the dialogue in verse, it was impossible to have the lyric parts in
any sort of prose, simply because the reader would then have felt an
intolerable incongruity. These parts have therefore been turned into
such familiar lyric measures as seemed at once possible and not
unsuitable. And where this method was found impracticable, as
sometimes in the _Commoi_, blank metres have again been used,--with
such liberties as seemed appropriate to the special purpose. The
writer's hope throughout has been, not indeed fully to transfuse the
poetry of Sophocles into another tongue, but to make the poet's
dramatic intention to be understood and felt by English readers. One
more such endeavour may possibly find acceptance at a time when many
causes have combined to awaken a fresh interest at once in dramatic
literature and in Hellenic studies.

The reader who is hitherto unacquainted with the Greek drama, should
be warned that the parts assigned to the 'Chorus' were often
distributed among its several members, who spoke or chanted, singly or
in groups, alternately or in succession. In some cases, but not in
all, _Ch. 1_, _Ch. 2_, &c., have been prefixed, to indicate such an
arrangement.

Footnotes:
1 [Sir John Seeley's] _Natural Religion_, p. 79.

2 Milton, _Samson Agonistes_, 164-169.

3 'Thou drawest awry
Just minds to wrong and ruin ...
... With resistless charm
Great Aphrodite mocks the might of men.'