Author Description

Richard Porson (1759-1808) published editions of Euripides' Hecuba (1779), Orestes (1798), The Phoenician Women (1799) and Medea (1801) as individual volumes. They were collected and published together in 1826, some years after Porson's death, as Euripidis Tragoediae Priores Quatuor, edited by James Scholefield (1789-1853). The volume contains Porson's reconstructed Greek text of the four tragedies accompanied by a detailed Latin commentary. The volume is introduced by a Latin preface and a supplement expounding Porson's theories on the metrical rules followed by Attic poets. These theories about metre lay behind many of the choices of readings found in the critical text of each play. Porson's critical texts of the plays influenced generations of scholars, and his commentaries were widely studied, both in Latin and in English translation, for over a century. The volume remains a key work of classical scholarship.