Talk:Aeschylus

message: Even in our sleep, a pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.-  Aeschylus  (525–456 BC)
Robert Kennedy quoted these lines as he told an Indianapolis crowd of the assassination of Martin Luther King.  Kennedy was himself assassinated a few months later.  Does anyone know the text source?
: It's from lines 179-80 of Agamemnon. Ifnkovhg (talk) 01:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have no Ancient (or Modern) Greek. However, given the Ancient Greeks were polytheists would Aeschylus have written about "the awful grace of God" or "the gods"?
Avalon (talk) 10:21, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I read in a reliable source this guy was killed when an eagle, mistaking his head for a rock, dropped a tortoise on him.Eddisford 21:09, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: death

message: I also removed the dating of the Prometheus to the fourth century; discussions generally talk about late fifth century.--Petrus Olaus 07:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Further edits 

message: I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information.  I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list.  Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article.  Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this as a model for the editors here.  Regards, Durova 16:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Cultural depictions of Aeschylus]] 

message: "the tyrant of Gela" - the Gela article mentions multiple "rulers", but without an exact year to work off, this is difficult.  The only one mentioned as a "tyrant" appears to have been a generation before Aeschylus was likely to travel there. Sherurcij (Speaker for the Dead)  22:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarification

message: Just from a quick browse, it appears that this article says that the Prometheus Bound is not by Aeschylus. This is questionable; the introduction to Griffith's recent edition says "Most modern scholars have seen no good reason to doubt the traditional ascritpion, though opinions as to date have varied." (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, ed. Mark Griffith, Cambridge, 1983, p. 32.) I think the article should simply note that the authenticity of the play is disputed, and give details at Prometheus Bound. --Akhilleus (talk) 22:08, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Prometheus Bound

message: This article was nominated as a Good Article Candidate. It meets all requirements—well done! Further improvement might include more detail on the contents of his plays. I have also added some wikilinks to relevant unlinked terms. A mild copyedit would help improve sentences like "However, the glory was tempered for Aeschylus personally when his brother was killed in the battle." –Outriggr § 05:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good article 

message: In the third volume of I Am a Cat, the Cat tells the story of Aeschylus's death. Shouldn't this be mentioned? 瀬人様 17:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not in this article. --Akhilleus (talk) 18:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[I Am a Cat]]

message: I deleted the following, because it's almost entirely wrong: 
"She defies the order of the new king, Creon, banning anyone from burying Polynices. In response, Creon sentences her to be buried alive, and Antigone commits suicide just before Creon is persuaded to rescind his order. The remainder of the play is an orgy of deaths. Creon is killed by his son, Haemon, who was betrothed to Antigone and who immediately afterwards kills himself. Then Eurydice, Creon's wife, kills herself in mourning. This ending entirely mirrors the plot of Antigone."
Creon, Haemon and Eurydice are NOT characters in the Septem. Not even in the spurious ending that features Antigone. These characters' actions that the author describes "entirely mirror[ing]" Antigone's plot is also off. In Sophocles' play, Eurydice does kill herself after Haemon killed himself. Haemon tried to kill Creon, but failed. Creon is alive at the end of Antigone. The entirety of the spurious ending is simply this: Antigone and Ismene mourn their dead brothers; a messenger announces the prohibtion against burying Polyneices; and Antigone announces her intention to defy that edict. This new ending was likely written to turn Aeschylus' Septem into a prequel of sorts to Sophocles' Antigone.Ifnkovhg 01:04, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Made a Septem edit. 

message: I have noticed that there are a lot of references made to a work by Freeman (1999), but that this work is not actually listed in the Notes or References sections.
I have gone back to the origin of the article and it does not seem to be that the reference has been removed; it just was never there. Is this a reference to Freeman's "The Greek Achievement"?
I do not have ready access to a copy of this work, so I cannot check to see if the page references in the article refer to that book. Does anyone know why there is no mention of the actual book by Freeman in this article, given that it is referenced so many times? MarkHudson (talk) 12:06, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Freeman references 

message: I'm not dead certain, but I would bet that the elusive Freeman reference is: Charles Freeman, The Greek Achievement: the foundation of the western world, 1999. Dare I add it to the bibliography? Ifnkovhg (talk) 06:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't been able to look at the book. Google Books only has snippet view, but searching this I'm pretty sure it's the right one (the main section on Aeschylus is on pp. 243-6), so it can safely be added. I don't think this fully solves the referencing issue though, as I wrote in the review. Lampman (talk) 13:36, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Freeman" reference. 

