Aeschylus: "father of tragedy"

Two people were artistically combined in the nature of Aeschylus: the evil and stubborn fighter of Marathon and Salamis and the brilliant science fiction aristocrat.

Innokenty Annensky

Three monumental figures, three tragic poet who worked in the “Age of Pericles”, captured certain stages in the development of the Athenian state: Aeschylus - his formation; Sophocles - heyday; Euripides - crisis phenomena in the spiritual life of society. Each of them also personified a specific phase in the evolution of the genre of tragedy, its transformation structural elements, changes in plot structure and figurative scheme.

Playwright with a hoplite sword. In the biography of Aeschylus (525-456 BC), like many famous Hellenes, there are annoying gaps. It is known that he was born into a wealthy landowner family Euphoria - she whose members took part in the Greco-Persian Wars.

Two brothers died in battle. Aeschylus himself as a heavily armed warrior, hoplite, fought at Marathon and Plataea, participated in the Naval Battle of Salamis (480 BC). At about the age of 25, he became familiar with the art of tragedy. In 485 BC. he received first prize in a playwriting competition. Subsequently, Aeschylus with dignity conceded his primacy to his younger contemporary - Sophocles. At the end of his life, Aeschylus went to Sicily, where he died. An epitaph was engraved on his grave, from which it followed that Aeschylus glorified himself on the battlefield, but not a word was said about the tragedies. From this we can conclude that for the Hellenes, defending their homeland was a more honorable matter than the work of a playwright.

Aeschylus wrote about 90 works; 72 are known by name. Only seven tragedies have reached us: “The Petitioners”, “The Persians”, “Seven Against Thebes”, “Prometheus Bound” and three parts of the “Oresteia” trilogy. Aeschylus himself modestly called his works “crumbs from Homer’s luxurious feast.”

"Persians": the apotheosis of courage. Overwhelming majority ancient Greek tragedies written on mythological subjects. "Persians"- the only tragedy that has come down to us, which is based on a specific historical event. The play is static; stage dynamism is still poorly expressed in it. The decisive role is assigned to the choir. The events take place in one place, on the square of the city of Susa, at the tomb of the Persian king Darius.

The chorus expresses alarm over the fate of the huge Persian army that set off on a campaign against Hellas. The gloomy atmosphere intensifies after the appearance of the queen Atossy, widows Daria, who told about strange dream, which hinted at the misfortune that befell the Persians. Atossa dreamed that his son Xerxes wanted to harness two women to a chariot. One of them was dressed in Persian dress, the other in Greek. But if the first one submitted, then the second one “jumped up, tore the horse harness with her hands, threw off the reins” and overturned the rider. The meaning of these omens is obvious to the chorus, but he does not dare to show it.

The culmination of the tragedy is the appearance Herald(or Messenger). His story about the Battle of Salamis, the core of the work, is the apotheosis of the courage of the Greeks. “They serve no one, are not subject to anyone,” “a shield of reliability,” says the Messenger, and Atossa adds: “The fortress of Pallas is solid by the power of the gods.” A panorama of the battle appears with specific details: the Greeks imitated a retreat, lured the Persian ships into their ranks, and then began to “flow around” them, “encircle” them, and sink them in close combat.

The defeat of the Persian fleet described by the Messenger evoked a feeling of horror in the choir. He is sure that the offensive, irresistible impulse of the Hellenes was inspired by their patriotic feeling. The shadow of Darius appeared, who reproached the leader of the campaign, the son of Xerxes, for madness and warned about the perniciousness of the war against the Greeks.

In the finale, Xerxes appears on stage, lamenting his “grief.” The tragedy found a grateful response from the audience; among them were direct participants in the Battle of Salamis.

"Prometheus Bound": Titan vs. Zeus. The basis of the tragedy "Prometheus Bound" served as a dramatic version of the popular the myth of Prometheus, benefactor of humanity. The work was apparently part of tetralogy, has not reached us. Aeschylus calls Prometheus a philanthropist.

For his good deeds, Prometheus becomes a victim of the “tyranny of Zeus,” who wanted to “exterminate people.” Nature sympathizes with Prometheus. Those who arrived have compassion for him Oceanids, daughters Ocean. The ruthlessness of Zeus, who decided to “destroy the entire human race and plant a new one,” is emphasized in the episode with And about, an unhappy girl who was seduced by Zeus, the “formidable lover.”

