OF EURIPIDES TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE BY W. FIELDING NEVINS, B.A. S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1870. 293. f. 23. INTRODUCTION. I HAVE CHOSEN this play for translation thinking it might be interesting to the general class of English readers. Euripides is pre-eminently the Greek poet of every-day life. Of him it may be truly said— Quidquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, cupido, He is more like Shakespeare than any other Greek poet, but with this difference: Shakespeare, as he chose, could be familiar or sublime; Euripides' talent and choice both seem to lie in the delineation of those feelings which are common to all men and all conditions of life. Unlike Sophocles, Euripides makes his characters speak more as men and women than kings, queens, &c. In Sophocles we admire the diction and plot, in Euripides the expression of feeling. He is so commonplace, if I may use the term, as at times to be almost comic; and yet he is, as he has been called, the |