Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/341

Rh solitude of his study, could lay no claim to the rewards due for its public exhibition.

§ 2. These statements show that the exercise of the tragic art was the sole occupation of a man's life, and (from the great fertility of the ancient poets) absorbed every faculty of his mind. There were extant in antiquity seventy dramas of Æschylus; and among these the satyric dramas do not appear to be included. All these plays fall in the period between Olymp. 70. 1. B. C. 500, and Olymp. 81. 1. B. C. 456. In the former of these years, Æschylus, then in his twenty-fifth year, first strove with Pratinas for the prize of tragedy, (upon which occasion the ancient scaffolding is said to have given way,) and in the latter year the poet died in Sicily. Accordingly he produced seventy tragedies in a period of forty-four years. That the excellence of these works was generally recognized is proved by the fact of Æschylus having obtained the prize for tragedy thirteen times. For, since at every contest he produced three tragedies, it follows that more than half his works were preferred to those of his competitors, among whom there were such eminent poets as Phrynichus, Chœrilus, Pratinas, and Sophocles; the latter of whom had, at his first representation, in Olymp. 77. 4. B. C. 493, obtained the prize from Æschylus.

It has been already stated that Æschylus composed three tragedies for every tragic contest in which he appeared as a competitor; and to these, as was also remarked, a satyric drama was annexed. In making this combination, Æschylus followed a custom which had probably grown up before his time, and which was retained as long as tragedy continued to flourish in Athens. But Æschylus differed from his successors in this, that his three tragedies formed a whole, connected in subject and plan; while Sophocles began to oppose three separate tragedies to an equal number produced by his rivals. We should be at a loss to understand by what means the three pieces composing the trilogy were formed into a connected series, without depriving each piece of its individual character, if we were not so fortunate as to