Æschy̆lus

, an excellent soldier and poet of Athens, son of Euphorion, and brother to Cynægirus. He was in the A then i an army at the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa. But the most solid fame he has obtained, is the offspring le of his valour in the field of battle than of his writings. Of 90 tragedies, however, the fruit of his ingenious labours, 40 of which were rewarded with the public prize, only seven have come safe to us: Pro me the us vinctus , Septem duces apud Thebas , Persæ , Agamemnon , Chœphori , Eumenides , Supplices . Æschylus is the first who introduced two actors on the stage, and clothed them with dre es suitable to their character. He likewise removed murder from the stage. It is said that, when he composed, his countenance betrayed the greatest ferocity; and according to one of his scholiasts, when his Eumenides were represented, many children died through fear, and several pregnant women actually miscarried in the house, at the sight of the horrible masks that were introduced. The imagination of the poet was strong and comprehensive, but disorderly and wild: fruitful in prodigies, but disdaining probabilities. His style is obscure, and the labours of an excellent modern critic have pronounced him the most difficult of all the Greek cla ics. A few expre ions of impious tendency in one of his plays, nearly proved fatal to Æschylus; he was condemned to death, but his brother Amynias, it is reported, reversed his sentence, by uncovering an arm, of which the hand had been cut off at the battle of Salamis in the service of his country, and the poet was pardoned. Æschylus has been accused of drinking to exce , and of never composing except when in a state of intoxication. In his old age he retired to the court of Hiero in Sicily. Being informed that he was to die by the fall of a house, he became di atisfied with the ficklene of his countrymen, and withdrew from the city into the fields, where he sat down. An eagle, with a tortoise in her bill, flew over his bald head, and supposing it to be a stone, dropped her prey upon it to break the shell, and Æschylus instantly died of the blow, in the 69th year of his age, 456 B.C. It is said that he wrote an account of the battle of Marathon, in elegiac verses. The best editions of his works are that of Stanley, folio, London, 1663, that of Glasgow, 2  vols. in 12mo, 1746, and that of Schutz, 2  vols. , 8vo, Halæ, 1782.— Horace , Art of Poetry , li. 278 .— Quintilian , bk. 10 , ch. 1 .— Pliny , bk. 10 , ch. 3 .— Valerius Maximus , bk. 9 , ch. 12 .――The 12th perpetual archon of Athens.――A Corinthian, brother-in-law to Timophanes, intimate with Timoleon. Plutarch , Timoleon .――A Rhodian set over Egypt with Peucestes of Macedonia. Curtius , bk. 4 , ch. 8 .――A native of Cnidus, teacher of rhetoric to Cicero. Cicero , Brutus .