Less than fifty years after his death, Aeschylus was portrayed in Aristophanes’ comedies as a symbol of archaic grandeur beloved by old men such as Dicaeopolis and Strepsiades, the heroes of Acharnians and Clouds, whereas the young cared only for Euripides and his ‘‘new’’ tragedy. In Aristophanes’ Frogs Aeschylus’ style is depicted as ‘‘noble’’ (semnos, 1004). His heroes are ‘‘half-gods’’ (1060), ‘‘with the spirit of a lion’’ (1041), and his thoughts are ‘‘great’’ (1058). His style is commensurately heroic, full of ‘‘words with flashing helmets’’ (818) and ‘‘horse-riding sayings’’ (821). This poet of manic inspiration (816) and wild temper (994, 1066) is assimilated to unbridled natural forces such as hurricanes (848) and raging fire (859), or fierce animals such as the bull (804, 822). He is said to ‘‘amaze’’ (962) the audience and play on their emotions by creating uncivilized and monstrous creatures. But he is also a political advisor who aims at the preservation of the city by giving good advice to his fellow citizens and who claims to teach them regard for hierarchy and martial virtues. This complex portrayal became very influential. Nineteenth-century scholars opted for the primitive Aeschylus, opposing him to the mature Sophocles and the decadent Euripides. Contemporary scholars tend to put more emphasis on the political character of the genre he illustrated or, better, created.
In fact, so little is known about Athenian tragedy before Aeschylus that Gilbert Murray had good reasons to entitle the book he devoted to the first extant tragic poet Aeschylus, the Creator of Tragedy (1940). Aeschylus, who competed with Choer-ilus, Pratinas, Phrynichus, and, at the end of his life, Sophocles, produced his first play in 498 and won his first victory in 484. He was both productive (the number of plays attributed to him by our sources varies between seventy-three and ninety) and successful: he won thirteen victories during his life and not a few after his death (a circumstance which may explain the figure of twenty-eight victories given by the Suda).
Only seven plays, as well as many fragments, survive. Moreover, only four are truly complete. Persians (472), a single play with no link to the (lost) plays produced with it, is the only surviving tragedy whose subject matter is taken from contemporary history; it stages the defeat of the Persians and the return of Xerxes. The Oresteia (458) is the only surviving trilogy - in all probability a form invented by Aeschylus.
It comprises three connected tragedies: Agamemnon, on the return of the victorious King Agamemnon and his murder by his wife Clytemnestra; Libation Bearers, on the revenge of his son Orestes and the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus; and Eumenides, on the trial and acquittal of Orestes at Athens.
Seven against Thebes (467) is the conclusion of a trilogy that covered the fate of the Labdacids; the two plays that preceded it (Laius and Oedipus) are lost, but may be reconstructed from the second stasimon of the surviving tragedy. The first play focused on Laius and his death in consequence of his disobedience to Apollo. The second was devoted to Oedipus’ discovery of his parricide and incestuous marriage and its consequences: Oedipus’ self-blinding and his curse upon his sons. The third, surviving, tragedy begins with the siege of Thebes, defended by Eteocles, by an Argive army led by Polynices, and ends with mutual fratricide and the defeat of the Argives.
Suppliants, produced in competition with Sophocles - that is, no earlier than the 460s, as revealed by a scrap of papyrus published in 1952 (P. Oxy 2256.3) - was either the first or the second play of a trilogy devoted to the story of Danaus and his fifty daughters. It deals with the arrival in Argos of the Danaids, pursued by their cousins the sons of Aegyptus, and the Argives’ decision to grant the fugitives asylum. All we know of Egyptians is the title, which explains why it has been considered either as the first play focusing on the pursuit of the Danaids by their cousins and ending with their flight (Del Grande 1947, 90-92; Sommerstein 1996, 143-46), or as the second (a view accepted today by most scholars, e. g., Winnington-Ingram 1961; Garvie 1969, 185-86; Herington 1986, 101), beginning with the surrender of the Danaids to the sons of Aegyptus after an Argive defeat and ending with the murder of the sons of Aegyptus by their cousins on the wedding night. The third play, Danaids, is better known: it began with the discovery of the corpses and was devoted to the trial of Hypermestra, the only Danaid who disobeyed her father and spared her husband, her vindication by Aphrodite, and the eventual reconciliation of her sisters to marriage.
The authorship of Prometheus Bound, which portrays the punishment of the rebel Titan by Zeus, has been discussed with particular heat in recent years. Following Schmid (1929), Griffith (1977) and West (1979) strongly deny its authenticity, relying mainly on stylistic and metrical arguments. Said (1985) and Herington (1986), in contrast, who point out that the major themes of the play are entirely consistent with the themes observable elsewhere in Aeschylus’ plays, tend to accept the ancient - and unanimous - attribution of Prometheus Bound to Aeschylus. This play, the only surviving part of a trilogy, was followed by Prometheus Unbound, devoted to the loosing of Prometheus by Heracles, who killed the eagle and released the Titan from his bonds. The content of Prometheus the Fire Carrier is not clear: according to some, it was the first play of the trilogy and staged the bringing of the fire to men, but many think that it concluded the trilogy with the establishment of a cult of Prometheus at Athens and its associated torch race.
World History
