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• Editor’s Note
• Preface
• On the Genius and Character of the Greek Tragedy
• The Life of æschylus
• Agamemnon
• Choephoræ Or, the Libation-bearers a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
• The Eumenides
• Prometheus Bound a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
• The Suppliants a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
• The Seven Against Thebes a Lyrico-dramatic Spectacle
• The Persians a Historical Cantata
• List of Editions Commentaries and Translations Used By the Translator

THE LIFE OF ÆSCHYLUS

• τονˆτον τὸν βακχεɩ̂ον ἅνακτα.

—Aristophanes.

• . . . personæ pallæque repertor honestæ.

—Horace

After his death the Athenians testified their esteem for his character by decreeing—what was quite an extraordinary privilege according to their stage practice—that his dramas might be exhibited at the great Dionysiac festivals, when their author could be no longer a competitor for the prize* The people of Gela, justly proud that the bones of so great a man should repose in their soil, erected a monument to his memory with the following inscription:—

• “Here Æschylus lies, from his Athenian home
• Remote, ’neath Gola’s wheat-producing loam.
• How brave in battle was Euphorion’s son
• The long-haired Mede can tell that fled from Marathon.”

With regard to the great merits of Æschylus both as a poet and as the creator of the tragic stage, there is but one testimony among the writers of antiquity. He not only introduced, as we have elsewhere stated, a second, and afterwards a third actor—without which there was no scope for the proper representation of an action—but he made the greatest improvements in the whole machinery and decorations of the stage, gave dignity to the actors by a minute attention to their masks, dresses, and buskins,† besides attending specially to the graceful culture of the dance, according to the testimony of Athenæus above quoted. As a dramatist he is distinguished by peculiar loftiness of conception and grandeur of phraseology. His style is sometimes harsh and abrupt, but it is always manly and vigorous; his metaphors are bold and striking, with something at times almost oriental in their cast; and, though not free from the offence of mixing incongruous metaphors—the natural sin of an imagination at once fearless and fertile—I do not think he can be fairly charged with turgidity and bombast; for, as Aristophanes remarks, in the Frogs, there is a superhuman grandeur about his characters which demands a more than common elevation of phrase.‡ As to the obscurity with which he has been charged, the comparative clearness of those plays which have been most frequently transcribed is a plain indication that this fault proceeds more from the carelessness of stupid copyists, than from confusion of thought or inadequate power of expression in the writer. In some cases, as in the prophecy of Calchas in the opening scene of the Agamemnon, the obscurity is studied and most appropriate Poetry, like painting, will have its shade. But the great excellence of Æschylus, as a poet, is the bracing tone of thorough manhood, noble morality, and profound piety which pervades his works Among those who are celebrated by Virgil as walking with Orpheus and Musæus in blissful Elysium—

“Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti,”

• “Ὁι Τρώων μεν ὑπεξέϕυγον στονόεσσαν ἀυτὴν
• Ἐν νόστῳ δ’ απόλοντο κακη̂ς ἰότητι γυναιλός”

• “Greeks that ’scaped the Trojan war-cry, and the wailing battle-field,
• But home returning basely perished by a wicked woman’s guile”

Homer,Odys. xi 383-4.

[* ]Scholiast, Aristoph Acharn v 10

[† ]Philostratus, Vit Soph I. 9; Vit Apollon VI. 11, p. 244.

[‡ ]The great comedian is particularly amusing in the contrast which he draws between the rude instinctive grandeur of the Æschylean diction and the elegant rhetorical decorations of Euripides —

• “With high-sounding words he will make such a pother,
• With helmeted speeches he bravely will spout;
• With chippings and shavings of rhetoric the other
• All whirling and dancing about
• Will stand at bay; but the deep-thoughted bard,
• With equestrian harmonies, galloping hard,
• Will floor in the fight
• The glib-tongued wight.
• The stiff hair of his mane all alive for the fray,
• Bristling and big from the roots he will ruffle,
• His black brows he will knit, and terribly bray,
• Like a lion that roars for the scuffle.
• Huge words by rivets and spike-nails bound,
• Like plank on plank he will fling on the ground,
• Blasting so bold
• Like a Titan of old.”