Aeschylus is regarded as the founder of Greek tragedy, so it's only fitting that he would have the most absurd death story of them all.
How did he die?
Simple: He was bludgeoned to death.
With a turtle.
In 458 B.C.
It seems that eagles in the area surrounding Sicily loved turtle meat, but had a problem getting past the hard shell to the meat inside.
Solution: Lift the turtles up to great heights and then drop them on the rocks to crack them open like coconuts.
As the story goes, Aeschylus was out in the sun one day when an eagle mistook the top of his bald head for a rock, and dropped a turtle on him, killing him dead on the spot.
The turtle, supposedly, survived.
As fanciful as this story may seem, it contains a note of plausability as the Lammergeier, or Bearded Vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), is native to the area, and is famous for dropping bones and tortoises on rocks to break them open.
Another bit of trivia about Bearded Vultures: In 1945, a 23-year old by the name of Shimon Perski and 59-year old David Ben-Gurion found a nest of Bearded Vultures in the Negev desert of Israel.
Young Persky liked the hebrew name for the bird -- Peres -- so much that he changed his name to Shimon Peres.
Shimon Peres, of course, went on to become Israel's ninth President and win the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. The older David Ben-Gurion went on to become Israel's first Prime Minister.
Now you know.
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Certain populations of Golden Eagles also drop turtles onto rocks in this way. I've seen the video footage.
ReplyDeleteI've been lucky enough to see wild lammergeiers in Mongolia, where they are also native. Very impressive birds. Hadn't heard the Aeschylus story. So, is being bludgeoned to death by a turtle worse than being nibbled to death by ducks?
ReplyDeleteIt's faster and quieter, for sure! :)
ReplyDeletePatrick