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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

LIST OF EDITIONS COMMENTARIES AND TRANSLATIONS

USED BY THE TRANSLATOR

Editions of the whole Plays.

Aldus: Venet., 1518

Victorius: ex officina Stephani; 1557.

Foulis: Glasguæ; 1746.

Schütz: 2 vols. Oxon.; 1810.

Butler: Cantab.; 1809-16, ex editione Stanleii; 4 vols. 4to.

Wellauer: cum. Lexico. Lipsiæ; 1823-31.

Scholefield: Cantab.; 1828.

Paley: Cantab.; 1844-47. 2 vols. 8vo.

Editions of the Separate Plays.

THE AGAMEMNON.

Blomfield: Cantab.; 1822.

Kennedy (with an English version, and Voss, German one). Dublin; 1829.

Klausen: Gothæ et Erfordiæ; 1833.

Peile. London Murray; 1839.

Connington (with an English poetical version). London; 1848.

Franz: with the Choephoræ and the Eumenides, and a German metrical translation. Leipzig; 1849.

CHOEPHORÆ.

Schwenk: Trajecti ad Rhenum; 1819.

Klausen: Gothæ et Erfordiæ; 1835.

Peile. London: Murray; 1844.

EUMENIDES.

K. O. Müller (with a German translation). Gottingen; 1833: and Anhang; 1834.

Linwood: Oxon.; 1844.

PROMETHEUS.

Bothe: Lipsiæ; 1830.

G C W. Schneider. Weimar; 1834.

Schoemann (with a German translation). Greifswald; 1844.

THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES.

Blomfield. Cantab.; 1817.

G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1834.

Griffith. Oxford.

THE PERSIANS.

Blomfield. Cantab; 1815.

G. C. W. Schneider. Weimar; 1837.

Commentaries, Dissertations, Monograms, &c.

Apparatus Criticus et Exegeticus in Æschyli tragædias; continens Stanleii commentarium, Abreschii animadersiones, et Reisigii emendationes in Prometheum. 2 vols. 8vo. Halis Saxonum; 1832.

Linwood: lexicon to Æschylus, 2nd edition. London; 1847.

Blumner: Weber die Idee des Schicksals in den Tragoedien des Æschylus. Leipzig; 1814.

Welcker: Die Æschyleische Trilogie. Darmstadt; 1824.

Hermanni Opuscula: 6 vols. 8vo., Latin and German. Leipzig; 1827-35.

Unger: Thebana Paradoxa. Halis; 1839.

Klausen: Theologoumena Æschyli. Berolini; 1829.

Toepelmann: Commentatio de Æschyli Prometheo (with a German translation). Lipsiæ, 1829.

B. G. Weiske: Prometheus und sein Mythenkreis. Leipzig; 1842.

Schoemann: Vindiciæ Jovis Æeschylei. Gryphiswaldiæ; 1846.

Translations.

Potter: English verse, 4to. Norwich; 1777.

Anon.: English prose (marked in my notes E. P. Oxon), 3rd edition. Oxford; 1840.

Droysen: German verse, 2nd edition. Berlin; 1842.

T. A. Buckley: English prose. London: 1849.

Wilhelm von Humboldt: Agamemnon metrisch ubersetzt. Leipzig; 1816.

Symmons: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1824.

Harford: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1831.

Th Medwyn: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1832.

Sewell: the Agamemnon in English verse. London; 1846.

Schoemann: die Eumeniden, German verse. Greifswald; 1845.

Th. Medwyn: the Prometheus, in English verse. London; 1832.

Prowett: the Prometheus, in English verse. Cambridge; 1846.

Swayne: the Prometheus, in English verse. London; 1846.

C. P. Conz: die Perser, and die Sieben vor Tuebae. Tübingen; 1817.

EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY By ERNEST RHYS

[* ]Southey—Preface to A Vision of Judgment.

[† ]As for Klopstock’s Odes, written mostly in classical metres, Zelter, the Berlin musician, said significantly that, when reading them, he felt as if he were eating stones!—See Briefwechsel mitGoethe.

