CC 301 1st Edition Exam # 3 Study Guide Aeschylus was born in the city of Eleusis, near Athens, in 525 BC and died in 456 BC. He was a Greek dramatist, the earliest of the city's great tragic poets. As the predecessor of Sophocles and Euripides, he is the founder of Greek tragedy.He fought successfully against the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC, at Salamis in 480 BC, and possibly at Plataea in the following year. He made at least two trips, perhaps three, to Sicily, where on his final visit he died at Gela. A monument was later erected there in his memory.It was a major step for drama when Aeschylus introduced the second actor. He also attempted to involve the chorus directly in the action of the play. Aeschylus is said to have written about 90 plays. His tragedies, first performed about 500 BC, were presented as trilogies, or groups of three, usually bound together by a common theme, and each trilogy was followed by a satyr drama (low comedy involving a mythological hero, with a chorus of satyrs). The titles of 79 of his plays are known, but only 7 have survived.Aristophanes was a Greek comic writer, who was the son of Philippus. It is not known where hewas born or in what year. However we do know that he lived in the deme of Kudathenaion whichwould suggest that he came from a wealthy family1. Most of his plays were political satires highlighting the troubles in Athens during that period. Many of them were performed at festivals,watched and voted for by the people, unfortunately out of the 40 plays that he wrote only 11 survive today.His first surviving work is The Acharnians (425 BC). Athens at this time was very demoralized because of the Peloponnesian War and the death of Pericles six years earlier. The play highlights the problems the people of Attica were having with constant raids on their land and continual enemy invasions.His second surviving play is The Knights (424 BC). In the play, Aristophanes pokes fun at the Athenian leader of the time Cleon, for his tyrannical leadership and also for his alcoholic tendencies. Because of the sharp attack on Cleon, Aristophanes had to play the part of Cleon himself. The play gained Aristophanes first place at the festival.Aristophanes in The Clouds (423 BC) turns his attention away from political satire and instead covers the cultural figure of Socrates. The Wasps (422 BC) ridiculed the courts of justice. The Peace (421 BC) focuses on the Peace of Nicias which saw the end of hostilities in the Peloponnesian War and discusses the peace between Athens and Sparta.Aristophanes next play was not for another seven years and in that time a law had been passed attempting to keep in check political satire. Aristophanes next surviving play was The Birds (414BC) and poked fun at Athens for its fondness of litigation. In 411 BC Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata which is another anti-war play and shows the plight of women trying to bring about peace in an attempt to stop losing their sons to the war.Euripides was born in 480 BC and died in 406 BC. Euripides was the youngest of the three principal fifth-century tragic poets. His work, which was quite popular in his own time, exerted great influence on Roman drama. In more recent times he has influenced English and German drama, and most conspicuously such French dramatists as Pierre Corneille and Jean-BaptisteRacine.His plays began to be performed in the Attic drama festivals in 454 BC, but it was not until 442 BC that he won first prize. This distinction, despite his prolific talent, fell to him again only four times. Aside from his writings, his chief interests were philosophy and science.Euripides represented the new moral, social, and political movements that were taking place in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BC. It was a period of enormous intellectual discovery, in which "wisdom" ranked as the highest earthly accomplishment. Anaxagoras had just proven that air was an element, and that the sun was not a divinity but matter. New truths were being established in all departments of knowledge, and Euripides, reacting to them, broughta new kind of consciousness to the writing of tragedy. His interest lay in the thought and experience of the ordinary individual rather than in the experiences of legendary figures of the heroic past.Sophocles was born about 496 BC in ColonusHippius (now part of Athens), he was to become one of the great playwrights of the golden age. The son of a wealthy merchant, he would enjoy all the comforts of a thriving Greek empire. Sophocles was provided with the best traditional aristocratic education. He studied all of the arts.By the age of sixteen, he was already known for his beauty and grace and was chosen to lead a choir of boys at a celebration of the victory of Salamis in 480 BC. In 468 BC, at the age of 28, hedefeated Aeschylus, whose pre-eminence as a tragic poet had long been undisputed, in a dramaticcompetition. In 441 BC he was in turn defeated in one of the annual Athenian dramatic competitions by Euripides. From 468 BC, however, Sophocles won first prize about 20 times and many second prizes. His life, which ended in 406 BC at about the age of 90, coincided with the period of Athenian greatness. He was not politically active or militarily inclined, but the Athenians twice elected him to high military office.Sophocles wrote more than 100 plays of which seven complete tragedies and fragments of 80 or 90 others are preserved. He was the first to add a third actor. He also abolished the trilogic form. Sophocles chose to make each tragedy a complete entity in itself--as a result, he had to pack all of his action into the shorter form, and this clearly offered greater dramatic possibilities. Sophocles also effected a transformation in the spirit and significance of a tragedy; thereafter, although religion and morality were still major dramatic themes, the plights, decisions and fates of individuals became the chief interest of Greek tragedy.Aeschylus' Agamemnon begins after the fall of Troy. A beacon of light signals the defeat of Troy to all those in Argos, including Queen Clytaemnestra. With the memory of the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia still burning, Clytaemnestra does not plan to welcome King Agamemnon home in a traditional manner.Clytaemnestra welcomes Agamemnon with a Crimson carpet upon his homecoming. Clytaemnestradecepively calls to