An oracle foretold that he was to die by a blow from heaven, and according to the legend, an eagle, mistaking the poet's head for a stone as he sat writing, dropped a tortoise on it to break the shell. He was buried at Gela, and his epitaph, ascribed to himself, ran: “Beneath this stone lies Æschylos, son of Euphorion. At fertile Gela he died. Marathon can tell of his tested manhood, and the Persians who there felt his mettle.” He is said to have produced between seventy and eighty plays, of which only seven survive. ----- Footnote 1: _Cf._, the legend of Caedmon, “the Father of English Song.” THE PERSIANS[2] DRAMATIS PERSONÆ ATOSSA _Ghost of_ DAREIOS _Messenger_ XERXES _Chorus of Persian Elders_ _ARGUMENT.—When Xerxes came to the throne of Persia, remembering how his father Dareios had sought to subdue the land of the Hellenes, and seeking to avenge the defeat of Datis and Artaphernes on the field of Marathon, he gathered together a mighty host of all nations under his dominion, and led them against Hellas. And at first he prospered and prevailed, crossed the Hellespont, and defeated the Spartans at Thermopylæ, and took the city of Athens, from which the greater part of its citizens had fled. But at last he and his armament met with utter overthrow at Salamis. Meanwhile Atossa, the mother of Xerxes, with her handmaids and the elders of the Persians, waited anxiously at Susa, where was the palace of the great king, for tidings of her son._ ----- Footnote 2: _Note._—Within two years after the battle of Salamis, the feeling of natural exultation was met by Phrynichos in a tragedy bearing the title of _The Phœnikians_, and having for its subject the defeat of Xerxes. As he had come under the displeasure of the Athenian _demos_ for having brought on the stage the sufferings of their Ionian kinsmen in his _Capture of Miletos_, he was apparently anxious to regain his popularity by a “sensation” drama of another kind; and his success seems to have prompted Æschylos to a like attempt five years later, B.C. 473. The Tetralogy to which the play belonged, and which gained the first prize on its representation, included the two tragedies (unconnected in subject) of _Phineus_ and _Glaucos_, and the satyric drama of _Prometheus the Fire-stealer_.