[Mini-Bio]: AESCHYLUS (525-456 B.C.E.)

Greek playwright. Born at Eleusis, Aeschylus began his career as
a dramatist during the 490s B.C.E. He was one of the most popular
tragedians of his period, winning thirteen victories in the Athenian
competitions. As was customary for the day, Aeschylus played the
lead in many of his own plays. He is credited with expanding the
dramatic capacitites of tragedy by introducing multiple characters
and reducing the role of the chorus.

Although Aeschylus is believed to have written about ninety plays,
only seven bearing his name survive, comprising the oldest corp-
us of Greek drama still extant. Six plays have been authenticated:
The Persians (472 B.C.E.), Seven Against Thebes (467), and The
Suppliant Women (466-459); and Agamemnon, The Libation-
Bearers, and Eumenides, a trilogy of works that together form the
Oresteia (458). (Prometheus Bound, once ascribed to Aeschylus,
is now thought to belong to a later era.) Scholars maintain that
most, if not all, of his plays fit into larger play cycles, most of
which have been lost.

Human history as a progression of guilt and vengeance, honor,
pride, and criminality is the great theme of Aeschylus' work. He
dramatizes the precarious situation of mankind, battered by the
often petty demands and punishments of the gods, driven to crime
and despondency by the passions of the immortals. Some critics,
however, contend that Aeschylus believed that the cycle of moral
corruption and decay could be broken, and that the future of Athen-
ian democracy might offer an escape from tragedy.

--Dictionary of Global Culture, Kwame Appiah & Henry L.
   Gates, Jr., Editors