Classics 095: Greek Tragedy

Aeschylus

• Sources for the life of Aeschylus
• Vita
• Marmor Parium
• Suda
• Dates
• born 525/4BCE
• first tragedies likely were in 499
  
• fought at battle of Marathon 490
• first first place at the Dionysia 484
  
• fought at battle of Salamis 480
• reproduced the Persians in Sicily at Syracuse at the invitation of Hieron the tyrant in 472
• died 456 in Sicily at Gela
• after death, his plays were granted the right to be re-produced.

• Supposedly became a playwright because Dionysus appeared to him in a dream and told him to write tragedy.
  
• He may have acted in his own plays.
• Particularly likely in the Eumenides
• Accused by Areopagus court of impiety for the Eumenides
• Took refuge at altar of Dionysus
• Also accused of revealing the Eleusinian Mysteries (a secret religious experience associated with Eleusis)