One of the culminations of the tragedy is Prometheus’ lengthy monologue, telling about what he did for people: he taught them how to build houses, navigate ships on the sea, gave them “the wisdom of numbers,” etc. Prometheus also says that he knows the secret of the death of Zeus. These words were heard by the supreme Olympian. He sends Hermes to Prometheus with an offer to grant him freedom in exchange for revealing the secret. But the inflexible Prometheus does not want to make any reconciliation with Zeus, declaring: “... I hate the gods, because they repaid me with evil for good.” Having achieved nothing, Hermes flies away. Then the vengeful Zeus sends lightning into the rock, and Prometheus falls through the ground with the words: “I suffer without guilt.”

Tragedy is characterized by tyrannical pathos. Prometheus is the unbending antagonist of Zeus, who, however, never appeared on the scene; This feature reflected the artistic insight of Aeschylus. The image of Prometheus is one of the “eternal”: he passes through world literature, having received interpretation from Goethe, Byron, Shelley.

The Oresteia trilogy: the curse of the Atrid family. Aeschylus combined the monumentality of stage images and ideas with the scale of his dramatic forms and the desire to cyclization of works. Evidence of this is the trilogy "Oresteia" written based on the myth of a curse weighing on a family Atridov. The background of events relates to Trojan mythological cycle and goes into the past.

Atreus, father Agamemnon And Menelaus(known to us from the Iliad), committed a terrible crime. His brother Tiestes seduced his wife Aeron, who gave birth to two children from this relationship. Outwardly reconciled with Thyestes, Atreus invited him to a feast, slaughtered his two children and fed their father their fried meat. From that moment on, the chain of bloody misfortunes did not stop in the Atrides family.

"Agamemnon": murder of the husband. The first part of the trilogy takes place in Argos, the homeland of King Agamemnon. He must return home after the end of the ten-year war. Meanwhile, in the absence of the husband, his wife Clytemnestra took a lover Aegisthus. Clytemnestra greets her husband, who arrives on a chariot, with flattering speeches. The captive who is with the king Cassandra, a girl endowed with the gift of prophecy is gripped by a premonition of terrible events.

After Agamemnon and Cassandra get off the chariot, terrible screams are heard behind the stage. Clytemnestra appears, brandishing a bloody axe, and announces that together with Aegisthus they have killed Agamemnon and Cassandra. The chorus expresses horror at what they have done.

"Hoefors": murder of the mother. The theme of the second part of the trilogy is the punishment predicted by Cassandra that befell the murderers of Agamemnon. The action takes place at the tomb of the Argive king. A person who has secretly returned to his homeland comes there Orestes, son of Agamemnon. When his father went to war against Troy, he sent Orestes to a neighboring country Phocis, where he was brought up by a friendly king Strophy

together with his son and inseparable friend, Pilade. God Apollo takes an oath from Orestes that he will become an avenger for the death of father Agamemnon. At his father's grave, where Orestes performs funeral rites, he meets his sister Electra, who came here with a group of women-weepers, hoefor. There is a “recognition” of brother and sister; Electra talks about her bitter lot with her evil mother, and Orestes reveals to her his plan for revenge.

Under the guise of a wanderer, Orestes enters Clytemnestra's palace in order to tell her false news from Strophius that her son is dead, and to give his mother the urn with his ashes. The news, on the one hand, is sad for Clytemnestra, but at the same time it encourages, for she was always afraid that her son would act as an avenger for his father. Clytemnestra rushes to convey this news to Aegisthus, who appears without a bodyguard, and Orestes kills him. Now Clytemnestra, double-minded and treacherous, begs her son to spare her. Orestes hesitates, but Pylades reminds him of the oath given to Apollo. And Orestes kills his mother. At this moment they appear Erinyes, terrible goddesses of vengeance; they are “the dogs of the avenging mother.”

"Eumenides": the wisdom of Athena. In the third part there comes a denouement of bloody events. Prologue of events - scene in front of the temple of Apollo in Delphi. Orestes rushes here with a plea for help. He asks the god Apollo to turn him away from the Erinyes.

