The Tragedies of Euripides.

EURIPIDES; TRANSLATED BY ROBERT POTTER,.

$2,200.00

Item Number: 135391

London: J. Dodsley, 1783.

First translation of Euripides into English, translated by Robert Potter, from his own library. Octavo, two volumes, bound in contemporary leather, engraved frontispiece to volume I, list of subscribers. The translator’s own copy with his inscription, “From the Library of the Rev Robert Potter, M.A., Rector of Lowestoft from 1789 to 1804” to volume one of the front pastedown. Robert Potter was a poet and translator, completed his translation of Euripides in 1783. He established the convention of using blank verse for Greek hexameters and rhymed verse for choruses. In good condition. Rare and desirable, with exceptional provenance.

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.