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INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS

ON THE

ELOPEMENT OF HELEN,
THE DESCRIPTION OF HELEN WHEN FIRST SHE CAME TO TROY,
THE FALL OF TROY,
THE BURNING OF TROY,
THE SPEECH OF CASSANDRA,
ELECTRA TENDING THE SICK COUCH OF ORESTES,
THE SCENE FROM THE EUMENIDES.

These Seven Pieces, consisting, with a single exception, of Translations from Greek Plays, have been arranged so as to illustrate successive portions of those Legends respecting the Calamities of the House of Atreus, and "the Tale of Troy divine," from which the Tragic Poets of Athens drew the subjects of so many of their Dramas. Among the leading ideas which the Greek Tragedians, and especially Æschylus, most constantly and earnestly inculcated, is the doctrine, that sooner or later the unerring vengeance of Heaven falls upon offenders, involving States in the guilt of their Chiefs, and visiting on after-generations the crimes of their remote ancestry. Moreover, in these writers the Supreme Power is represented as jealous of excessive prosperity in mortals.

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