Aeschylus (525 – 455 BC) started off as a farm worker in ancient Athens. Then one day, he had a vision in which the god Dionysius ordered him to write plays. So he dropped the farm tools, gave his notice, and began to write plays. It was a good career move. He became ancient Greece’s greatest playwright, and penned more than ninety plays. Most of his works won prizes in Athens’ great drama festivals. Many of his plays are still performed in theaters around the world to this day. Aeschylus is credited with founding serious drama, and is frequently referred to as the “The Father of Tragedy”. As seen below, the Father of Tragedy ended his life with a tragicomic death.
The Man Who Invented Tragedy and Acting As We Know It
Aeschylus practically invented acting as we understand the term today. Before he came along, theater consisted of a narrator who told a story, interrupted at intervals with a chorus that performed a song and dance. Aeschylus did not want to do what everybody else did, and simply let somebody narrate his plays. So he used actors instead to play out the story with distinct roles and an exchange of dialogue.
Aeschylus improved production values with the use of striking imagery and extravagant costumes. His innovations also included a wheeled platform to change stage scenery. He also used a crane to lift actors in scenes involving flight or descent from the heavens. His chief themes were conflicts between men and the gods, between the individual and the state, and the inevitability of divine retribution for sins.
Aeschylus’ Career
Back then, playwrights submitted three tragedies for competitions at drama festivals, and Aeschylus became the first to link his three plays into a unified trilogy. His trilogies typically followed a family over several generations, such as the Oresteia, about King Agamemnon during the Trojan War, and his descendants in its aftermath. Like all freeborn Athenians, Aeschylus was also a citizen-soldier, and he fought in the Battle of Marathon, 490 BC, in which his brother was killed.
He also fought in the naval battles of Artemisium and Salamis, 480 BC. His wartime experiences found expression in his play, The Persians. For all his literary accomplishments, Aeschylus’ self-penned epitaph did not mention his success as a playwright. Instead, it stated what he was proudest of in his life, and what he most wanted to be remembered for: that he had fought at the Battle of Marathon.
The Tragicomic Death of the Inventor of Tragedy
Aeschylus’ dramatic life came to a dramatic – or more like tragicomic – end in 455 BC, during a visit to Gela, in Sicily. There, he received a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object. So he left the city and stayed outdoors to avoid that fate. A common theme in Greek drama is that it is futile to try and avoid one’s fate, and the dramatist’s attempt to escape his prophesied fate proved futile as he sat in a field outside Gela.
An eagle was flying above with a tortoise clutched in its talons, and seeking something with which to break the shell. It mistook Aeschylus’ bald head for a rock, dropped the tortoise on his shiny dome, and killed him instantly. The account of the great playwright’s bizarre demise might be apocryphal, but it fits in with ancient Greek perceptions of the inevitability of fate.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Encyclopedia Britannica – Aeschylus, Greek Dramatist
History Halls – Deaths You’ll Go to Hell for Laughing At: Catherine the Great
Metropolitan Museum of Art – The Death of Aeschylus
Rosenmeyer, Thomas G. – The Art of Aeschylus (1982)
