Æschylos Tragedies and Fragments

Aeschylus invented tragedy as we know it. In these surviving works composed in fifth-century Athens, he gave Western literature its first great meditations on fate, divine justice, and the terrible weight of choice. The Persians stands alone among ancient dramas: a tragedy told from the enemy's perspective, where the chorus of Persian elders gathers in Susa to mourn the destruction of Xerxes' army at Salamis. It is startlingly empathetic for a piece written during the Persian Wars, reminding us that losers have mothers, wives, and dreams too. Prometheus Bound dramatizes the eternal sufferer chained to a rock, defiant against Zeus, while Seven Against Thebes traces the bloody end of a cursed line. These are not comfortable plays. They ache with the collision between mortal will and forces larger than any individual can comprehend. Aeschylus wrote for a city that had just discovered democracy, and his dramas ask the questions that matter: what do we owe the gods, what do we owe each other, and how do we bear what cannot be changed?