477 Commencement of Athenian supremacy. 473 Æschylos carried off the first prize with _The Persians_ (the first of the extant plays), which belonged to a tetralogy that included two tragedies, _Phineus_ and _Glaucos_, and a satyric drama, _Prometheus the Fire-stealer_. _The Persians_ has the interest of being a contemporary record of the great sea-fight at Salamis by an eye-witness. 471 Æschylos appears to have produced this year his next tetralogy, of which _The Seven against Thebes_ survives. The play was directed against the policy of aiming at the supremacy of Athens by attacking other Greek States, and, in brief, maintained the policy of Aristeides as against that of Themistocles. Birth of Thucydides. 468 Sophocles gained his first victory in tragedy with his _Triptolemos_; Æschylos defeated. Æschylos charged with impiety, on the ground that he had profaned the Mysteries by introducing on the stage rites known only to the initiated; tried and acquitted; departure for Syracuse. 467 Æschylos at the court of Hieron at Syracuse, where he is said to have composed dramas on local legends, such as _The Women of Ætna_. Death of Simonides. 461 Ostracism of Kimon; ascendency of Pericles. 460-59 Probable date of _The Suppliants_, if the play be connected with the alliance between Argos and Athens (B.C. 461), and the war with the Persian forces in Egypt, upon which the Athenians had entered as allies of the Libyan Prince Inaros. (B.C. 460.) The date of _Prometheus Bound_ has been referred to B.C. 470 on the strength of a description of Ætna (vv. 370-380), which is supposed to be a reference to the eruption of B.C. 477. Internal evidence, however, seems to warrant the view that _The Suppliants_ and the _Prometheus Bound_ were separated by only a brief interval of time. 458 Æschylos in Athens. He found new men and new methods; institutions, held most sacred as the safeguard of Athenian religion, were being criticised and attacked; the Court of Areiopagos was threatened with abolition under pretence of reform. Production of the Oresteian Trilogy (or, rather, tetralogy, as in addition to the _Agamemnon_, the _Libation-pourers_, and the _Eumenides_, there was a satyric drama, _Proteus_). This trilogy was a conservative protest, religious, social, and political, which culminated in the assertion of the divine authority of the Areiopagos. Popular feeling was once more excited against the poet, who left Athens never to return, and settled at Gela, in Sicily, under the patronage of Hieron. 456 Death of Æschylos, aged 69.