[‡ ]Τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρωˆτον τετραμετρῳ εχρωˆντο διὰ τὸ σατυρικὴν καὶ ὀρχηστκωτέραν [Editor: illegible character]ιναι τὴν ποίησιν.

Port. 4.

[§ ]As in the conclusion of the Agamemnon, when the passion of the interested parties has wrought itself up to a climax. So in the passionate dialogue between Eteocles and Polynices, in Eurip. Phœnis. 591. The use of the Trochees in these passages is thus precisely the same as that of the Anapæsts in the finale of the Prometheus In the Persians, they serve to give an increased dignity to the person of Atossa, and the Shade of the royal Darius.

[∥ ]“Take our blank verse for all in all, in all its gradations from the elaborate rhythm of Milton, down to its lowest structure in the early dramatists, and I believe that there is no measure comparable to it, either in our own or in any other language, for might and majesty, flexibility and compass.”—Southey, Preface to the Vision of Judgment. What Bulwek says to the contrary (Athens and the Athenians, vol. II. p. 43), was crudely thought, or idly spoken, and unworthy of so great a genius.

[* ]Eumenides, sect. 16.

[† ]See Aristides and the musical writers; also Dionysius. Consider, also, what a solemnity Plutarch attributes to the ἐμβατηριος παιων of the Spartans (Lycurg. 22), which, of course, was either Dactylic or Anapæstic verse. Altogether, there can be no greater mistake than to imagine that our Dactylic and Anapæstic verse are the æsthetical equivalents of the ancient measures from which their names are borrowed They are, in many parts of my translation, rather the equivalent of Dochmiac verse, and this, in obedience to the uniform practice of our highest poets, in passages of high passion and excitement.

[* ]Διθύραμβος ο̂ς [Editor: illegible character]ν κύκλιος χορός.—Schol., Pindar, as above.

[† ]χορὸς ’εστὼς κυκλικωˆς.—Tzetzes Proleg. to Lycophron

[‡ ]Hartung, on the Dithyramb —Classical Museum, No XVIII p. 373. Mure’s literature of ancient Greece.—Vol III., p 85

[§ ]The number fifty is mentioned in the Epigram of Simonides, beginning ἠρχεν Αδείμαντος, in the above-mentioned prologue of Tzetzes, and in Pollux, Lib iv., 15, who says that this number of the Chorus was used even by Æschylus up to the time when the Eumenides was represented The number twelve is commonly mentioned by other authorities as having been used by Æschylus, while Sophocles is said to have increased it to fifteen, which afterwards became the standard number Müller (Eumenides) ingeniously supposes that the tragic poets, so long as the exhibition by tetralogies lasted, got the original number of fifty from the public authorities, and divided it among the different pieces of the tetralogy Blomfield’s notion (Preface to the Persae) that the Chorus to the Eumenides consisted of only three persons, though a kind word has been said in its favour lately (Mason in Smith’s Dict of Antiq. voceChorus), deserves, in my opinion, not a moment’s consideration, either on philological or æsthetical grounds I may mention here further, for the sake of those to whom these matters are strange, that the Chorus holds communication with the other characters in a Greek play generally by means of its Coryphaeus or Leader, which is the reason why it is often addressed in the singular and not in the plural number.

[* ]“Æschylus used to say that his tragedies were only slices cut from the great banquet of Homeric dainties.”—Athenæus, VIII p. 348

[† ]In the Frogs (v 886), Aristophanes makes him show at once the religiousness of his character, and its source, in the two lines of invocation—

• “O, thou that nourished my young soul, Demeter,
• Make thou me worthy of thy mysteries!”

[* ]From the διδασκαλία, or note of the year of representation with the name of the author, in the argument to that play On the arguments from internal evidence brought forward to prove that the Suppliants is the oldest extant play, I place no value whatever The simplicity of structure proves nothing, because it proves too much. Several of the extant plays are equally simple. For aught we know, it may have been the practice of Æschylus to the very last, as we see in the case of the Choephoræ, to give the middle piece of his trilogies less breadth and variety than the opening and concluding ones, and it is almost certain that the Suppliants was either the second or the first play of a trilogy.

