Excerpt from The Agamemnon of Æschylus: With Notes

Eschylus was born at Eleusis in Attica, in the fourth year of the sixty-third Olympiad, B. C. 525. His father's name was Euphorion. He belonged to a distinguished family of the class of the Eupatridae. As Bode remarksf' he probably may have traced his origin back to Codrus, the last king of Athens, for, among the life-archons who succeeded in the royal line was an Eschylus, in whose reign the Olympiads commenced, and who may have been an ancestor of the poet. In that case, he inherited the proudest associations, both in the legendary and the historical traditions of his race. His father seems to have been connected with the worship of Demeter, and so, from his earliest youth, he was accus tomed to the spectacle of the solemn Eleusinian Mysteries, which belonged to the most ancient, imposing, and revered services of the Hellenic religion. There is no doubt that at the proper age he was initiated into those Mysteries, which, as Isocrates says, taught men to entertain sweeter hopes of a future life and that he continued to be a devout believer in a superintending providence, and in a righteous retribution.

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