Major Dramatists of the Athenian Age

Aeschylus

He was a poet by profession and he was regarded by the Athenians as the father of tragedy. He is reputed to have written seventy tragedies. The genius of Aeschylus was in the awful and sublime rather than in the tender and pathetic.

He is called the theological poet because his plays had great spiritual and religious fervor. His greatest work is considered to be Prometheus. The hero of this play is a Titan was chained and tortured on a rock in the Caucasus because he had, against the explicit orders of Zeus.

Aeschylus is called the soldier playwright because he took part in the Battle of Marathon and in the Battle of Salamis. He also wrote the trilogy Oresteia which is composed of three plays: Agamemnon, Cheophori and Eumenides.