Aeschylus (pronounce /ˈɛskɨləs/ or /ˈiːskɨləs/, Greek: Αἰσχύλος, Aiskhúlos, 525 BC/524 BC – 456 BC/455 BC) was an ancient Greek playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedians whose plays survive, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict among them; previously, characters interacted only with the chorus. No more than seven of the estimated 92 plays written by Aeschylus have survived into modern times.