Then the action moves to Athens, to the square in front of the temple Pallas. Orestes relies on the intercession of the goddess of wisdom and justice. To solve this difficult problem Athena appeals to the highest state court, the Areopagus. The clash of two points of view is shown. Apollo is on the side of Orestes, justifying the dominant role of his father; Erinyes, champions of blood feud, prove Clytemnestra right. Athena holds free voting. Six votes for acquittal, six for conviction. The goddess herself casts her vote for Orestes. Thanks to Athena, Orestes is acquitted by a majority of one vote.

Why didn’t the vengeful Erinyes pursue Clytemnestra? The answer is simple: she killed her husband, who was not related to her by blood. The Erinyes are adherents of the old law of blood feud, Apollo is a supporter of the new law, affirming the importance of the father.

The pathos of the finale lies in the glorification of the wisdom of Athena, the bearer of state justice. She puts an end to enmity, henceforth turning evil goddesses into good goddesses, beneficent ones into Eumenides. Tragedy affirms the wisdom of the authorities, the court, the Areopagus, who protect order and law in the midst of chaos.

Poetics of Aeschylus. The characterization of Aeschylus as the “father of tragedy” implies two main features of him: he was founder of the genre and innovator. Pre-Aeschylean tragedy contained weakly expressed dramatic elements; she was close to lyrical musical cantata.

The proportion of choir parts in Aeschylus was significant. However second actor introduction allowed Aeschylus to increase the severity of the conflict. In "Oresteia" a third actor appears. If in the early tragedies "The Persians" and "Prometheus Bound" there is relatively little action, and monologues prevail over dialogues, then in “The Oresteia” the development of dramatic technique is noticeable.

The heroic time of Aeschylus was manifested in the sublime character of his drama. Aeschylus' dramas captured the imagination of his contemporaries

the power of passions, the grandeur of images, and the splendor of costumes and scenery. Characters Aeschylus seems somewhat straight, if we compare them with Sophocles and Euripides, but they large-scale, majestic. The power of Aeschylus' images harmonizes with a style full of bright comparisons, metaphors. The carpet on which Agamemnon steps is named "purple bridge" Clytemnestra compares the murder of her husband to a “feast.” Aeschylus loves things that are a bit fanciful, complex epithets. the campaign against Troy is called a thousand-ship campaign, Helen - polyandrous, Agamemnon - spear-wielding, etc. The heroes of Aeschylus are characterized by a mythological perception of the world that is organic to them. Fate, fate, the highest duty determine their actions. The gods are invisibly present in Aeschylus’s tragedies, the heroes of which carry out the will of the Olympians, such as Orestes, following orders Apollo. Aeschylus' discoveries were received further development in the works of his younger contemporaries - Sophocles and Euripides, who went further than the “father of tragedy”.

The world significance of Aeschylus. Aeschylus had a strong influence on the development of not only Greek, but also Roman tragedy. And although his younger contemporary Euripides was more organic in the psychological drama of modern times, Aeschylus and his powerful images continued to influence world art, attracted the attention of writers and artists of all eras. Aeschylus had a strong influence on German composer Richard Wagner(1813-1883), who carried out a bold reform of opera, achieving a unique synthesis of the arts: verbal text and music. The dramaturgy of Aeschylus also inspired Russian composers: Alexander Scriabin wrote the symphony “Prometheus”; Sergey Taneyev- opera "Oresteia"; Aeschylus is one of Byron's favorite playwrights. The scale and scope of Aeschylus’s creativity were in tune with the quests of the greatest American playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953).

Subjects ancient literature could also serve to solve specific political problems. They made it possible to express an idea in an allegorical form, when doing so openly would be more than risky. In 1942, in Paris, occupied by the Nazis, French writer and philosopher, Nobel laureate Jean Paul Sartre(1905-1980) writes his famous drama-parable "Flies" which was based on Aeschylus’s “Choephori”. The pathos of this play was in the call for an active struggle against fascism.

In Russia, the stage history of Aeschylus is poorer than that of his younger contemporaries, Sophocles and Euripides. However, the event in theatrical life capital in the mid-1990s. became the production of “Orsstsi” in the Central academic theater Russian army, realized by an outstanding German director Peter Stein.