message: The article currently states "She also renames them The Awesome Goddesses, ". Is "The Awesome Goddesses" really a good translation for The 'Eumenides'? I mean, it sounds modern and trendy, but it doesn't convey any of the meaning of the word. I much prefer the version given in this article here, "The Kindly Ones", reflecting the greek roots 'eu-' (good) and 'menos' (mood or spirit). If no-one has any objection, I plan to change it.
Drjamesaustin (talk) 08:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translating the term "Eumenides" 

message: Usually pronounced /'i:sk ɪl əs/, /'i:sk əl əs/ in British usage.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.2.123 (talk) 11:45, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: I'm removing the claim that Aeschylus's name means "shame". The reference cited is a baby naming site which, well, it doesn't look very reliable. Furthermore, there is a common misunderstanding of the ancient Greek word "aiskhos" as "shame" because the common biblical verb "aiskhynomai" does mean "to cause shame", but it's a metaphoric use of the word. The literal (and probably more common in his day) meaning is "disfigurement"; it is much more likely that Aeschylus's name was a reference to his appearance. I'm not listing this as a fact since I don't think there are any reliable sources for either meanings.
94.67.196.155 (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Aischos (Disgrace/Deformity) ulos (diminutive). Technically he was A little disgrace or Ugly little So-and-So! but it need not imply anything personal. Check out the OCD for names, personal, Greek: a personal name wasn't necessarily personal, any more than Bottom or Botham in English nomenclature always refers to the bottom of a hill, though originally it did. Some respectable Greeks got called Kopr... from kopros or shit. The Furies got called The Kindly Ones. To quote OCD:  While there was a natural tendency for desirable attributes to be chosen, it is not always the case, and it remains a matter of psychological curiosity why some forms were chosen, and even handed down within families. However I agree that the claim should have a reliable source since it involves some speculation about the name's personal relevance for Aeschylus. Maybe he really was a little disgrace. Most poets are a disgrace, I believe. McCnut (talk) 05:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aeschylus and "shame" 

message: These paragraphs:
::Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult to Demeter based in his hometown of Eleusis.[17] As the name implies, members of the cult were supposed to have gained some secret knowledge. Firm details of specific rites are sparse, as members were sworn under the penalty of death not to reveal anything about the Mysteries to non-initiates. Nevertheless, according to Aristotle some thought that Aeschylus had revealed some of the cult's secrets on stage.[18]
::Other sources claim that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot, but he fled the scene. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the crowd watching the play tried to stone Aeschylus. He then took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. When he stood trial for his offense he pleaded ignorance. He was acquitted, with the jury sympathetic to the wounds that Aeschylus and his brother Cynegeirus suffered at Marathon. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, Aeschylus's younger brother Ameinias helped acquit his brother by showing the jury the stump of the hand that he lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. The truth is that the award for bravery at Salamis went to Ameinias of Pallene, not Aeschylus's brother.
are very unclear. Was the attempted lynching related to the supposed revelation of Eleusian secrets? If so, which play prompted the reaction? And if the revelation of Eleusian secrets was the problem, isn't it somewhat strange that he would be threatened by a mob (were initiates so numerous that they could form a mob?) Besides, the "other sources" aren't mentioned by name, which makes the passage somewhat weasely - and, in the way it is constructed, it seems to imply that those other sources are somehow contradicting Aristotle.
So - what play prompted and attempt at lynching Aeschylus, and was it because of a leak of Eleusine secrets? What sources say that? Does Aristotle deny the attempted lynching, or its relation to the Eleusine misteries? Ninguém (talk) 12:54, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cryptic paragraphs 

message: Substituted at 06:48, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment