The number of those who do not read the originals will be increased by
the dropping of Greek from the academical course. To give them
something like an equivalent for the original in English is the object
of a translation. As prose can never be an equivalent for poetry, and
as the thoughts and diction of poetry are alien to prose, it is
necessary to run the risks of a translation in verse. To translate as
far as possible line for line, is requisite in the case of the Greek
dramatists, if we would not lose the form and balance which are of the
essence of Greek art. It is necessary also to preserve as much as
possible the simplicity of diction, and to avoid words and phrases
suggestive of very modern ideas. After all, it is difficult, with a
material so motley and irregular as the English language, to produce
anything like the pure marble of the Greek. There are translations of
Greek tragedies or parts of them by writers of high poetic reputation,
which are no doubt poetry, but are not Greek art.

The lyric portions of the Greek Drama are admired and even
enthusiastically praised by literary judges whose verdict we shall not
presume to dispute. To translation, however, the choric odes hardly
lend themselves. Their dithyrambic character, their high-flown
language, strained metaphors, tortuous constructions, and frequent,
perhaps studied, obscurity, render it almost impossible to reproduce
them in the forms of our poetry. Nor perhaps when they are strictly
analysed will much be found, in many of them at least, of the material
whereof modern poetry is made. They are, in fact, the libretto of a
chant accompanied by dancing, and must have owed much to the melody
and movement. In attempting to render the grand choric odes of the
"Agamemnon," moreover, the translator is perplexed by corruptions of
the text and by the various interpretations of commentators, who,
though they all agree as to the moral pregnancy and sublimity of the