CHAPTER II.
THE SOLDIER-POET.
To us Æschylus is a poet, and a poet he has been to all ages since his own; but to himself he was a soldier, so that when he was to write an epitaph for himself, the one fact which he wished inscribed upon his tomb was this—that the long-haired Persians knew how he could fight. To the men of his own age he was both soldier and poet, and from their stand-point we must try to regard him.
Æschylus was born about the year 525 B. C. at Eleusis, near Athens, a village celebrated for the secret rites of Demeter there performed,—those Eleusinian mysteries which are among the most remarkable institutions that the world has seen. The great goddess of Eleusis, Demeter, or Mother Earth, was one of the most august of the divinities of Greece. She represented the earth in its power and its kindliness; in the conception formed of her, the earth's venerable age and greatness, and the mysterious influence by which she quickens seed and nourishes life, were combined with the genial fertility and rich
