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Euripides and His Age, by Gilbert Murray, [1913], at sacred-texts.com
Texts.—Murray, 3 vols., 3s. 6d. each (Oxford, 1901–1913), with brief critical notes. This edition received much help from Wilamowitz and Verrall. Wecklein-Prinz (Leipzig, about 1895 to 1905), edited by Dr. Wecklein from Prinz's collations of MSS.; large critical apparatus and lists of emendations. Text much altered.
Fragments. Fragmenta Tragicorum Graecorum by Nauck (Leipzig, second edition, 1889): this fine book still holds the field (26s.). Supplementum Euripideum by H. von Arnim (Bonn, 1912). (Price 2s.) Contains the recent papyrus discoveries; a convenient and learned little book, defaced by metrical errors.
Texts with Commentary.—Paley, 3 vols., 8s. each (Cambridge, second edition, 1880). Though old-fashioned and often based on wrong information about the MSS. and other matters this is a most sound and thoughtful work. Of the numerous modern editions (especially school editions) of particular plays we may mention Euripides’ Herakles erklärt von Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (first edition, Berlin, 1889); since re-edited in two volumes. This is an epoch-making book, and together with the same author's Analecta Euripidea (1875) has laid the foundation for modern criticism: also
[paragraph continues] Verrall's Medea, Sandys' Bacchae, Keene's Electra, Powell's Phoenissae. In French, Weil's Sept Tragédies d’Euripide; in German Bruhn's editions of the Iphigenia in Tauris and the Bacchae deserve special note.
Translations.—There are complete translations of the extant plays in prose by Coleridge (Bohn) and in verse by A. Way (Macmillan). A good prose translation, which should really bring out the full meaning of the Greek, is greatly needed. By Murray there are at present translations of the following plays: Hippolytus, Bacchae, Trojan Women, Electra, Medea, Iphigenia in Tauris, Rhesus. In paper 1s. each, in cloth 2s. (George Allen).
Essays, etc.—The best starting point is Haigh's Tragic Drama of the Greeks (Oxford, 1896), pp. 804–381; Introduction to vol. i. of Paley's Commentary (see above); Articles in the Histories of Greek Literature by Mahaffy, Jebb (both Primer and article in Encyclopædia Britannica), Jevons, Murray. In French, the article in Croiset's History of Literature; P. Decharme, Euripide et l’esprit de son Théâtre (Paris, 1893); P. Masqueray, Euripide et ses Idées (Paris, 1908). In German, the "Einleitung" to Wilamowitz's Herakles, vol. i. (Berlin, 1889); Dieterich's article on Euripides in Pauly-Wissowa's Real Encyclopädie is excellent, though severely compressed and ignorant of English work; articles in the Histories of Literature by Bergk (still valuable), Christ (in Ivan Müller's Handbuch), Bethe (in Gercke und Norden's Handbuch), Wilamowitz (in Kultur der Gegenwart); the
account in Eduard Meyer's Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. iv., is good. Also Ed. Schwartz, Charakterköpfe aus der Antiken Literatur (Leipzig, 1906), second study, very good: H. Steiger, Euripides, seine Dichtung and seine Persönlichkeit (Leipzig, 1918). Useful, though often uncritical is W. Nestle Euripides, der Dichter der Griechischen Aufklärung (Stuttgart, 1901); also Die Philosophische Quellen des Euripides (Leipzig, 1908). The ideas of "the Enlightenment," to which reference is often made, can be well studied in Mr. Brailsford's book in this Library, Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle.
Dr. A. W. Verrall's theory of Euripides is developed in Euripides the Rationalist (Cambridge, 1905); Euripides’ Ion (1890); Four Plays of Euripides (1905); The Bacchantes of Euripides (1910). See also G. Norwood, The Riddle of the Bacchae (London, 1908).
Murray's previous writings include the chapter in his Ancient Greek Literature (1898); introduction to vol. ii. of The Athenian Drama (George Allen, 1908). (This volume is called "Euripides" and contains, besides the translations of the Hippolytus, Bacchae and Frogs, since republished separately, an Introduction and an Appendix on the lost plays of Euripides). Introductions to his translations of separate plays: see above; Greek and English Tragedy, an essay in English Literature and the Classics, edited by G. S. Gordon (Oxford, 191e); and the article on Euripides in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Ethics and Religion. (These writings have been sometimes quoted in the present volume.)
The Lives can best be read in the edition of the Scholia by Ed. Schwartz (Berlin, 1887). To this must now be added the fragments of Satyrus in Oxyrhyncus Papyri, vol. ix. (also contained, though without Dr. Hunt's introduction, in Arnim's Supplementum Euripideum; see above). The ancient references to the facts of Euripides’ life are admirably collected in vol. i. of Nauck's small text of Euripides. See also Wilamowitz's Herakles, pp. 1–40.
Chronology of the Plays.—Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Analecta Euripidea (Berlin, 1875). Grace Macurdy, The Chronology of the extant Plays of Euripides (Columbia University, 1905).
Lost Plays.—Fragments in Nauck; see above. No complete translation. A good many of the lost plays are treated and fragments translated in the Appendix to Murray's Euripides, Athenian Drama, vol. ii.; see above. The classical work on this subject is still Welcker's Griechische Tragoedie, a great book: 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1839–41.) Hartung's Euripides Restitutus, 2 vols. (Hamburg, 1844), is uncritical and somewhat prejudiced against Welcher, but has much charm.
Antiquities, etc.—The standard book is Haigh's Attic Theatre, 3rd edition, by A. W. Pickard-Cambridge (Oxford, 1907). See also Greek Tragedy by J. T. Sheppard (Cambridge Manuals) and Greek Drama by Barnet in Dent's Series.