Father Of Tragedy
Aeschylus as a bust.
Aeschylus, the famous Greek playwright, who wrote perhaps ninety plays, (only seven or eight of which survive,) was known as The Father of Tragedy. He wrote; The Persians, The Suppliants, Seven against Thebes, Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Oresteia, The Eumenides, and possibly Prometheus Bound (whose authorship is disputed). He survived the Battles of Marathon in 456BC, Salamis 480BC, and the Battle of Plataea in 479, all against the Persians. He traveled the Mediterranean to Sicily several times, in an age when water borne travel was far from safe.
He was married, had two sons, and survived to the age of 69 in a world with no antibiotics, no hospitals, no vaccines and no knowledge of how the body worked when the average life span was about 35. All this he lived through, only to be killed by a tortoise!
A tortoise was dropped by an eagle in order to smash it and eat it’s innards, but it landed on Aeschylus’ bald head! Whether the eagle was actually aiming for Aeschylus’ head, thinking his pate was a large stone, good for tortoise smashing, is impossible to know.
Father of Tragedy indeed!
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