Aeschylus

• Born at Eleusis in Attica 525 B.C. [ca]
• Died in Sicily [456 B.C.]
• Fought in the battles of Marathon [490] and Salamis [480]
• Wrote 82 plays of which seven have survived:

• Persians [472 B.C.]
• Seven against Thebes [467]
• Suppliant Women [in competition with Sophocles]
• Oresteia [458]: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides
• Prometheus [date unknown, thought by many not to be by Aeschylus]

Characteristics: Grand vision, cosmic meaning to social customs; fond of the spectacular; visualization of images; most religious and most optimistic; learning through suffering

Sophocles

• Born at Colonus, a suburb of Athens, in 496 B.C.
• Died in 406
• Prominent citizen, twice on board of generals, on committee in charge of cleaning up after the Sicilian disaster

Wrote 123 plays and won first prize 24 times [note that the Oedipus Tyrannus came in second]; Sophocles never came in third. Seven of his plays survive

• Ajax
• Antigone
• Electra
• Trachiniae
• Oedipus Tyrannus
• Philoktetes
• Oedipus at Colonus                                                                 Sophocles

Only the last two are firmly dated, 409 and 406.

Characteristics: Sophocles concentrates more on the characters than on the mythical grandeur of the stories. He is the master of the perfectly made play and of tragic irony.

When news came to Athens of Euripides' death, Sophocles dressed his chorus in mourning for the loss of his colleague.

Euripides

• Born at Phlya in 480 B.C.
• Died in Macedonia in 406.
• Not prominent as a soldier or in politics.
• Character in several plays of Aristophanes.
• Nineteen plays survive [10 preserved as school plays, 9 by chance in an alphabetical listing]
• Won first prize only four times in his lifetime and with his last plays, performed posthumously.
• Known for his portrayal of unheroic heroes and for his women. Euripides was clearly interested in the intellectual movements of his day and was called in antiquity the "philosopher of the stage." His characters act and speak like his contemporaries.
• For background, read Thucydides and the Older Sophists.

 Euripides