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ÆSCHYLUS
Æschylus, son of Euphorion, from Eleusis
(525–456 B.C.)
Æschylus was by birth an Eupatrid, of the old nobility. He came from Eleusis, the seat not only of the Demeter Mysteries, but also of a special worship of Dionysus-Zagreus, and close to Thespis's own deme Icaria. We hear that he began writing young; but he was called away from his plays, in 490, to fight at Marathon, where his brother Kynêgeirus met a heroic death, and he won his first victory in the middle of the nine years of peace which followed (484). Four years later he joined in the general exodus to the ships and Salamis, leaving the stones of Athens for the barbarians to do their will upon. These were years in which tragedies and big thoughts might shape themselves in men's minds. They were not years for much actual writing and play-acting. In 476 Æschylus seems to have been at the wars in Thrace; we have echoes of them in the Lycurgus* Trilogy and in the Persæ (esp. 866). Soon after that again he was in Syracuse, perhaps on a diplomatic mission, and wrote his Women of Etna,* in honour of the town of that name which Hiero had just founded (476–475) on the slopes of the mountain.
From 484 onwards he was probably the chief figure
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