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AGAMEMNON A TRAGEDY TAKEN FROM AESCHYLUS This Version or Per-version of jEschylus was originally printed to be given away among Friends, who either knew nothing of the Original, or would be disposed to excuse the liberties taken with it by an unworthy hand. PREFACE All the Choruses in this Tragedy call for a more lyrical Interpreter than myself. But even I might have done better with the first, by mingling fragments of the so oft-told Story with such dark and ill-ominous presage as would accumulate as Time went on. So much for the matter. As for the manner ; I think that some such form as Tennyson has originated in his version of the battle of Brunan- burh might well be adopted in this case, as in many other of Eschylus' Choruses such as in the Persae, the Seven against Thebes, and the Eumenides the question being whether such a trochaic gallop may not over-ride the Iambic Blank Verse Dialogue that follows it. I suppose that a literal version of this play, if possible, would scarce be intelligible. Even were the dialogue always clear, the lyric Choruses, which make up so large a part, are so dark and abrupt in themselves, and therefore so much the more mangled and tormented by copyist and commentator, that the most conscientioustranslator must not only jump at a meaning, but must bridge over a chasm ; especially if he determine to complete the antiphony of Strophe and Antistrophe in English verse. Thus, encumbered with forms which sometimes, I think, hang heavy on schylus himself1: struggling with indistinct meanings, obscure allusions, and even with puns which some have tried to reproduce in English ; this grand play, which to the scholar and the poet, lives, breathes, andmoves in the dead language, has hitherto seemed to me to drag and stifle under co...
