AESCHYLUSBORN 525/524 BC

died 456/455 BC, Gela, Sicily first of classical Athens' great tragic dramatists, who raised that emerging art to great heights of poetry and theatrical power. Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion, fought and was wounded at Marathon (490 BC), where Athens defeated the invading Persians, and he again fought against the Persians when they invaded Greece in 480. His first victory in Athens' major dramatic competition was in 484 BC, and 12 years later his earliest extant work, Persai (Persians), was performed. After a visit to the court of Hieron I at Syracuse, Sicily, Aeschylus had a series of successes in the 460s and 450s with three trilogies of plays, only one of which trilogies, the Oresteia, has survived complete. It consists of Agamemnon, Choephoroi (The Libation Bearers), and Eumenides (The Furies). Aeschylus' other surviving tragedies are Hepta epi Thebais (Seven Against Thebes), Hiketides (Suppliants), and Prometheus desmotes (Prometheus Bound). Aeschylus went again to Sicily, where he died. Aeschylus lifted the art of tragedy from its dim origins as a choral and largely static recitative to fully developed drama. He added a second actor to the dramatic performance, developed the ensuing possibilities of dialogue, and thus enabled tragic drama to assume its characteristic function-the presentation of action. He was also the first-known writer to express in dramatic form that vision of life that is recognized as tragic. For Aeschylus, tragic events represented the gods' punishment for human sins and transgressions.