ABSTRACT
The first two editions of this book opened with the assertion that the Supplices is the earliest work of European drama. It now seems possible – some would say certain – that this is not true; that the trilogy was first produced not in or near 492 b.c. but much later, probably in 464, after the Persae and the Septem. The belief in the earlier dating never rested, of course, on any documentary evidence but chiefly on considerations of style, some of which (as I record with some complacency) I had rejected as evidence of date: namely, that in this play the real protagonist is not an actor but the chorus, and that the second actor is handled rather clumsily. Nevertheless, the general impression of archaism, combined with what Bowra well called ‘the loaded magnificence of the style’, 1 seemed reason enough, in the absence of direct evidence, to think it an early play.