SUMMARY OF “CHAINED PROMETHEUS” BY AESCHYLUS:

The action takes place on the edge of the earth, in distant Scythia, among the wild mountains - maybe this is the Caucasus. Two demons, Power and Violence, introduce Prometheus onto the stage; the fire god Hephaestus must chain him to a mountain rock. Hephaestus feels sorry for his comrade, but he must obey fate and the will of Zeus: “You were sympathetic to people beyond measure.” Prometheus's arms, shoulders, and legs are shackled, and an iron wedge is driven into his chest. Prometheus is silent. The job is done, the executioners leave, the authorities say contemptuously: “You are a Provider, here are the providences of how to save yourself!”

Only when left alone does Prometheus begin to speak. He turns to the sky and the sun, the earth and the sea: “Look what I, God, suffer from God’s hands!” And all this because he stole fire for people, opened the way for them to worthy of a person life.

A chorus of nymphs appears - Oceanids. These are the daughters of Ocean, another titan, they heard the roar and clang of Promethean shackles in their distant seas. “Oh, it would be better for me to languish in Tartarus than to writhe here in front of everyone! - exclaims Prometheus. “But this is not forever: Zeus will not achieve anything from me by force and will come to ask me for his secret humbly and affectionately.” - “Why is he executing you?” - “For mercy towards people, for he himself is merciless.” Behind the Oceanids comes their father Ocean: he once fought against the Olympians along with the rest of the Titans, but he humbled himself, submitted, was forgiven and is peacefully splashing around all corners of the world. Let Prometheus also humble himself, otherwise he will not escape even worse punishment: Zeus is vengeful! Prometheus contemptuously rejects his advice: “Don’t worry about me, take care of yourself: lest Zeus punish you yourself for sympathizing with the criminal!” The ocean leaves, the Oceanids sing a compassionate song, remembering in it Prometheus’ brother Atlas, who is also suffering on the western end of the world, supporting the copper firmament with its shoulders.

Prometheus tells the chorus how much good he has done for people. They were foolish, like children - he gave them intelligence and speech. They were languishing with worries - he inspired them with hope. They lived in caves, afraid of every night and every winter - he forced them to build houses against the cold, explained the movement of the heavenly bodies in the changing seasons, taught them writing and counting in order to pass on knowledge to their descendants. It was he who pointed out for them the ores underground, harnessed their oxen to the plow, made carts for earthly roads and ships for sea routes. They were dying of disease - he discovered healing herbs for them. They did not understand the prophetic signs of the gods and nature - he taught them to guess by bird cries, and by sacrificial fire, and by the entrails of sacrificial animals. “Truly you were a savior for people,” says the chorus, “how come you didn’t save yourself?” “Fate is stronger than me,” Prometheus answers. “And stronger than Zeus?” - “And stronger than Zeus.” - “What fate is destined for Zeus?” - “Don’t ask: this is my great secret.” The choir sings a mournful song.

The future suddenly bursts into these memories of the past. Zeus’s beloved Princess Io, transformed into a cow, runs onto the stage. (At the theater it was an actor in a horned mask.) Zeus turned her into a cow to hide her from the jealousy of his wife, the goddess Hera. Hera guessed about this and demanded a cow as a gift, and then sent a terrible gadfly to her, who drove the unfortunate woman around the world. So she ended up, exhausted by pain to the point of madness, at the Promethean Mountains. Titan, “the protector and intercessor of man,” takes pity on her; he tells her what further wanderings await her across Europe and Asia, through heat and cold, among savages and monsters, until she reaches Egypt. And in Egypt she will give birth to a son from Zeus, and the descendant of this son in the twelfth generation will be Hercules, an archer who will come here to save Prometheus - at least against the will of Zeus. “What if Zeus doesn’t allow it?” - “Then Zeus will die.” - “Who will destroy him?” - “Himself, having conceived an unreasonable marriage.” - "Which?" - “I won’t say a word more.” Here the conversation ends: Io again feels the sting of the gadfly, again falls into madness and rushes away in despair. The Oceanid Choir sings: “Let the lust of the gods blow us away: their love is terrible and dangerous.”

It is said about the past, it is said about the future; Now the terrible present is coming. Here comes the servant and messenger of Zeus - the god Hermes. Prometheus despises him as a hanger-on for the Olympian masters. “What did you say about the fate of Zeus, about the unreasonable marriage, about the impending death? Confess, otherwise you will suffer bitterly!” - “It is better to suffer than to serve as a servant, like you; and I am immortal, I saw the fall of Uranus, the fall of Cronus, I will also see the fall of Zeus.” - “Beware: you will be in underground Tartarus, where the Titans are tormented, and then you will stand here with a wound in your side, and an eagle will peck at your liver.” - “I knew all this in advance; let the gods rage, I hate them! Hermes disappears - and indeed Prometheus exclaims: “The earth really trembled all around, / And lightning curled, and thunder roared ... / O Heaven, O holy mother, Earth, / Look: I suffer innocently!” This is the end of the tragedy.

