Episode Details

Aeschylus fought at Marathon and Salamis before writing the plays that created tragic drama as an art form. He valued his military service so highly that his epitaph mentions nothing about his plays. Yet The Oresteia remains the only complete Greek tragic trilogy to survive.

This episode tells the story of a warrior who turned battlefield horror into theatrical catharsis and invented the dramatic form that shaped Western storytelling for 2,500 years.

• How he fought at Marathon and why he considered it his greatest achievement
• The invention of the second actor and why it changed theater forever
• The Oresteia and its radical argument about justice replacing revenge
• The bizarre legend of his death by a falling tortoise