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WHITTAKER & CO., AVE MARIA LANE;

GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

H

LONDON:

GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,

ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.

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WHITTAKER & CO., AVE MARIA LANE;

GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

1880.

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PREFACE.

IT has been said by one of the most distinguished of English Scholars that "an adequate Edition of Sophocles remains yet to be achieved in England." And by the term "adequate” he evidently means one which, both in its critical revision of the text and its sound interpretations of it, shall satisfy all the conditions of grammatical accuracy and poetic justice.

The English Editions of Sophocles as a whole are not numerous, although of the separate plays many have been published with more or less success. Mr. Blaydes, who carried through with great pains, and with minute care even in the smallest details of criticism and interpretation, the First Volume of Sophocles in the Bibliotheca series, has since completed the other plays with equally conscientious care in separate editions. The three plays contained in Vol. I. (Oed. R., Oed. Col., Antigone) have lately appeared also in Vol. I. of the Clarendon Press Series, with a very full and elaborate Preface on the Language of Sophocles, a complete apparatus criticus, and explanatory English notes, by Professor Campbell. It was nevertheless the desire of the Publishers to complete (if possible, in a volume of moderate length) the Edition of Sophocles in the Bibliotheca Classica. My own considerable experience in editing Greek Plays induced them to request me to undertake a work, the difficulty of which, even to one who has been familiar with the author for quite half a century, might well deter the most ardent and the most industrious of younger scholars. This difficulty, which is universally acknowledged, arises not

Professor Kennedy, Studia Sophoclea, Part i. p. 1, Introduction.

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