The next important period for mythology was the fifth century B.C., when Greece experienced a flowering of the theater. During this period, three Greek playwrights rose to fame for their tragic plays. The first of these tragedians was Aeschylus, who wrote more than ninety plays and is sometimes called the father of tragedy.

Life

Historians know several facts about Aeschylus. He was born into an aristocratic family near Athens around 525 B.C., served as a soldier in the Persian Wars, and became a celebrated tragedian. He participated numerous times in the Great Dionysia, part of a festival honoring Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. For this festival, three dramatists each created three tragedies and a satyr play (a short play featuring drunkenness, sexuality, and practical jokes), which were performed and judged at the celebration. His first competition is thought to have taken place around 499 B.C., with his first victory in 484 B.C. From then on, Aeschylus won first prize in nearly every competition (although he was bested once by his protégé Sophocles).

Aeschylus died around 455 B.C. in Gela, Sicily, at the age of sixty-nine. The cause of his death is unknown, although a rumor (thought to have been started by a comic writer) claimed that Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head. Regardless of how he died, Aeschylus was honored with a public funeral at which sacrifices and performances were carried out.

Works

Aeschylus is thought to have written ninety plays during his lifetime, approximately eighty of which are known from the bits and pieces that have survived. However, only seven of his plays, all tragedies, remain intact today: The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides (the latter three make up the famous trilogy the Oresteia), and Prometheus Bound.

A major theme of these tragedies is justice. Aeschylus believed that the gods and goddesses sometimes resented mortals' attempts to attain greatness, which they saw as hubris (excessive pride). The deities often pursued justice by tricking a person into causing his own downfall through pride. The unjust were not always punished directly; sometimes, punishment fell upon a culprit's descendants. Zeus, the god of justice, is a central figure in Aeschylus's work.

As was common in his culture, Aeschylus saw revenge as a legitimate form of justice. For example, the three plays of the Oresteia show a cause-and-effect chain of violence and revenge, broken only when the goddess Athena intervenes and replaces the old-fashioned blood feud with a new system of trial by jury.

Throughout these plays, gods and goddesses intervene in human affairs. The works of Aeschylus are one of the richest sources of classical mythology that has survived.