Aeschylus (525-456 BC) brought a new grandeur and epic sweep to the drama of classical Athens, raising it to the status of high art. The Persians, the only Greek tragedy to deal with events from recent Athenian history, depicts the final defeat of Persia in the battle of Salamis, through the eyes of the Persian court of King Xerxes, becoming a tragic lesson in tyranny. In Prometheus Bound, the defiant Titan Prometheus is brutally punished by Zeus for daring to improve the state of wretchedness and servitude in which mankind is kept. Seven Against Thebes shows the inexorable downfall of the last members of the cursed family of Oedipus, while The Suppliants relates the pursuit of the fifty daughters of Danaus by the fifty sons of Aegyptus, and their final rescue by a heroic king.

Aaron Poochigian’s new translations of Aeschylus’s earliest extant plays provide the clearest rendering yet of their formal structure. The distinction between spoken and sung rhythms is as sharp as it is in the source texts, and for the first time readers in English can fully grasp the balanced, harmonious arrangement of choral odes. The importance of these works to the history of drama and tragedy and to the history of classical literature is beyond question, and their themes of military hubris and foreign versus native are deeply relevant today. Persians offers a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of the Athenians’ most hated enemy; in Seven against Thebes Argive invaders, though no less Greek than the Thebans themselves, are portrayed as barbarians; and in Suppliants the city of Argos is called upon to protect Egyptian refugees. Based on textual evidence and the archaeological remains of the Theater of Dionysus at Athens, Poochigian’s introductory overview of stage properties and accompanying stage directions allow readers to experience the plays as they were performed in their own time. He is most careful in his translations of the plays’ choral odes. Instead of rendering them with little or no form, Poochigian has preserved the comprehensive structures Aeschylus himself employed. Readers are thus able to recognize Aeschylus as a master of poetry as well as of drama. Poochigian’s translations are the most accurate renditions of the poetry and dramaturgy of the original works available. Intended to be both read as literature and performed as plays, these translations are lucid and readable, while remaining staunchly faithful to the texts.

The formidable talents of Anthony Hecht, one of the most gifted of contemporary American poets, and Helen Bacon, a classical scholar, are here brought to bear on this vibrant translation of Aeschylus' much underrated tragedy The Seven Against Thebes. The third and only remaining play in a trilogy dealing with related events, The Seven Against Thebes tells the story of the Argive attempt to claim the Kingdom of Thebes, and of the deaths of the brothers Eteocles and Polyneices, each by the others hand. Long dismissed by critics as ritualistic and lacking in dramatic tension, Seven Against Thebes is revealed by Hecht and Bacon as a work of great unity and drama, one exceptionally rich in symbolism and imagery.

Aeschylus (ca. 525-456 BCE), the dramatist who made Athenian tragedy one of the world's great art forms, witnessed the establishment of democracy at Athens and fought against the Persians at Marathon. He won the tragic prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times between ca. 499 and 458, and in his later years was probably victorious almost every time he put on a production, though Sophocles beat him at least once. Of his total of about eighty plays, seven survive complete. The third volume of this edition collects all the major fragments of lost Aeschylean plays.