In recent years the general view of the theology and morality of Aeschylus which we still find expressed in the most popular handbooks of Greek tragedy has come under fire; fire which its defenders have so far been unwilling or unable to return. That Aeschylus was a bold religious innovator propounding advanced doctrines can no longer be assumed without argument; neither can one take for granted that his outlook on morality in general and on justice in particular was as advanced (...) as it was once usual to maintain. (shrink)

So many scholars nowadays believe that the final scenes of the Seven against Thebes as we have them have been considerably distorted and interpolated that some may not be aware that such an opinion was first expressed little more than ioo years ago. The first scholar to do so was A. Scholl, who afterwards recanted.

No project lay nearer to the heart of Eduard Fraenkel during his last years than that of promoting a reprint of the famous book Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles, by Tycho von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, which was first published as volume xxii of Philologische Untersuchungen in 1917. Tycho Wilamowitz, the son of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and the grandson of Theodor Mommsen, was killed fighting against the Russians near Ivangorod on the night of 14/15 October 1914. After his death the manuscript was prepared (...) for publication by his friend Ernst Kapp, who has explained in the foreword of the book the nature of his services. (shrink)

All commentators so far as I know have believed that lines 100–1 are simply a vague paraphrase for Jebb's translation may be taken to represent the usual view: ‘… is he threading the straits of the sea, or hath he found an abode on either continent?’ But this sense is not only poetially inept, but linguistically impossible.