_The reception accorded to the pocket edition of Dean Plumptre's “Dante”
has encouraged the publishers to issue in the same_ format _the Dean's
masterly translation of the Tragedies of Æschylos._
_In preparing the present issue they have followed the carefully revised
text of the second edition, and have included the scholarly and
suggestive annotations with which the Dean invariably delighted to
enrich his work as a translator._
_The seven Plays, which are all that remain of the seventy or eighty
with which Æschylos is credited, are presented in their chronological
order. Passages in which the reading or the rendering is more or less
conjectural, and in which, accordingly, the aid of the commentator is
advisable, are marked by an asterisk; and passages which are regarded as
spurious by editors of authority have been placed in brackets._
_In translating the Choral Odes the Dean used such unrhymed
metres—observing the strophic and antistrophic arrangement—as seemed to
him most analogous in their general rhythmical effect to those of the
original. He added in an appendix, however, for the sake of those who
preferred the rhymed form with which they were familiar, a rhymed
version of the chief Odes of the Oresteian trilogy. Those in the other
dramas did not appear to him to be of equal interest, or to lend
themselves with equal facility to a like attempt. The Greek text on
which the translation is based is, for the most part, that of Mr.
Paley's edition of 1861._
_A translation was also given of the Fragments which have survived the
wreck of the lost plays, so that the work contains all that has been
left to us associated with the name of Æschylos._
_In the present edition a chronological outline has been substituted for
the biographical sketch of the poet, who from his daring enlargement of
the scope of the drama, the magnificence of his spectacular effects and
the splendour of his genius, was rightly honoured as “the Father of
Tragedy.”_