Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/59

Rh interval of sixteen years, between B. C. 484, the year of his Hrst tragic victory, and the close of the Persian war by Cimon's double victory at the Eurymedon, B. C. 470. (Bode, Gesch. der Hellen. Dichtkunst, iii. p. 212.) The year B. C. 468 was tlie date of a remarkable event in the poet's life. In that year he was defeated in a tragic contest by his younger rival Sophocles, and if we may believe Plutarch (Cim. 8), his mortification at this indignity, as he conceived it, was so great, that he quitted Athens in disgust the very same year, and went to the court of Hiero (Paus. i. 2. §3), king of Syracuse, where he found Simonides the lyric poet, who as well as himself was by that prince most hospitably received. Of the fact of his having visited Sicily at the time alluded to, there can be no doubt; but whether the motive alleged by Plutarch for his doing so was the only one, or a real one, is a question of considerable difficulty, though of little practical moment. It may be, as has been plausibly maintained by some authors, that Aeschylus, whose family and personal honours were connected with the glories of Marathon, and the heroes of the Persian war, did not sympathise with the spirit of aggrandisement by which the councils of his country were then actuated, nor approve of its policy in the struggle for the supremacy over Greece. The contemporaries of his earlier years, Miltiades, Aristeides, and Themistocles, whose achievements in the service of their country were identified with those of himself and his family, had been succeeded by Cimon: and the aristocratical principles which Aeschylus supported were gradually being supplanted and overborne by the advance of democracy. From all this, Aeschylus might have felt that he was outliving his principles, and have felt it the more keenly, from Cimon, the hero of the day, having been one of the judges who awarded the tragic prize to Sophocles in preference to himself. (Plut. l. c.) On this supposition, Athens could not have been an agreeable residence to a person like Aeschylus, and therefore he might have been disposed to leave it; but still it is more than probable that his defeat by Sophocles materially influenced his determinations, and was at any rate the proximate cause of his removing to Sicily. It has been further conjectured that the charge of or impiety which was brought against Aeschylus for an alleged publication of the mysteries of Ceres (Aristot. Eth. iii. 1), but possibly from political motives, was in some measure connected with his retirement from his native country. If this were really the case, it follows, that the play or plays which gave the supposed offence to the Athenians, must have been published before B. C. 468, and therefore that the trilogy of the Oresteia could have had no connexion with it. Shortly before the arrival of Aeschylus at the court of Hiero, that prince had built the town of Aetna, at the bottom of the mountain of that name, and on the site of the ancient Catana: in connexion with this event, Aeschylus is said to have composed his play of the Women of Aetna (B. C. 471, or 472), in which he predicted and prayed for the prosperity of the new city. At the request of Hiero, he also reproduced the play of the Persae, with the trilogy of which he had been victorious in the dramatic contests at Athens, (B. C. 472.) Now we know that the trilogy of the Seven against Thebes was represented soon after the "Persians:" it follows therefore that the former trilogy must have been first represented not later than B. C. 470, (Welcker, Trilogie, p. 520; Schol. ad Aristoph. Ran. 1053.) Aristeides, who died in B. C. 468, was living at the time. (Plut. Arist. 3.) Besides "The Women of Aetna," Aeschylus also composed other pieces in Sicily, in which are said to have occurred Sicilian words and expressions not intelligible to the Athenians. (Athen. ix. p. 402, b.) From the number of such words and expressions, which have been noticed in the later extant plays of Aeschylus, it has been inferred that he spent a considerable time in Sicily, on this his first visit. We must not however omit to mention, that, according to some accounts, Aeschylus also visited Sicily about B. C. 488, previous to what we have considered his first visit. (Bode, Id. iii. p. 215.) The occasion of this retirement is said to have been the victory gained over him by Simonides, to whom the Athenians adjudged the prize for the best elegy on those who fell at Marathon. This tradition, however, is not supported by strong independent testimony, and accordingly its truth has been much questioned. Suidas indeed states that Aeschylus had visited Sicily even before this, when he was only twenty-five years of age (B. C. 499), immediately after his first contest with Pratinas, on which occasion the crowd of spectators was so great as to cause the fall of the wooden planks or temporary scaffolding, on which they were accommodated with seats.

In B. C. 467, his friend and patron king Hiero died; and in B. C. 458, it appears that Aeschylus was again at Athens from the fact that the trilogy of the Oresteia was produced in that year. The conjecture of Böckh, that this might have been a second representation in the absence of the poet, is not supported by any probable reasons, for we have no intimation that the Oresteia ever had been acted before. (Hermann, Opusc. ii. p. 137.) In the same or the following year (B. C. 457), Aeschylus again visited Sicily for the last time, and the reason assigned for this his second or as others conceive his fourth visit to this island, is both probable and sufficient. The fact is, that in his play of the Eumenides, the third and last of the three plays which made up the Orestean trilogy, Aeschylus proved himself a decided supporter of the ancient dignities and power of that "watchful guardian" of Athens, the aristocratical court of the Areiopagus, in opposition to Pericles and his democratical coadjutors. With this trilogy Aeschylus was indeed successful as a poet, but not as a politician: it did not produce the effects he had wished and intended, and he found that he had striven in vain against the opinions and views of a generation to which he did not belong. Accordingly it has been conjectured that either from disappointment or fear of the consequences, or perhaps from both these causes, he again quitted Athens, and retired once more to Sicily. But another reason, which if founded on truth, perhaps operated in conjunction with the former, has been assigned for his last sojourn in Sicily. This rests on a statement made more or less distinctly by various authors, to the effect that Aeschylus was accused of impiety before the court of the Areiopagus, and that he would have been condemned but for the interposition of his brother Ameinias, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Salamis. (Aelian, V. H. v. 19.) According to some authors