[* ]Schol, Aristoph Ran. 1060, Welcker’s Tril p. 475, and the Vit. Robortel (which, however, I have not seen).

[† ]Mar Par ep 53. Welcker’s Tril. p. 116.

[‡ ]See Introduction to that piece

[* ]Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. III. 1. Clemen Alex., Strom II. 14, p. 461. Pott. Aelian, V.H.V. 19, and Welcker, Trilog p. 106.

[1 ]The primary authorities for the life of Æschylus are the Parian Marble, the Βίος Αισχ[Editor: illegible character]λου, the Frogs of Aristophanes, the arguments of the extant plays, and various incidental notices in Athenæus and other ancient authors, most of whom have been quoted or mentioned in the text With regard to secondary sources of information, the present writer has been much assisted, and had his labour essentially curtailed, by Petersen’sVita Æschyli, Havniae, 1812, the article Æschylus, by Whiston, in Dr Smith’s Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, the admirable condeused summary in Bernhardy’sGrundriss der Griechischen Litteratur, 2ter, Theil,Halle, 1845, and Donaldson’s Greek Theatre In Chronology, I have followed Clinton.

[* ]Welcker, in the introductory remarks to his Epischer Cyclus (sect. 1), has given what appear to me sufficient reasons for not confounding this Proclus with the famous Platonist of the same name.

[† ]This and other curious fragments from the wreck of the old Hellenic epos, will be found in Becker’s Scholia to Homer (Berlin, 1825), or in the second volume of Welcker’s Epic Cycle (Bonn, 1849), in the Appendix

[* ]See Thucydides, I. [Editor: illegible character].

[* ]See Niebuhr’s Travels (§ 25, c 4), Michaelis’ Commentaries on the Laws of Moses (Art, 135); and Southey’s Thalaba.

[* ]Dictionary—voce Goel, and Commentaries, § 131

[* ]Die Thymele in der Orchestra ist durch ein Aschenkrug als Agamemnon’s Grab bezcichnet.—Droysen.

[* ]This original germ of the Furies is mentioned frequently in these plays, as πολυκρατεɩ̂ς ἀρὰι ϕθιμενων, Fell Curses of the Dead, in the Chocphoræ, p. 111 above. See also the words of Clytemnestra, My curse beware, p. 126 above.

[* ]Wordsworth’s “Athens and Attica,” London, 1836, c. 11

[* ]Vol I., c. 3.

[† ]Fast., Hellen., Introduc. pp. 6, 7.

[* ]Eurip Phœnissae. Prolog, and Argument to the same from the Cod. Guelpherbyt. in Matthiae

[† ]πρωˆτος ’εν ’ανθρώποις τὴν ἀῤῥενοϕθορίαν ἑυρων —Compare Romans i. 27.

[† ]ὀιδέω to swell, and πονˆς a foot; literally swell-foot. Welcker remarks that there is a peculiar significancy in the appellations connected with this legend; even Λάιος being connected with λαικάζω, λαιδκαπρος, and other similar words—(Trilog. p. 355)—but this is dangerous ground

[‡ ]The σχιστή ὸδος.—See Wordsworth’s Greece, p 21.

[* ]It is particularly mentioned in the oldest form of the legend, that he considered his sons had not sent him his due share of the flesh offered in the family sacrifice—Scholiast Soph. O C 1375 This is alluded to in the fifth antistrophe of the third great choral chaunt of this play, v 768. Well See my Note

[* ]The subject of “The Eleusinians” was the burial of the dead bodies of the chiefs who had fallen before Thebes, through the mediation of Theseus.—See Plutarch, Life of that hero, c 29

[† ]See Welcker’s Triologie, p 359, etc

[‡ ]Classical Museum, No XXV. p 312.

[* ]The play of Phrynichus, which celebrated the defeat of Xerxes, was called Phænissæ, from the Phœnician virgins who composed the chorus How far Æschylus may have borrowed from this work is now impossible to know Nothing certainly can be gained by pressing curiously the word παραπεποιη̂σθαι in the mouth of an old grammarian.

[* ]Chœrilus was a Samian, contemporary of Herodotus, but younger. His poem, entitled περσικά, included the expedition of Darius as well as that of Xerxes