Editing Aeschylus (section)

==Influence==
===Influence on Greek drama and culture===
[[Image:Mosaic Orestes Iphigenia Musei Capitolini MC4948.jpg|thumb|250px|Mosaic of [[Orestes (mythology)|Orestes]], main character in Aeschylus's only surviving trilogy ''[[The Oresteia]]'']]
The theatre was just beginning to evolve when Aeschylus started writing for it. Earlier playwrights such as [[Thespis]] had already expanded the cast to include an actor who was able to interact with the [[Greek chorus|chorus]].<ref name="P222">{{harvnb|Pomeroy|1999|p=222}}</ref> Aeschylus added a second actor, allowing for greater dramatic variety, while the chorus played a less important role.<ref name=P222/> He is sometimes credited with introducing ''skenographia'', or scene-decoration,<ref>According to [[Vitruvius]]. See Summers 2007, 23.</ref> though Aristotle gives this distinction to Sophocles.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/830001324 |title=Performance in Greek and Roman theatre |date=2013 |publisher=Brill |others=George William Mallory Harrison, Vaios Liapēs |isbn=978-90-04-24545-7 |location=Leiden |pages=111 |oclc=830001324}}</ref> Aeschylus is also said to have made the costumes more elaborate and dramatic, and made his actors wear platform boots (''cothurni'') to make them more visible to the audience.<ref>{{cite web |last= |first= |title=Aeschylus |url=https://www.poemhunter.com/aeschylus/ |website=PoemHunter |access-date=23 September 2024}}</ref> According to a later account of Aeschylus' life, the chorus of Furies in the first performance of the ''Eumenides'' were so frightening when they entered that children fainted, patriarchs urinated, pregnant women went into labour.<ref>''Life of Aeschylus''.</ref>

Aeschylus wrote his plays in verse. No violence is performed onstage. The plays have a remoteness from daily life in Athens, relating stories about the gods, or being set, like ''The Persians'', far away.<ref name="P223">{{harvnb|Pomeroy|1999|p=223}}</ref> Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis.<ref name=P223/> The ''Oresteia'' trilogy concentrated on humans' position in the cosmos relative to the gods and divine law and divine punishment.<ref>{{harvnb|Pomeroy|1999|pp=224–25}}</ref>

Aeschylus' popularity is evident in the praise that the comic playwright [[Aristophanes]] gives him in ''[[The Frogs]]'', produced some 50 years after Aeschylus' death. Aeschylus appears as a character in the play and claims, at line 1022, that his ''Seven against Thebes'' "made everyone watching it to love being warlike".<ref name="Scharffenberger 2007 229–249">{{Cite journal |last=Scharffenberger |first=Elizabeth W. |date=2007 |title="Deinon Eribremetas": The Sound and Sense of Aeschylus in Aristophanes' "Frogs" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25434023 |journal=The Classical World |volume=100 |issue=3 |pages=229–249 |jstor=25434023 |issn=0009-8418}}</ref> He claims, at lines 1026–7, that with ''The Persians'' he "taught the Athenians to desire always to defeat their enemies."<ref name="Scharffenberger 2007 229–249"/> Aeschylus goes on to say, at lines 1039ff., that his plays inspired the Athenians to be brave and virtuous.

===Influence outside Greek culture===
Aeschylus' works were influential beyond his own time. [[Hugh Lloyd-Jones]] draws attention to [[Richard Wagner]]'s reverence of Aeschylus. Michael Ewans argues in his ''Wagner and Aeschylus. The Ring and the Oresteia'' (London: Faber. 1982) that the influence was so great as to merit a direct character by character comparison between Wagner's ''Ring'' and Aeschylus's ''Oresteia''. But a critic of that book, while not denying that Wagner read and respected Aeschylus, has described the arguments as unreasonable and forced.<ref>{{cite journal |author = Furness, Raymond |title=Reviewed work: Wagner and Aeschylus. The 'Ring' and the 'Oresteia', Michael Ewans |journal=The Modern Language Review |volume=79 |issue=1 |date=January 1984 |pages= 239–40 |jstor=3730399 |doi=10.2307/3730399}}</ref>

[[J.T. Sheppard]] argues in the second half of his ''Aeschylus and Sophocles: Their Work and Influence'' that Aeschylus and [[Sophocles]] have played a major part in the formation of dramatic literature from the [[Renaissance]] to the present, specifically in French and Elizabethan drama.{{clarify|date=October 2020}} He also claims that their influence went beyond just drama and applies to literature in general, citing Milton and the Romantics.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Aeschylus and Sophocles: their Work and Influence |journal=[[The Journal of Hellenic Studies]] |volume=47 |issue=2 |pages=265 |year=1927 |doi=10.2307/625177 |last=Sheppard |first=J. T. |author-link=J. T. Sheppard |jstor=625177 }}</ref>

[[Eugene O'Neill]]'s ''[[Mourning Becomes Electra]]'' (1931), a trilogy of three plays set in America after the Civil War, is modeled after the ''Oresteia''. Before writing his{{clarify|reason=this?|date=October 2020}} acclaimed trilogy, O'Neill had been developing a play about Aeschylus, and he noted that Aeschylus "so changed the system of the tragic stage that he has more claim than anyone else to be regarded as the founder (Father) of Tragedy."<ref>Floyd, Virginia, ed. ''Eugene O'Neill at Work''. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981, p. 213. {{ISBN|0-8044-2205-2}}</ref>

During his presidential campaign in 1968, Senator [[Robert F. Kennedy]] quoted the [[Edith Hamilton]] translation of Aeschylus on the night of the assassination of [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] Kennedy was notified of King's murder before a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was warned not to attend the event due to fears of rioting from the mostly African-American crowd. Kennedy insisted on attending and delivered an [[Robert F. Kennedy's speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.|impromptu speech]] that delivered news of King's death.<ref name="flickr.com">{{cite web| url = https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/3645184605/| title = Virginia&nbsp;– Arlington National Cemetery: Robert F. Kennedy Gravesite| date = 7 June 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Robert Kennedy: Delivering News of King's Death |url=https://www.npr.org/2008/04/04/89365887/robert-kennedy-delivering-news-of-kings-death |access-date=19 June 2022 |work=National Public Radio |date=April 4, 2008}}</ref> Acknowledging the audience's emotions, Kennedy referred to his own grief at the murder of Martin Luther King and, quoting a passage from the play ''Agamemnon'' (in translation), said: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black&nbsp;... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."<ref>{{cite book
| last= Kennedy | first= Maxwell Taylor | title= Make Gentle the Life of This World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy | publisher= Harcourt Brace & Company | date= 1998 | location= New York | language= English | isbn= 0-15-100-356-4}}</ref>
<ref>{{cite web | url= https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/statement-on-assassination-of-martin-luther-king-jr-indianapolis-indiana-april-4-1968
| title= Statement on Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. | last= Kennedy | first= Robert F. | date= April 4, 1968 | website= The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum | publisher= Papers of Robert F. Kennedy. Senate Papers. Speeches and Press Releases, Box 4, "4/1/68 - 4/10/68." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. | access-date= July 6, 2024}}</ref> The quotation from Aeschylus was later inscribed on a memorial at the gravesite of Robert Kennedy following his own assassination.<ref name="flickr.com"/>