The LYRICAL
DRAMAS of
ÆSCHYLUS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
The original text included Greek characters that were not supported by Unicode at the time of this ebook’s creation. In these cases I used the nearest available character and surrounded it with parentheses. A full listing, along with descriptions of the proper characters, can be found at 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 Æschylus when he was still comparatively a young man, in 1837-8, and he did not complete it, working intermittently, until 1846. Even then, there was a process of revision and correction to be gone through, which carried on the work by a further term of three or four years.
The translation had occupied twelve years, says Miss Stoddart, in her biography (1895), but only the first three and the last three of those years were specially devoted to the work. Carlyle interested himself in finding a London publisher for the translation, and he characteristically mingled his praise of it with blame. He spoke of it indeed as “spirited and lively to a high degree,” and added, “the grimmer my protest against your having gone into song at all with the business.” It was Professor Aytoun who suggested the rhymed choruses. Leigh Hunt wrote to Blackie, approving where Carlyle had demurred. He said: “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 the lyrical 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.