Aeschylus

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is also the first whose plays still survive; the others are Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: critics and scholars' knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow conflict among them whereas characters previously had interacted only with the chorus.
== Tossup Questions ==
# In one of this man's plays, a warrior gets false advice that eating a slain man's brain before the gate of Proetus will heal him. This playwright presented the argument that children only get biological material from their fathers through the character of a god in a trial setting. He wrote about the unrolling of a purple carpet for a king who gets murdered in a trilogy where the Kindly Ones appear after the Furies stop haunting the murderer of Clytemnestra. For 10 points, name this Ancient Greek author who included The Eumenides and Agamemnon in his Oresteia trilogy, whose tragedy Seven Against Thebes was written before Sophocles or Euripides.
# One of this writer's plays centers on maidens in Oriental clothing and holding wands. In that play, a king warns that Zeus would send a man-eating monster if the maidens were not protected. This author of The Suppliants described the ultimate fight between Eteocles [ee-tee-OE-klees] and Polyneices [pol-ih-NIGH-sees] in Seven Against Thebes [theebs]. Name this author who wrote of Agamemnon's family in the Oresteia trilogy.
# In one play by this author, a sister spots a lock of hair on her father's tomb, which prompts her brother and her cousin Pylades to emerge from a hiding place to help her conjure a spirit. The title character of another of this man's plays tells the outcast Io that her offspring will rescue him from a torment inflicted by Kratos, Bia, and Hephaestus on the orders of (*) Zeus. The title man is persuaded to step on a purple tapestry signifying his hubris, and is then murdered in his bath, in the first of three plays this man wrote about a man who kills his murderous mother Clytemnestra. For 10 points, name this earliest of the three great Athenian tragedians, who wrote Prometheus Bound and Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and the Eumenides, which comprise his Oresteia trilogy.
# One play by this author describes the only one of the fifty Danaids, Hypermnestra, who did not kill her husband. In another play, he wrote about the mother of Xerxes, Atossa, who confronts the ghost of Darius about the loss at Salamis. This author of The Suppliants and The Persians wrote of Eteocles and Polynices in Seven Against Thebes and penned a trilogy whose title figure kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. For 10 points, The Libation Bearers and Agamemnon are included in the Oresteia trilogy of what oldest of the three great Athenian tragedians?
# In one play by this author, the title character's first words are a speech that begins, "O divine air Breezes on swift bird-wings The multitudinous laughter of Mother Earth!" One of this man's plays was modified to include a Fourth Episode involving a Herald who prohibits a certain action to better segue into a play by a different author; that episode follows a Threnos. The antagonist is told by his Spy of the title characters at (*) Argos' camp in one play by this author, who wrote of another character telling the Oceanids about a marriage that could lead to Zeus's downfall after being trapped by Kratos and Bia. This author wrote of the alliance against Eteocles as well as another character who gets struck by lightning and has his liver eaten while he is chained to a mountain. For 10 points, name this Greek tragedian behind Seven Against Thebes and Prometheus Bound.
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