PREFACE


The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar
approaches the task of translating the _Agamemnon_ depends directly on its
greatness as poetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of
Aeschylus is an extraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the
vocabulary obscure, unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its
peculiarities cannot be disregarded, or the translation will be false in
character. Yet not Milton himself could produce in English the same great
music, and a translator who should strive ambitiously to represent the
complex effect of the original would clog his own powers of expression and
strain his instrument to breaking. But, apart from the diction in this
narrower sense, there is a quality of atmosphere surrounding the
_Agamemnon_ which seems almost to defy reproduction in another setting,
because it depends in large measure on the position of the play in the
historical development of Greek literature.

If we accept the view that all Art to some extent, and Greek tragedy in a
very special degree, moves in its course of development from Religion to
Entertainment, from a Service to a Performance, the _Agamemnon_ seems to
stand at a critical point where the balance of the two elements is near
perfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yet
faded to a formality. The _Agamemnon_ is not, like Aeschylus' _Suppliant
Women_, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play, showing
clash of character and situation, suspense and movement, psychological
depth and subtlety. Yet it still remains something more than a play. Its
atmosphere is not quite of this world. In the long lyrics especially one
feels that the guiding emotion is not the entertainer's wish to thrill an
audience, not even perhaps the pure artist's wish to create beauty, but