* Aeschylus ' play, The Persians is produced in Sicily.

13-14 ), Aeschylus left Athens for Sicily because Athenians valued him less than some other poets ( Vit.

Plutarch, in the Life of Cimon, recounts his first triumph of the young talented Sophocles against the famous and hitherto unchallenged Aeschylus, which ended in an unusual manner, without the usual draw for the referees, and that caused the voluntary exile of Aeschylus Sicily.

In The Libation Bearers, the second play of Aeschylus ' trilogy Orestia, Pylades speaks only once.

Aeschylus (, Aiskhulos ; c. 525 / 524 BC – c. 456 / 455 BC ) was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides.

So important was the war to Aeschylus and the Greeks that, upon his death, around 456 BC, his epitaph commemorated his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon rather than his success as a playwright.

As soon as he woke from the dream, the young Aeschylus began writing a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC, when he was only 26 years old ; He would win his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484 BC.

In 510 BC, Cleomenes I ( Aeschylus was 15 at the time ) expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power.

In 490 BC, Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against Darius I's invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon.

By 473 BC, after the death of Phrynichus, one of his chief rivals, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition.

In 472 BC, Aeschylus staged the production that included the Persians, with Pericles serving as choregos.

Euripides () ( c. 480 – 406 BC ) was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Euripides first competed in the City Dionysia, the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus, and it was not until 441 BC that he won a first prize.

Many more errors came from the tendency of actors to interpolate words and sentences, producing so many corruptions and variations that a law was proposed by Lycurgus of Athens in 330 BC "... that the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should be written down and preserved in a public office ; and that the town clerk should read the text over with the actors ; and that all performances which did not comply with this regulation should be illegal.

Aeschylus, in 458 BC, proposed the male as the parent, with the female as a " nurse for the young life sown within her.

Prometheus Bound, perhaps the most famous treatment of the myth to be found among the Greek tragedies, is traditionally attributed to the 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus.

* 484 BC: Athenian playwright Aeschylus wins a poetry prize

* 472 BC: The tragedy The Persians is produced by Aeschylus.

* 468 BC: Sophocles, Greek playwright, defeats Aeschylus for the Athenian Prize.

* 458 BC: Greek playwright Aeschylus completes the Oresteia, a trilogy that tells the story of a family blood feud.

* Aeschylus of Athens, playwright ( 525 – 456 BC )

* 778 BC: Agamestor, King of Athens, dies after a reign of 17 years and is succeeded by his son Aeschylus.

* 755 BC: Aeschylus, King of Athens, dies after a reign of 23 years and is succeeded by Alcmaeon.

Although early authors such as Aeschylus refer in passing to Menelaus ' early life, detailed sources are quite late, post-dating 5th-century BC Greek tragedy.

* 525 BC — Aeschylus, author of Greek tragedies ( d. 456 BC )

It is best known for having been the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the most famous religious events of the ancient Greek religion, and the birthplace of Aeschylus, one of the three great tragedians of antiquity.

Aeschylus mocks Euripides ' verse as predictable and formulaic by having Euripides quote lines from many of his prologues, each time interrupting the declamation with the same phrase "" ("... lost his little flask of oil ").

) Euripides counters by demonstrating the alleged monotony of Aeschylus ' choral songs, parodying excerpts from his works and having each citation end in the same refrain (" oh, what a stroke, won't you come to the rescue?

Aristophanes, in his comedy The Frogs, parodies such disputes by having Euripides and Aeschylus bicker over orthotes epeon.

Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult to Demeter based in his hometown of Eleusis.

The opera Les Danaïdes ( The Danaids ) is a five-act tragédie lyrique ; the plot was based on an ancient Greek legend that had been the basis for the first play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, entitled The Suppliants.

Aeschylus had written his own epitaph commemorating his life as a warrior fighting for Athens against Persia, without any mention of his success as a playwright, and Sophocles was celebrated by his contemporaries for his social gifts and contributions to public life as a state official, but there are no records of Euripides's public life except as a dramatisthe could well have been " a brooding and bookish recluse ".

Aeschylus gained thirteen victories as a dramatist, Sophocles at least twenty, Euripides only four in his lifetime, and this has often been taken as an indication of the latter's unpopularity with his contemporaries, and yet a first place might not have been the main criterion for success in those times ( the system of selecting judges appears to have been flawed ) and merely being chosen to compete was in itself a mark of distinction.

Finally, just as Aeschylus gave Prometheus a key role in bringing Zeus to power, he also attributed to him secret knowledge that could lead to Zeus's downfall: Prometheus had been told by his mother Gaia of a potential marriage that would produce a son who would overthrow Zeus.

His program of new constructions included a new theatre, designed by Damocopos, which gave the city a flourishing cultural life: this in turn attracted personalities as Aeschylus, Ario of Metimma, Eumelos of Corinth and Sappho, who had been exiled here from Mytilene.

The groundbreaking tragic playwright Aeschylus is said to have been especially loved for his satyr plays, but none of them have survived.

His listeners may also have understood the introduction of a new god by allusions to Aeschylus ' The Eumenides ; the irony would have been that just as the Eumenides were not new gods at all but the Furies in a new form, so was the Christian God not a new god but rather the god the Greeks already worshipped as the Unknown God.

Semele was a tragedy by Aeschylus ; it has been lost, save a few lines quoted by other writers, and a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy.

Aeschylus wrote a satyr play about the abduction called Orithyia which has been lost.

By the loosest definition, stock characters have been around ever since the tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, being based upon the traits of mythological characters.

The Greek playwright Aeschylus was said to have been killed in 456 or 455 BC by a tortoise dropped by an eagle who mistook his bald head for a stone – if this incident did occur, the Lammergeier is a likely candidate for the " eagle ".

John Kleinig, professor of Philosophy at City University of New York, observes that over the years the idea has been treated by creative writers from Aeschylus through John Galsworthy to Joseph Conrad, by psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, scholars of religion, political economists, scholars of business and marketing, and — most particularly — by political theorists, who deal with it in terms of loyalty oaths and patriotism.

However, Arrian describes the occasion when Alexander and Hephaestion publicly identified themselves with Achilles and Patroclus, who were acknowledged, by Plato and Aeschylus among others, to have been lovers.

The Athenians may have been blending the cult of Bendis with the equally Dionysiac Thracian revels of Kotys, mentioned by Aeschylus.

Wagner felt that the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus had been the finest ( though still flawed ) examples so far of total artistic synthesis, but that this synthesis had subsequently been corrupted by Euripides.

Increasingly, arguments for and against the attribution to Aeschylus have been based on metrical-stylistic grounds: the play's diction, the use of so-called Eigenworter, the use of recitative anapests in the meter, etc.

In Zeus ' turn to make the gift, however, Aeschylus could not report that the oracle was given directly to Apollo, who had not yet been born, Robertson notes, and thus Phoebe was interposed.

Nevertheless, the mask is known to have been used since the time of Aeschylus and considered to be one of the iconic conventions of classical Greek theater.

Given Aeschylus ' tendency to write connected trilogies, three plays attested in the catalogue of his work have been supposed to constitute the Achilleis: Myrmidons, Nereids and Phrygians ( alternately titled The Ransoming of Hector ).