Achilleis (trilogy) - The Trilogy

The Trilogy

Given Aeschylus' tendency to write connected trilogies, three plays attested in the catalogue of his work have been supposed to constitute the Achilleis: Myrmidons, Nereids and Phrygians (alternately titled The Ransoming of Hector). Despite the paucity of surviving text, the Myrmidons has achieved some measure of fame, because of Aristophanes' satire of it at Frogs 911–13 in which Euripedes mocks Aeschylus' stagecraft:

πρώτιστα μὲν γὰρ ἕνα τιν' ἂν καθῖσεν ἐγκαλύψας,

Ἀχιλλέα τιν' ἢ Νιόβην, τὸ πρόσωπον οὐχὶ δεικνύς,

πρόσχημα τῆς τραγῳδίας, γρύζοντας οὐδὲ τουτί.

At the very beginning he sits someone alone, enshrouded,

some Achilles or Niobe, not showing the mask,

the ornament of tragedy, mumbling not even this much.

This play, along with the also lost Niobe, are two famous examples cited in antiquity of the often-discussed theme of the "Aeschylean silence".