Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments, Volume 3: With Critical Notes, Commentary and Translation in English Prose

367 Pages·2010·7.23 MB·Greek

by  Richard Claverhouse Jebb (editor)

Cambridge Library CoLLeCtion
Books of enduring scholarly value
Classics
From the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, Latin and Greek were
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Eventually, just as nineteenth-century reforms of university curricula were
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Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments
Sir Richard Jebb’s seven-volume edition of the works of Sophocles, published
between 1883 and 1896, remains a landmark in Greek scholarship. Jebb
(1841–1905) was the most distinguished classicist of his generation, a
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and University Orator, subsequently
Professor of Greek at Glasgow University and finally Regius Professor of
Greek at Cambridge, and a Member of Parliament for the University. Each
volume of the edition contains an introductory essay, a metrical analysis,
an indication of the sources used to establish the text, and the ancient
summaries (‘arguments’) of the play. The text itself is given with a parallel
English translation, textual collation and explanatory notes, and an appendix
consisting of expanded notes on some of the textual issues. The quality of
Jebb’s work means that his editions are still widely consulted today. This
volume contains Antigone.
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Sophocles: The Plays
and Fragments
With Critical Notes, Commentary and
Translation in English Prose
Volume 3: The Antigone
Edited by Richard Claverhouse Jebb
CAMbRiDGE UNiVERSiTy PRESS
Cambridge, New york, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paolo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New york
www.cambridge.org
information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108008402
© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2010
This edition first published 1888
This digitally printed version 2010
iSbN 978-1-108-00840-2 Paperback
This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect
the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.
Cambridge University Press wishes to make clear that the book, unless originally published
by Cambridge, is not being republished by, in association or collaboration with, or
with the endorsement or approval of, the original publisher or its successors in title.
SOPHOCLES
THE PLAYS AND FRAGMENTS.
PART III.
THE ANTIGONE.
C. J. CLAY & SONS,
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
AVE MARIA LANE.
: DEIGHTON, BELL AND CO.
leipjig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
SOPHOCLES
THE PLAYS AND FRAGMENTS
WITH CRITICAL NOTES, COMMENTARY, AND
TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH PROSE,
R. C. JEBB,
DOCTOR OF LETTERS, CAMBRIDGE; HON. LL.D. EDINBURGH AND HARVARD;
PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW,
FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE AND PUBLIC ORATOR IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.
PART III.
THE ANTIGONE.
EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
CAMBRIDGE:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
1888
[All Rights reserved]
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AND SONS,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
PREFACE.
THE Antigone, one of the earliest of its author's extant
plays,—the Ajax alone having a rival claim in this respect,—
belongs by time, as by spirit, to the very centre of the age
of Pericles. At the probable date of its composition, the
Parthenon was slowly rising on the Acropolis, but was still
some years from completion; Pheidias, a few years older
than Sophocles, and then about sixty, was in the zenith of
his powers. The traditional, and best, reading of a verse in
the ode to Dionysus (v. 1119) suggests the fresh interest in
Southern Italy which Athenians had lately acquired by the
foundation of Thurii1, and recalls the days, then recent, when
one of the new colonists, Herodotus, had been in the society of
Sophocles. The figure of Antigone, as drawn by the poet, bears
the genuine impress of this glorious moment in the life of
Athens. It is not without reason that moderns have recognised
that figure as the noblest, and the most profoundly tender,
embodiment of woman's heroism which ancient literature can
show; but it is also distinctively a work of Greek art at the
highest. It is marked by the singleness of motive, and the
1 In his able work, The Age of Pericles (vol. 11. p. 132), Mr Watkiss Lloyd
makes an interesting remark with reference to the Antigone. Thurii stood near the
old site of Sybaris. Telys was despot of Sybaris when it was destroyed by Croton
{fire. 510 B.C.). Shortly before that event, he had put some Crotoniat envoys to
death, and exposed their unburied bodies before the walls, according to the historian
Phylarchus [circ. 210 B.C.) in Athen. p. 521 D. Callias, the soothsayer of Telys,
afterwards forsook him,—alarmed by the omens (Her. 5. 44). This story may well
have been brought into notoriety at Athens by the keen interest felt just then in
Thurii. Creon's part would thus suggest a striking reminiscence.