Potter, Robert

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 - 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. He is often described as the father of tragedy: Our knowledge of the genre begins with his work[4] and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays.[5] According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow conflict among them whereas characters previously had interacted only with the chorus.

Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays h...