Abstract

A few years ago, as part of an investigation of the authenticity of Prometheus Bound, I published figures for the occurrence of non-Aeschylean words in that play, as compared with two undisputedly Aeschylean plays and with one Sophoclean play The figures showed that Prom, contained a greater number of words not found elsewhere in the surviving plays of Aeschylus ; and also that, like Soph. Aj., but unlike the six undisputed plays of Aeschylus, it contained a relatively large number of Eigenwörter that occur more than once in the play, some of them quite common and familiar words. The discrepancy between Prom, and the two Aeschylean plays chosen for comparison was quite marked; and the high rate of repeated Eigenwörter for Soph. Aj. seemed to confirm that this criterion might be a good one for distinguishing unAeschylean characteristics in a non-Aeschylean play. But the sample was very small, and I was conscious that the criterion was somewhat arbitrary; I was therefore not very confident of the value of my findings.