c. 525 B.C.E.–c. 456 B.C.E.

Poet

Early Years.

The tragic poet Aeschylus was born in Eleusis—now a suburb of Athens—in 525 or 524 B.C.E. and died at Gela in Sicily 68 years later. The dates of his life place him squarely in the formative period of the golden age of Greek classical culture. When he was born, Athens was ruled by a tyrant named Hippias, but following Hippias' exile in 510 B.C.E., Athens opted for a constitutional government in which political power was vested in a popular assembly where all citizens could vote. Aeschylus' formative period therefore coincided with Athens' development as a democracy. Aeschylus presented his first tragedies in the seventieth Olympiad—that is, the period between the seventieth and seventy-first Olympic Games, which puts the date between 499 and 496 B.C.E. In 490 B.C.E. Aeschylus fought at Marathon where the...