University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

I have been led by the interest which I found in the work of translating Sophocles, and in part also by the reception which my translation met with, to enter on another, and, in some respects, more difficult task, in which I have had predecessors at once more numerous and of higher mark. I leave it to others to compare the merits and defects of my work with theirs.

I have adhered in it to the plan of using for the Choral Odes such unrhymed metres, observing the strophic and antistrophic arrangement, as seemed to me most analogous in their general rhythmical effect to those of the original; while, for the sake of those who cannot abandon their preference for the form with

which they are more familiar, I have added, in an Appendix, a rhymed version of the chief Odes of the Oresteian trilogy. Those in the other dramas did not seem to me of equal interest, or to lend themselves with equal facility to a like attempt.

I have for the most part followed the text of Mr Paley's edition of 1861, and, in common with all students of Æschylos, I have to acknowledge a large debt of gratitude to him both for his textual criticism and for the varied amount of illustrative material which he has brought together in his notes. It is right to name Professor Conington also as at once among the most distinguished of those with whose labours my own will have to be compared, and as one who has done for Æschylos at Oxford what Mr Paley has done at Cambridge, bringing to bear on the study of his dramas at once the accuracy of a critic and the insight of a poet. Had his work as a translator been carried further, had the late Dean of St Paul's left us more than the single tragedy of the Agamemnon, or my friend, Miss Swanwick, been able to complete what she began so well in her version of the Oresteian trilogy, I should probably not have undertaken the work which I have now brought to a conclusion. I have felt, however,

that it was desirable for the large mass of readers to whom the culture which comes through the study of Greek literature in the inimitable completeness of the originals is more or less inaccessible, that there should be a translation within their reach, embracing all that has been left to us by one who takes all but the highest place among the tragic poets of Athens, and making it, as far as was possible, intelligible and interesting in its connexion with the history of Greek thought, political and theological.

I have indicated by an asterisk (*) passages where the reading or the rendering is more or less conjectural, and in which therefore the student would do well to consult the notes of commentators. Passages which are regarded as spurious by editors of authority are placed between brackets [ ].

It only remains that I should once again acknowledge my obligations to my friend the Rev. Charles Hole, for much help kindly given in the progress of my work through the press.