From the fifth century tragedy, the works of the three most significant representatives of the genre - Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - have been preserved. Each name marks a historical stage in the development of Attic tragedy, which consistently reflected three stages in the history of Athenian democracy.

Aeschylus, a poet of the era of the formation of the Athenian state and the Greco-Persian wars, is the founder of ancient tragedy in its established forms, the “father of tragedy.” With the help of mythological images, he revealed the historical revolution that he witnessed - the emergence of a democratic state from a tribal society. Aeschylus combines the traditional worldview with new attitudes. He sincerely believes in the existence of divine forces that influence man and often insidiously lay snares for him. The gods of Aesichil become the guardians of the legal foundations of the new state system, and he strongly emphasizes the point of personal responsibility of a person for his freely chosen behavior. The material for it is heroic tales. He often depicts the fate of the hero in three successive tragedies that make up a whole trilogy. He reinterprets the tales, permeating them with his own problems. He was the first to increase the number of actors from one to two, reduce the chorus parts and give primacy to the dialogue. Thanks to him, tragedy began to turn from the field of mimetic choral lyrics into drama.

The myths about the change of generations of gods and people and about Prometheus, who stole fire from the sky for people, receive a new development from Aeschylus in the tragedy “Chained Prometheus”. Prometheus, one of the Titans, is a friend of humanity. In the fight between Zeus and the Titans, Prometheus took part on the side of Zeus; but when Zeus set out to destroy the human race and replace it with a new generation, Prometheus opposed this. He brought heavenly fire to people and encouraged them to live a conscious life.

Writing and arithmetic, crafts and sciences - all these are gifts of Prometheus. In his work, Aeschylus abandons ideas about a certain former “golden age” and the subsequent deterioration of human life. He will take the opposite point of view: human life did not deteriorate, but improved, rising from a beast-like state to a rational one. Prometheus is the mythological giver of the blessings of reason in Aeschylus.

For the services rendered to people, Prometheus is doomed to torment. The prologue of the tragedy depicts how the blacksmith god Hephaestus, by order of Zeus, chains Prometheus to a rock; Hephaestus is accompanied by two allegorical figures - Power and Violence. Zeus opposes Prometheus only with brute force. All nature sympathizes with the suffering of Prometheus. When, at the end of the tragedy, Zeus, irritated by Prometheus’s intransigence, sends a storm and Prometheus, along with the rock, falls into the underworld, the chorus of Oceanid nymphs (daughters of the Ocean) is ready to share his fate with him. The new ruler of the gods in “Prometheus Bound” is given the features of the Greek “tyrant”: he is ungrateful, cruel and vengeful. The cruelty of Zeus is further emphasized by the episode in which another of his victims, the mad Io, Zeus's lover, is pursued by the jealous wrath of Hera. In a number bright paintings Aeschylus depicts the baseness and servility of the gods who humbled themselves before Zeus and the love of freedom of Prometheus, who prefers his torment to servile service with Zeus, despite all persuasion and threats.

The image of Prometheus, a lover of humanity and a fighter against the tyranny of the gods, the embodiment of reason overcoming the power of nature over people, created by Aeschylus, became a symbol of the struggle for the liberation of mankind. The myth of Prometheus was subsequently repeatedly developed by poets of modern times. In the New Literature one can highlight the works of Goethe, Byron and Shelley (the drama “Prometheus Unbound”).

He was a legendary poet, a brave warrior, and possibly an initiate of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries. But we are all grateful to the Greek Aeschylus for the fact that he stood at the origins of the great, mysterious and sacred art, whose name is Theater.

There were three of them, the founders of the ancient theater, and they appeared almost simultaneously on the land of Hellas.

An ancient legend allows us to roughly establish the age ratio of the three great tragedians. When 45-year-old Aeschylus took part in the Battle of Salamis, Euripides was born on the very day of the battle, and Sophocles led the choir of ephebes who glorified this victory. And yet Aeschylus was the first.

