Aeschylus (c.525–c.456 BCE) was the earliest writer of Greek tragic drama whose works survive. He is regarded as the founder of Greek tragic drama. His seven extant plays from a known 80 titles include Prometheus Bound and the Oresteia trilogy.
Aeschylus contributed considerably to the methodological development of the dramatic form and the movement away from pure ritual to the theater as we know it. He did so by introducing the concept of two actors in dialogue and by limiting the role of the choral song.
Aeschylus is best known for his trilogy, the Oresteia (458 BCE,) consisting of the tragedies Agamemnon, The Choephori, and The Eumenides.
Using themes from Homer‘s Iliad and Odyssey, the Oresteia tell the story of the fall of the House of Atreus in a series of retributive murders over three generations. Agamemnon, who has killed his daughter to ensure victory over the Trojans, returns home and is killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. This is followed by the vengeance of their son Orestes.
The Oresteia have inspired some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the modern world—from Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche to T. S. Eliot and Simone de Beauvoir.
According to legend, Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a turtle onto his bald head, taking it for a stone on which the shell could be broken. Aeschylus’s head was broken; this fulfilled an oracle’s prediction that Aeschylus would be struck dead by a force from the heavens.
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It is always in season for old men to learn.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Learning
Call no man happy till he is dead.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Happiness
The sea is there—and who shall quench it?—nurturing the juices which yield much purple worth its weight in silver, wholly renewable, the dye of vestments; there is a remedy for these here with the gods’ help, my lord, from our reserve: the house does not know how to be poor.
—Aeschylus
Let war stay abroad; it makes no difficulty in coming, for the man who will have in him a strong desire for glory. I disapprove of a bird’s battling in its own home.
—Aeschylus
Who except the gods can live without any pain?
—Aeschylus
Topics: Acceptance
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Sleep, Suffering, Despair, God, Wisdom
Everyone’s quick to blame the alien.
—Aeschylus
Take heart. Suffering, when it climbs the highest, lasts but a little time.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Suffering
He who goes unenvied shall not be admired.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Envy
Hell to ships, hell to men, hell to cities.
—Aeschylus
Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
—Aeschylus
Against necessity, against its strength, no one can fight and win.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Necessity, Acceptance
And from your city do not wholly banish fear,
For what man living, freed from fear, will still be just?
—Aeschylus
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.
—Aeschylus
I count false words the foulest plague of all.
—Aeschylus
Bronze is a mirror of the face, wine of the mind.
—Aeschylus
To the man who himself strives earnestly, God also lends a helping hand.
—Aeschylus
Topics: Prayer
Countless chuckles of the waves of the sea.
—Aeschylus
The rest, I keep silent: a great ox is treading on my tongue—but the house itself, if it got a voice, would speak very plainly.
—Aeschylus
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