# Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878)/Preface

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PREFACE.
The favourable reception which has been given to the first edition of this translation, in spite of its many imperfections, has shown that I was not wrong in thinking that such a work was likely, if only it were worthily executed, to fill a gap in the translated literature of our time. New versions of the Iliad and Odyssey appear in almost every conceivable form of English versification. Of Æschylos there have, of late years, been several partial or complete translations. In working upon Sophocles I have but three predecessors: Francklin, in 1758; Potter, in 1788; Dale, in 1825. English versions of single plays have been published: the Antigone by Dr Donaldson in 1848, and the Aias by Mr D'Arcy Thompson in 1862. A few choruses, tendered with great skill and elegance, are to be found in the late Mr Anstice's Translations from Greek Choral Poetry. These have, all of them, I believe, been for several years out of print, ​and it was, in part, the feeling that I was entering on unoccupied ground which led me to undertake a task which might well have called for higher culture and more abundant leisure.
Kindly as my work has been received, I cannot blind myself either to the demerits which critics have pointed out, or those (many more in number) which the work of revision has brought under my notice. Partly from the fact that the work was done chiefly in the scant intervals of leisure left by my usual labours, partly from the wish to get it over and done with before I entered on fresh tasks of another kind, it was carried through the press with somewhat undue haste; required, more or less, pruning and correction throughout, and called, in some instances, for a reconsideration of the principles of translation on which I had acted. I have endeavoured, in revising it, to remedy these defects, and trust that they are, at least, materially reduced in number.
The points in which I have seen reason (over and above changes in the translation of many words and phrases) to modify the judgments which I expressed in the preface to the first edition are as follows:—
(1.) I retain the conviction that unrhymed verse, if only it be melodious enough, and analogous to the tone and feeling of the original, is the best ​representative of the choral ode of the Greek tragic poets. Rhyme still seems to me, as I then said, to introduce an element more or less incongruous, to fetter the free flow of thought by the periodicity of the same sound recurring at fixed intervals, to present a temptation, very difficult to guard against, to expansion and over-ornamentation for the sake of it. If I had but few precedents to appeal to among those who had gone before me as translators, Mr Matthew Arnold's employment of unrhymed metres in his Merope gave then, and the exquisite drama of Philoctetes, published anonymously last year, has given since, abundant proof how capable that form is of approximating in melody and beauty to the perfection of the Sophoclean choruses. On the other hand, there has been something not far from a consensus of critics in favour of rhyme, and many readers among my friends have expressed the same feeling. They missed what they had been accustomed to look upon as the indispensable accompaniment of all but the so-called heroic verse. At all events, they did not find in my translation that which compensated for its absence. I have accordingly endeavoured to meet their wants, without surrendering my own judgment, by adding a rhymed version of the choral odes and chief lyrical dialogues in an appendix. I must leave it to them to decide ​which attempt has been furthest removed from failure.
(2.) On another point I have to make a more entire retractation. It seemed to me, when I entered on my task, that a reproduction of the symmetry, line by line, between the strophes and antistrophes of a choral ode would not give sufficient pleasure to the ear of an English reader to make the attempt, obviously more or less difficult, worth the time and labour it would cost; and that the delight which it gave to the Athenian hearer depended mainly on the accessories of music and motion by which it was accompanied. In going over my work again, I have come to a different conclusion. The impression made upon the ear, and even upon the eye of a reader, is, I believe, so far analogous to that which was made upon the spectator, that the attempt to reproduce it ought not to be hastily abandoned. It at least serves to indicate what is the crowning excellence of poetry in all its highest forms, the union of the most vigorous life, and freedom, and strong emotion, with a voluntary obedience to self-imposed laws of melody, and the consummate self-control and mastery over language which that obedience implies. In this edition, accordingly, both in the rhymed and unrhymed ​versions, I have endeavoured to preserve the symmetry in question throughout.
(3.) In another less conspicuous matter I have also to acknowledge a change of opinion. In the first edition I, for the most part, deliberately broke up the single-line dialogues, the στιχομυθίαι, which occur in every tragedy, into less regular lines and half lines, more in harmony with the forms of most of our English dramas. Here again, I believe, it would have been better to have been more faithful to the form of the original. Mr Swinburne's success in these portions of his Atalanta in Calydon has shown that it is quite possible to do so, and yet to escape the stiffness and monotony which at first seem almost inevitable.
(4.) Admitting the force of much that may be said on the conservative side, in favour of retaining any received nomenclature and orthography, I have not seen reason to recede from the course which I took in the first edition, and have, in some instances, gone further in the same direction. It still seems to me right to give Greek mythology as it actually was, and not as it was seen through the medium of the speech of men who were bent upon identifying two polytheistic systems which were but partially in contact with each other. The more I compare the effect produced ​on one's mind by writers who adhere to the Latin forms of names, and by those, in our own country or in Germany, who return, as far as may be, to the Greek, the more I feel that the latter give one a sense of a distinct nationality and life which is wanting in the former. It is a gain, I believe, to get rid even of the Latinised termination in -us, and to reproduce the original in -os.
(5.) I have thought it right to meet the wishes of many readers by prefixing to each play a short argument, giving so much and no more of the story, as may enable one who starts with but little previous knowledge to take up the action of the drama at the point at which it opens, and follow it without difficulty to the end. I have, in like manner, acted on the suggestion that for such readers it is desirable to give, here and there, brief explanatory notes, enabling them to understand local or mythological allusions for which they would otherwise have to refer to a classical dictionary.
(6.) Lastly, I have indicated by brackets lines which are looked on by one or more critics of repute as spurious, and by an asterisk (*) the more prominent passages in which the text is so uncertain, or the construction so difficult, that the rendering must be looked on as, at best, somewhat uncertain.
​What has been said will show that the volume which I now bring to a completion is something more than a mere reprint. The labour which I have bestowed has, I trust, not been altogether fruitless. I have to thank the friends and critics whose suggestions have helped me in it, and to ask the forgiveness of that praiseworthy and often suffering class, the purchasers of first editions, for not having bestowed the same pains at an earlier stage of publication.