He was born in Eleusis, a city in Attica located near Athens. This place, of which only ruins remain today, has been known for a long time thanks to the ancient center of the Mysteries located there. It was located around a crevice in the earth's surface, where, according to ancient Greek myth, Pluto forcibly carried away the daughter of Zeus and Demeter Persephone. In many works this place was later referred to as the “city of Goddesses.”

History has preserved few details from the life of the great tragedian. We know that Aeschylus' two brothers distinguished themselves in battles with the Persians, and he himself fought courageously at Marathon and Salamis. In the first of these battles he was wounded. And now it is quite surprising that the “father of tragedy” never forgot about his military past and was proud of it even more than of his peaceful occupation. This is evidenced by the lines of the epitaph he himself composed: “Under this monument is hidden Aeschylus, son of Euphoriot. He was born an Athenian and died among the fertile plains of Gela. The famous forest of Marathon and the quick-tongued Mede will tell whether he was brave. They know this!” They say that centuries later poets and artists from different eras made a pilgrimage to this slab in Sicily.

Aeschylus spent most of his life in Athens and, for unknown reasons, left them forever. According to one of the legends explaining such an escape, Aeschylus, initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, broke his vow of secrecy and in the tragedy “Prometheus Bound,” albeit allegorically, made the secrets revealed to him public.

Controversy continues to this day about what secrets Aeschylus divulged. It is very difficult to find and recognize them in his poems today. But maybe this legend is actually not far from the truth. Let us at least remember how unusually, again according to legend, the life of the 70-year-old tragic man ended. Roman sources say that an eagle lifted a heavy turtle into the air and dropped it on the bald head of the elder Aeschylus, mistaking it for a stone. Although it is true that this is how eagles sometimes kill their victims, this story is more like an allegory. After all, the eagle is a symbol of Zeus, and the turtle is a symbol of Apollo: an allusion to the retribution sent to Aeschylus for divulging sacred secrets.

“The Petitioners”, “Prometheus Bound”, “The Persians”, “Seven Against Thebes”, “Agamemnon”, “Choephori” and “Eumenides” are the names of seven of his tragedies that have survived to this day. We do not know exactly how many of them Aeschylus wrote. Based on individual parts from Greek catalogs, which were available in all ancient libraries, it was possible to restore the names of 79 of his tragedies. It is believed that there were at least 90 of them.

Seven reached us. Like almost all classical works of ancient Greece, they are preserved in the archives of Alexandria. These were copies taken from official texts, the originals of which were in Athens. They came to Europe from Constantinople, already during the Renaissance.

According to Aristotle, Aeschylus creates a new form of tragedy. He "is the first to increase the number of actors from one to two and to give importance to the dialogue on stage." The actors, chorus and audience in Aeschylus are connected by a single thread of what is happening. The audience participates in the performance, expressing approval of the characters or indignation at their actions. The dialogue between the two actors is often accompanied by murmurs, screams of horror, or crying from the audience. The chorus in Aeschylus's tragedy becomes the spokesman for the thoughts and feelings of the characters and even the audience themselves. What only vaguely arises in their souls under the influence of what is happening on stage suddenly acquires clear outlines and harmony in the wise remarks of the choir.

There is very little information left about what mechanics Aeschylus used during his performances, but it seems that the special effects system of the ancient theater made it possible to work miracles. In one of his now lost works - it was called "Psychostasia" or "Weighing of Souls" - Aeschylus imagined Zeus in the sky, who weighed the fates of Memnon and Achilles on huge scales, while the mothers of both, Eos and Thetis, "floated" in the air next to the scales. How was it possible to lift large weights into the sky and throw them down from a height, to cause during the action, as in Prometheus Bound, lightning, rain and mountain collapses that awed the audience?

It is logical to assume that the Greeks used large cranes, lifting devices, hatches, water and steam drainage systems, as well as all kinds of chemical mixtures, so that fire or clouds appeared at the right moment. Nothing survives that could support this hypothesis. And yet, if the ancients achieved such effects, then they must have had special means and devices for this.

Aeschylus is credited with many other, simpler theatrical innovations. For example, buskins - shoes with high wooden soles, luxurious clothes, as well as improvement of the tragic mask with the help of a special horn to amplify the sound. Psychologically, all these tricks: increasing height and strengthening the sound of the voice - were designed to create an environment befitting the appearance of gods and heroes.

