The greatest of the three great playwrights of ancient Greece and Athens (the others being Sophocles and Euripides) and the earliest of them. He was born in 525 BCE in Eleusis in Northern Attica to an aristocratic family, and fought bravely in the Persian wars. He was the first playwright to introduce the second actor to his plays (until then the plays incorporated one actor as wall as a chorus lead by the Choregos or chorus-leader), and thus created Drama and dialogue in the theatre. Of his 90 or so plays only six survived, as well as a seventh play which was mistakely attributed to him, but recently was proven to be of another anonymous playwright. Of these six plays, we have the only surviving trilogy of ancient Athens. The plays are: The Oresteia trilogy which includes Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers (Choephori) and The Eumenides; Seven against Thebes; The Persians and The Suppliant Women; the seventh of the plays (and the non-Aeschylean) is Prometheus Bound. Various fragments of his other plays leave us with only a glimpse of his true genius. Before his death he demanded that his epitaph shall not mention his poetry and plays, but rather his participation in the Persian wars and his contribution to his homeland the polis Athens.
In Aristophanes' comedy, The Frogs, Dionysos is being addressed by the spirits of the dead Euripides and Aeschylus in a request to judge who is the best playwright who ever lived, after a heated debate between the two dead playwrights, Dionysos gives the title to Aeschylus.