Aeschylean

Pronunciation pronunciation key
eeskăleeăn

Definition 
Tragic on a grand or epic scale. The allusion is to the tragedies of the celebrated Greek playwright Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.), whose dramas typically dealt with tragedies resulting from pride or defiance of the gods. Of his 90 or so plays, just seven survive, including the trilogy known as the Oresteia (458 B.C.). Aeschylus is said to have been killed when an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise on it in order to break its shell. "A few minutes after the hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag. 'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess" (Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891).