Lament For The Two Brothers Slain , Aeschylus was born in the year 525 BC in Eleusis, a city some 18km north west of Athens. He was the son of Euphorion who has been described as a scion of a Eupatrid (a noble family of the Attican region of Greece). As well as growing up with a burning ambition to be a writer he also distinguished himself in battle.
He fought well at the battle of Marathon and others and it could be said that he actually took more pride in his military accomplishments than his dramatic writing. This suggestion is borne out by the following self-penned inscription on a monument erected in his honour in the town where he died (Gela, Sicily):
Lament For The Two Brothers Slain By Each Other’s Hand by Aeschylus
Lament For The Two Brothers Slain
Now do our eyes behold
The tidings which were told:
Twin fallen kings, twin perished hopes to mourn,
The slayer, the slain,
The entangled doom forlorn
And ruinous end of twain.
Say, is not sorrow, is not sorrow’s sum
On home and hearthstone come?
Oh, waft with sighs the sail from shore,
Oh, smite the bosom, cadencing the oar
That rows beyond the rueful stream for aye
To the far strand,
The ship of souls, the dark,
The unreturning bark
Whereon light never falls nor foot of Day,
Even to the bourne of all, to the unbeholden land.