholars they have proposed numerous solutions. Thanks to the great influence of the poet's work in Antiquity, it has been possible to gather a substantial collection of fragments and references to the lost work of Aeschylus. Regarding the number of theatrical victories in the Athenian contests, both the aforementioned article in the Suda and the anonymous life of the poet agree that Aeschylus won a total of 13 times. The first victory of him dates from the year 484 a. C., during the archonship of Philocrates in Athens. Although it is unknown in what year he participated for the first time in literary contests, ancient testimonies seem to indicate that his first participation took place in the first half of the century V a. C. The preserved works of Aeschylus are the following:

• The Persians (472 BC)
• The Seven Against Thebes (467 BC)
• The supplicants (463 BC)
• Orestíada (458 BC) comprising:
  • Agamemnon
  • The matches.
  • Euménides
• Prometheus chained (authorizing in discussion)

From testimonies of later authors we know that Aeschylus also composed elegies, of which very little is known. He was also attributed certain epigrams, including the famous epitaph for him.