taught; (2) Eryxias, or Erasistratus; concerning riches, whether they are good; (3) Axiochus: concerning death, whether it is to be feared,—but those extant on the several subjects are not genuine remains. J. le Clerc has given a Latin translation of them, with notes and several dissertations, entitled Silvae Philologicae, and they have been edited by S. N. Fischer (Leipzig, 1786), and K. F. Hermann, De Aeschin. Socrat. relig. (Gött. 1850). The genuine dialogues appear to have been marked by the Socratic irony; an amusing passage is quoted by Cicero in the De inventione (i. 31).
See Hirzel, Der Dialog. i. 129-140; T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. iii. p. 342 (Eng. trans. G. G. Berry, London, 1905).
AESCHYLUS (525–456 B.C.), Greek poet, the first of the only three Attic Tragedians of whose work entire plays survive, and in a very real sense (as we shall see) the founder of the Greek drama, was born at Eleusis in the year 525 B.C. His father, Euphorion, belonged to the “Eupatridae” or old nobility of Athens, as we know on the authority of the short Life of the poet given in the Medicean Manuscript (see note on “authorities” at the end). According to the same tradition he took part as a soldier in the great struggle Life.of Greece against Persia; and was present at the battles of Marathon, Artemisium, Salamis and Plataea, in the years 490–479. At least one of his brothers, Cynaegirus, fought with him at Marathon, and was killed in attempting a conspicuous act of bravery; and the brothers’ portraits found a place in the national picture of the battle which the Athenians set up as a memorial in the Stoa Poecile (or “Pictured Porch”) at Athens.
The vigour and loftiness of tone which mark Aeschylus’ poetic work was not only due, we may be sure, to his native genius and gifts, powerful as they were, but were partly inspired by the personal share he took in the great actions of a heroic national uprising. In the same way, the poet’s brooding thoughtfulness on deep questions—the power of the gods, their dealings with man, the dark mysteries of fate, the future life in Hades—though largely due to his turn of mind and temperament, was doubtless connected with the place where his childhood was passed. Eleusis was the centre of the most famous worship of Demeter, with its processions, its ceremonies, its mysteries, its impressive spectacles and nocturnal rites; and these were intimately connected with the Greek beliefs about the human soul, and the underworld.
His dramatic career began early, and was continued for more than forty years. In 499, his 26th year, he first exhibited at Athens; and his last work, acted during his lifetime at Athens, was the trilogy of the Oresteia, exhibited in 458. The total number of his plays is stated by Suidas to have been ninety; and the seven extant plays, with the dramas named or nameable which survive only in fragments, amount to over eighty, so that Suidas’ figure is probably based on reliable tradition. It is well known that in the 5th century each exhibitor at the tragic contests produced four plays; and Aeschylus must therefore have competed (between 499 and 458) more than twenty times, or once in two years. His first victory is recorded in 484, fifteen years after his earliest appearance on the stage; but in the remaining twenty-six years of his dramatic activity at Athens he was successful at least twelve times. This clearly shows that he was the most commanding figure among the tragedians of 500–458; and for more than half that time was usually the victor in the contests. Perhaps the most striking evidence of his exceptional position among his contemporaries is the well-known decree passed shortly after his death that whosoever desired to exhibit a play of Aeschylus should “receive a chorus,” i.e. be officially allowed to produce the drama at the Dionysia. The existence of this decree, mentioned in the Life, is strongly confirmed by two passages in Aristophanes: first in the prologue of the Acharnians (which was acted in 425, thirty-one years after the poet’s death), where the citizen, grumbling about his griefs and troubles, relates his great disappointment, when he took his seat in the theatre “expecting Aeschylus,” to find that when the play came on it was Theognis; and secondly in a scene of the Frogs (acted 405 B.C.), where the throne of poetry is contested in Hades between Aeschylus and Euripides, the former complains (Fr. 860) that “the battle is not fair, because my own poetry has not died with me, while Euripides’ has died, and therefore he will have it with him to recite”—a clear reference, as the scholiast points out, to the continued production at Athens of Aeschylus’ plays after his death.
Apart from fables, guesses and blunders, of which a word is said below, the only other incidents recorded of the poet’s life that deserve mention are connected with his Sicilian visits, and the charge preferred against him of revealing the “secrets of Demeter.” This tale is briefly mentioned by Aristotle (Eth. iii. 2), and a late commentator (Eustratius, 12th century) quotes from one Heraclides Pontius the version which may be briefly given as follows:—
The poet was acting a part in one of his own plays, where there was a reference to Demeter. The audience suspected him of revealing the inviolable secrets, and rose in fury; the poet fled to the altar of Dionysus in the orchestra and so saved his life for the moment; for even an angry Athenian crowd respected the inviolable sanctuary. He was afterwards charged with the crime before the Areopagus; and his plea “that he did not know that what he said was secret” was accepted by the court and secured his acquittal. The commentator adds that the prowess of the poet (and his brother) at Marathon was the real cause of the leniency of his judges. The story was afterwards developed, and embellished by additions; but in the above shape it dates back to the 4th century; and as the main fact seems accepted by Aristotle, it is probably authentic.
As to his foreign travel, the suggestion has been made that certain descriptions in the Persae, and the known facts that he wrote a trilogy on the story of the Thracian king Lycurgus, persecutor of Dionysus, seem to point to his having a special knowledge of Thrace, which makes it likely that he had visited it. This, however, remains at best a conjecture. For his repeated visits to Sicily, on the other hand, there is conclusive ancient evidence. Hiero the First, tyrant of Syracuse, who reigned about twelve years (478–467), and amongst other efforts after magnificence invited to his court famous poets and men of letters, had founded a new town, Aetna, on the site of Catana which he captured, expelling the inhabitants. Among his guests were Aeschylus, Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides. About 476 Aeschylus was entertained by him, and at his request wrote and exhibited a play called The Women of Aetna in honour of the new town. He paid a second visit about 472, the year in which he had produced the Persae at Athens; and the play is said to have been repeated at Syracuse at his patron’s request. Hiero died in 467, the year of the Seven against Thebes; but after 458, when the Oresteia was exhibited at Athens, we find the poet again in Sicily for the last time. In 456 he died, and was buried at Gela; and on his tomb was placed an epitaph in two elegiac couplets saying: “Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian, who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela; of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, or the long-haired Persian who knows it well.” The authorship of this epitaph is uncertain, as the Life says it was inscribed on his grave by the people of Gela, while Athenaeus and Pausanias attribute it to Aeschylus. Probably most people would agree that only the poet himself could have praised the soldier and kept silence about the poetry.
Of the marvellous traditions which gathered round his name little need be said. Pausanias’ tale, how Dionysus appeared to the poet when a boy, asleep in his father’s vineyard, and bade him write a tragedy—or the account in the Life, how he was killed by an eagle letting fall on his head a tortoise whose shell the bird was unable to crack—clearly belong to the same class of legends as the story that Plato was son of Apollo, and that a swarm of bees settled upon his infant lips as he lay in his mother’s arms. Less supernatural, but hardly more historical, is the statement in the Life that the poet left Athens for Sicily in consequence of his defeat in the dramatic contest of 468 by Sophocles; or the alternative story of the same authority that the cause of his chagrin was that Simonides’ elegy on the heroes
