Aeschylus how many plays

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Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Works Aeschylus' total output is variously stated at between 70 and 90 plays.

Technique Aeschylus was the most innovative and imaginative of Greek dramatists. Works by Aeschylus Seven against Thebes. Prometheus Bound. All rights reserved. Sign in to annotate. Aeschylus was born around B. E at Eleusis, a town west of Athens and famous home of the cult of Demeter, a mystery cult which, through various rituals, prepared Greek souls for their transition into the afterlife. His father was named Europhion and there is documentation of a brother who was later killed at the Battle or Marathon.

The playwright matured under as the Athenian democracy regained power after a period of tyranny and sought to hold it against both internal and external threats. Significantly, his adolescent years saw the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Pisistratid family and establish the first democracy. The tension between democratic ideals and tyranny would eventually find its way into his plays, including Agagmemnon. Moreover, the ancient writer Pausanias wrote that Aeschylus' tombstone made no mention of drama's such as the Oresteia, but proclaimed his participation as a soldier in those famous Athenian military victories against the Persians at Salamis and Marathon which contributed to much to the growth of Athenian confidence and power.

Athens returned the favor, since it regarded Aeschylus as one of the main representatives of its Golden Age, before the Peloponnesian War and the teaching of the Sophists had weakened traditional Athenian society. Aeschylus is known to have fought with his brother for Greece against Persian invaders at Marathon in It was the first successful major repulsion of the Persians by Greeks; Aeschylus was around thirty-five years old at the time.

He went to war again at Salamis and Artemisium in and possibly the next year at Plataea. By this time, however, his career as a dramatist was already well underway. Aeschylus is thought to have written his first plays around the year , for the legendary dramatic competition, the Great Dionysa, at the Festival of Dionysus in Athens, where they were performed.

The competition, held in the annually in the spring, drew the most talented playwrights from around Greece for several decades. Plays were composed in trilogies, three lofty tragedies in unsequential arrangement or on a common theme, and one satyr play, or burlesque comedy. They were then judged according to high aesthetic criteria as well as the approval of the general audience. Aeschylus won his first victory in and went on to win twelve more after that. In total, Aeschylus wrote approximately ninety plays, the titles of about eighty of which are known.

However, only seven tragedies of the prodigious playwright's works survive. His earliest existing play is The Persians , presented in A historical tragedy about the Battle of Salam? It is highly probably Aeschylus drew on his own experiences at Salamis with the Persians, who had again invaded Greece around , in creating the famous play.

Although Aeschylus was the undisputed champion of the competition at Athens for most of his illustrious career, he suffered a memorable defeat in to a young Sophocles. There were not to be two in a row, for the next year Aeschylus produced his Oedipus trilogy of which Seven Against Thebes is the only survivor.

The Oresteia, Aeschylus' masterpiece and his only intact trilogy, was writen in Shortly after presenting it, the playwright traveled to Sicily for a second time.