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Aeschylus ( or ;〔Jones, Daniel; Roach, Peter, James Hartman and Jane Setter, eds. ''Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary''. 17th edition. Cambridge UP, 2006.〕 ''Aiskhulos''; ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is also the first whose plays still survive; the others are Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: critics and scholars' knowledge of the genre begins with his work,〔R. Lattimore, ''Aeschylus I: Oresteia'', 4〕 and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays.〔Martin Cropp, 'Lost Tragedies: A Survey'; ''A Companion to Greek Tragedy'', page 273〕 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.〔The remnant of a commemorative inscription, dated to the 3rd century BC, lists four, possibly eight, dramatic poets (probably including Choerilus, Phrynichus, and Pratinas) who had won tragic victories at the Dionysia before Aeschylus had. Thespis was traditionally regarded the inventor of tragedy. According to another tradition, tragedy was established in Athens in the late 530s BC, but that may simply reflect an absence of records. Major innovations in dramatic form, credited to Aeschylus by Aristotle and the anonymous source ''The Life of Aeschylus'', may be exaggerations and should be viewed with caution (Martin Cropp (2006), "Lost Tragedies: A Survey" in ''A Companion to Greek Tragedy'', pp. 272–4)〕 Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived, and there is a longstanding debate regarding his authorship of one of these plays, ''Prometheus Bound'', which some believe his son Euphorion actually wrote. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work.〔P. Levi, ''Greek Drama'', 159〕 He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy; his ''Oresteia'' is the only ancient example of the form to have survived.〔S. Saïd, ''Aeschylean Tragedy'', 215〕 At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480-479 BC). This work, ''The Persians'', is the only surviving classical Greek tragedy concerned with contemporary events (very few of that kind were ever written),〔S. Saïd, ''Aeschylean Tragedy'', 221〕 and a useful source of information about its period. The significance of war in Ancient Greek culture was so great that Aeschylus' epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright. Despite this, Aeschylus' work – particularly the ''Oresteia'' ''–'' is acclaimed by today's literary academics. == Life == There are no reliable sources for the life of Aeschylus. Aeschylus was born in c. 525 BC in Eleusis, a small town about 27 kilometers northwest of Athens, which is nestled in the fertile valleys of western Attica, though the date is most likely based on counting back forty years from his first victory in the Great Dionysia. His family was wealthy and well established; his father, Euphorion, was a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica, though this might be a fiction that the ancients invented to account for the grandeur of his plays.〔S. Saïd, ''Eschylean tragedy'', 217〕 As a youth, he worked at a vineyard until, according to the 2nd-century AD geographer Pausanias, the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of tragedy.〔 As soon as he woke from the dream, the young Aeschylus began to write 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, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power. Cleisthenes' reforms included a system of registration that emphasized the importance of the deme over family tradition. In the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family were living in the deme of Eleusis.〔Kopff 1997 pp.1-472〕 The Persian Wars would play a large role in the playwright's life and career. In 490 BC, Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against Darius I's invading Persian army at the Battle of Marathon.〔 The Athenians emerged triumphant, a victory celebrated across the city-states of Greece.〔 Cynegeirus, however, died in the battle, receiving a mortal wound while trying to prevent a Persian ship retreating from the shore, for which his countrymen extolled him as a hero.〔〔 In 480, Aeschylus was called into military service again, this time against Xerxes I's invading forces at the Battle of Salamis, and perhaps, too, at the Battle of Plataea in 479.〔 Ion of Chios was a witness for Aeschylus's war record and his contribution in Salamis.〔 Salamis holds a prominent place in ''The Persians'', his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia. Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult to Demeter based in his hometown of Eleusis. As the name implies, members of the cult were supposed to have gained some secret knowledge. Firm details of specific rites are sparse, as members were sworn under the penalty of death not to reveal anything about the Mysteries to non-initiates. Nevertheless, according to Aristotle some thought that Aeschylus had revealed some of the cult's secrets on stage.〔''Nicomachean Ethics'' 1111a8-10.〕 Other sources claim that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot, but he fled the scene. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the audience tried to stone Aeschylus. He then took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. At his trial, he pleaded ignorance. He was acquitted, with the jury sympathetic to the wounds that Aeschylus and Cynegeirus had suffered at Marathon. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, Aeschylus's younger brother Ameinias helped to acquit Aeschylus by showing the jury the stump of the hand that he lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. The truth is that the award for bravery at Salamis went not to Aeschylus' brother but to Ameinias of Pallene.〔 Aeschylus travelled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BC, having been invited by Hiero I of Syracuse, a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island; and during one of these trips he produced ''The Women of Aetna'' (in honor of the city founded by Hieron) and restaged his ''Persians''.〔 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''.〔 In 458 BC, he returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle which had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile.〔 Pliny, in his ''Naturalis Historiæ'', adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object. Aeschylus's work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death, his were the only tragedies allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions.〔 His sons Euphorion and Euæon and his nephew Philocles also became playwrights.〔 The inscription on Aeschylus's gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements: According to Castoriadis, the inscription on his graveyard signifies the primary importance of "belonging to the City" (polis), of the solidarity that existed within the collective body of citizen-soldiers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Aeschylus」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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