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.
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Footnote 1:
_Cf._, the legend of Caedmon, “the Father of English Song.”