The theater of Ancient Greece was very different from the theater we are accustomed to at the beginning of the 21st century. Classical theater is mystical and religious. The performance does not please the audience, but gives a lesson in life, through empathy and compassion, which the viewer is imbued with, cleanses his soul from certain passions.

With the exception of “The Persians,” which were based on real historical events, Aeschylus’ tragedies were always based on epics, myths, and folk legends. These were the Trojan and Theban wars. Aeschylus knew how to restore them to their former glory, to give them grandeur and current meaning. King Pelasgus in The Petitioners discusses the affairs of the state as if he were a Greek of the 5th century BC. The controversial Zeus from Prometheus Bound sometimes uses expressions worthy of the Athenian ruler Peisistratus. Eteocles in the tragedy "Seven against Thebes" gives orders to his army as a strategist - a contemporary of Aeschylus - would do.

He had an amazing ability in a separate, particular case to see not just an episode in a chain of events, but its connection with the spiritual world and with fate itself, which governs people and the Universe. His tragedies have the rare property of always remaining above the triviality of everyday life and even bringing into it something from the Highest reality. In this art the followers will not be able to compare with Aeschylus. They will invariably descend to earth, into the human world. And their gods and heroes will be so similar to ordinary people with their passions and desires that we will hardly be able to recognize them as the mysterious inhabitants of the Other Reality. With Aeschylus, everything, absolutely everything, is shrouded in mystery, fanned by the Breath of what stands above people.

For a person at the beginning of the 21st century with his way of thinking, this may seem boring and tedious, but we cannot measure by our standards what existed and was valued 2500 years ago. In addition, Aeschylus sought to teach a lesson, and not to entertain, because this was not what the tragedy served. There were other places and circumstances for entertainment, and therefore no one was surprised by their absence in the theater, just as today it does not seem strange to us that no one laughs at a concert of Beethoven's music - we go to the circus to laugh.

Having learned about the death of Aeschylus, the Athenians awarded him the highest honors, and the tragedies that had won in so many competitions were staged again. Aeschylus, who became the character of Aristophanes' "Frogs", says about himself: "My poetry did not die with me."

Many centuries later, Victor Hugo wrote about Aeschylus: “... it is impossible to approach him without the awe that you experience in the face of something huge and mysterious - He is like a colossal rocky block, steep, devoid of gentle slopes and soft outlines, and at the same time he filled with special charm, like flowers of distant, inaccessible lands. Aeschylus is an ancient mystery in human form, a pagan prophet. His works, if they had all reached us, would have been the Greek Bible.”

It often happens that when we approach our own past, we find that we know very little about it, partly because the sources are scanty, and partly because we are neither inclined to cherish nor try to explain it. Perhaps to some such attempts will seem only a memory of the ashes of forgotten times. But for some they can become the smallest particles of a better, new world. A world that is more humane and more directed towards God.

for the magazine "Man Without Borders"

choir. However, even in this early tragedy, problems specific to Aeschylus emerge. The free democratic system of Hellas is repeatedly contrasted with eastern autocracy and despotism, and the king of Argos is depicted as a democratic king who does not make serious decisions without the consent of the people's assembly. Sympathetic to the struggle of the Danaids against the sons of Egypt who wanted to enslave them. Aeschylus makes it clear, however, that aversion to marriage is a delusion that must be overcome. At the end of “The Petitioners,” the Danaides are joined by a choir of handmaidens who sing of Aphrodite’s power. The further parts of the trilogy, “Egyptians” and “Danaids”, have not reached us, but the myth itself is well known. The sons of Egypt managed to achieve the marriage they sought, but the Danaids killed their husbands on the first night; only one of the Danaids, Hypermester, being carried away by her husband, spared him, and this couple became the ancestors of the subsequent kings of Argos. These myths were supposed to form the content of the unsurvived parts of the trilogy. It is known that in the final tragedy of the Danaids the goddess Aphrodite spoke and made a speech in defense of love and marriage. The trilogy thus ended with the triumph of the family principle. Then came the drama of the satyrs “Amimona”, the plot of which was the love of the god Posidoya for Amymone, one of the Danaids.

Very typical of the early type of tragedy are “The Persians,” staged in 472 and part of a trilogy that was not connected by a thematic unity.