Authors

Greek

Aeschylus

Aeschylus is the earliest of the great Athenian tragedians and the father of drama as we know it: he introduced the second actor, enabling true dialogue for the first time. Of his seventy to ninety plays only seven survive, including the Oresteia trilogy — the only complete ancient Greek tragic trilogy — and Prometheus Bound. He fought at the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE), and his epitaph, which he reportedly composed himself, mentions Marathon but not his plays. His tragedies are characterized by theological grandeur and linguistic density.