1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

Prometheus Bound (authorship of this play has
been disputed).
We are told that Aeschylus won about thirteen victories, compared to the twenty-four of
Sophocles, and four of Euripides during his lifetime and one posthumous. Fragments exist of
many of the missing plays. The most substantial fragments come from satyr plays: Diktuoulkoi
("Netfishers") and Theoroi, also known as Isthmiastai ("Spectators at the Isthmian Games").
There are few extensive fragments from the tragedies. The most we have are from Myrmidons,
Niobe, and Prometheus Luomenos (“Prometheus Released”).
Aeschylus' plays have many exchanges between one actor and the chorus. As much as
half a play can be choral and his choruses are visually striking. The chorus of Persians appeared
in lavish oriental costumes. The Erinyes, or Furies in the Eumenides, were so hideous in
appearance that (an ancient biographer claimed) women miscarried upon seeing them, and little
boys fainted from fright. By the time that the biographer wrote his account (in the fourth century
or later), women were attending the theatre.
Of the three great tragedians whose work we have, Aeschylus gets the prize for poetry.
He combines abstract usage, invented and rare words coupled with bold metaphors. He is
certainly the most difficult, if not impossible, to translate. He often takes an image and carries it
throughout the play, or trilogy, as, for instance, in the Oresteia with the related images of net,
hunt, blood, fertility, sacrifice, and war: public pursuits which lead to private disaster. This use of
a repeated image in a play, or connected trilogy, is not unlike the Wagnerian Leitmotiv in opera.
The Persians
Most tragic plots and characters come from mythology. Aristophanes said that Aeschylus
wrote "slices from the banquet of Homer." The first tragedy that we know of that had a plot and
characters entirely of the author's own making was the Antheus by Agathon, towards the end of
the fifth century.
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