The LYRICAL
DRAMAS of
ÆSCHYLUS

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The original text included Greek characters that were not supported byUnicode at the time of this ebook’s creation. In these cases I used thenearest available character and surrounded it with parentheses. A fulllisting, along with descriptions of the proper characters, can be foundat the end of the book in the section titled Greek Textual Notes.

Footnotes have been relocated to the end of the book. Footnotes and(end)notes are labeled with an “f” and “n”, respectively.

Text alterations: some spelling and punctuation corrections, change some of the plays’formatting, and remove obsolete references to “vol. I” and “vol. II”,which were leftover from the 1850 two-volume version of this work.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Professor John Stuart Blackie [1809-1895], in his day fondly called“Scotland’s greatest Greek scholar,” began his translation of Æschyluswhen he was still comparatively a young man, in 1837-8, and he did notcomplete it, working intermittently, until 1846. Even then, there was aprocess of revision and correction to be gone through, which carried onthe work by a further term of three or four years.

The translation had occupied twelve years, says Miss Stoddart, in herbiography (1895), but only the first three and the last three of thoseyears were specially devoted to the work. Carlyle interested himself infinding a London publisher for the translation, and hecharacteristically mingled his praise of it with blame. He spoke of itindeed as “spirited and lively to a high degree,” and added, “thegrimmer my protest against your having gone into song at all with thebusiness.” It was Professor Aytoun who suggested the rhymed choruses.Leigh Hunt wrote to Blackie, approving where Carlyle had demurred. Hesaid: “Your version is right masculine and Æschylean, strong, musical,conscious of the atmosphere of mystery and terror which it breathes in;”and he especially admired the poetic interpretation given “to thelyrical nature of these fine Cassandra-voiced ringing old dramas.”

The following is a list of the chief English translators of Æschylus:—

The Tragedies translated into English Verse; R. Potter, 1777, 1779.

The Seven Tragedies literally translated into English Prose, from theText of Blomfield and Schütz, 1822, 1827.

Literal translation by T. A. Buckley, 1849.

The Lyrical Dramas . . . into English Verse, J. S. Blackie, 1850; intoEnglish Prose, F. A. Paley, 1864, 1891; E. H. Plumptre, 1868, 1873; AnnaSwanwick, 1873; from a revised text, W. Headlam, 1900, etc.

The Seven Plays in English Verse; L. Campbell, 1890.

The Agamemnon was translated by Dean Milman, 1865; and “transcribed”by Robert Browning, 1877. A. W. Verrall’s edition of the text, withcommentary and translation, appeared in 1889.

The most important of the earlier editions of the text was that byStanley; of the more recent, that by Schütz, Wellauer, and Hermann.