GREEK PLAYS IN MODERN TRANSLATION,

Edited by Dudley Fitts (two plays byRichmond Lattimore '26). Dial Press, 1947,pp. 596, $5.00.

In the summer of 1940 the present reviewer had the pleasure o£ spending an evening with Mr. Lattiinore and hearing him read the first hall: of his translation o£ The Trojan Women o£ Euripides, I he pleasure o£ that evening has been renewed by reading the entire play together with his translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus in this important anthology of Greek plays in translation. Mr. Latdmore is not unknown as a writer of original poetry and as translator he enjoys the distinction ol having given us a brilliant version of Pindar, the most difficult of Greek poets. In his present translations from Aeschylus and Euripides he has created a version which is true to the language and spirit of the original and, at the same: time, retains the authentic note of poetry. As Mr. Dudley Fitts, the editor of the volume, writes in the introduction, "a man reading.... Mr. Lattimore's superb rendering of the Agamemnon is reading faithful translation that is also poetry in its own right and in its own way."