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xvi language in which it is embodied, but also by their unfamiliarity with the mythological lore of Hellas. Like travellers in a foreign country, they shrink from the exertion of exploring an unknown region without the assistance of a guide. In order in some measure to supply this want, I have prefixed to each drama a brief introduction, setting forth the main incidents of the situation, together with other explanatory details. In these introductions I make no claim to originality; I have consulted the various works, bearing upon the subject, to which I had access, and from them I have endeavoured to bring together, as concisely as possible, such materials as seemed subservient to the object which I had in view.

With regard to Prometheus, I have felt the impossibility of treating adequately, within the narrow limits of an introduction, a subject so vast, and with reference to which such diverse opinions are entertained. The theory propounded by Schoemann appears to me to be one of the most successful attempts to reconcile the apparent discrepancy between the character of Zeus as portrayed in the Prometheus Bound, and that depicted in the remaining dramas of Æschylus, more especially in the Suppliants and the Oresteian trilogy. I have accordingly given, in my introduction, a brief epitome of some leading ideas embodied in Schoemann's essay, and to that I must refer the reader for a more complete exposition of his views.

In the introduction to my translation of the Oresteian trilogy, I have alluded at some length to the