Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
WITH NOTES ANDRHYMED CHORAL ODES
The reception accorded to the pocket edition of DeanPlumptre's “Dante” has encouraged the publishers toissue in the same format the Dean's masterly translationof the Tragedies of Æschylos.
In preparing the present issue they have followed thecarefully revised text of the second edition, and haveincluded the scholarly and suggestive annotations withwhich the Dean invariably delighted to enrich his workas a translator.
The seven Plays, which are all that remain of theseventy or eighty with which Æschylos is credited, arepresented in their chronological order. Passages in whichthe reading or the rendering is more or less conjectural,and in which, accordingly, the aid of the commentator isadvisable, are marked by an asterisk; and passageswhich are regarded as spurious by editors of authorityhave been placed in brackets.
In translating the Choral Odes the Dean used suchunrhymed metres—observing the strophic and antistrophic8arrangement—as seemed to him most analogous in theirgeneral rhythmical effect to those of the original. Headded in an appendix, however, for the sake of those whopreferred the rhymed form with which they were familiar,a rhymed version of the chief Odes of the Oresteiantrilogy. Those in the other dramas did not appear to himto be of equal interest, or to lend themselves with equalfacility to a like attempt. The Greek text on which thetranslation is based is, for the most part, that of Mr.Paley's edition of 1861.
A translation was also given of the Fragments whichhave survived the wreck of the lost plays, so that thework contains all that has been left to us associatedwith the name of Æschylos.
In the present edition a chronological outline has beensubstituted for the biographical sketch of the poet, whofrom his daring enlargement of the scope of the drama,the magnificence of his spectacular effects and thesplendour of his genius, was rightly honoured as “theFather of Tragedy.”
| Page | |
|---|---|
| Chronological Outline of the Life of Æschylos | 11 |
| The Persians | 17 |