*Up to this point the text of this Introduction closely follows the version printed in earlier volumes of the present translation. In those earlier volumes the remainder of this section concentrated on the Bacchae, but since that play is treated in more detail elsewhere, this section has been recast. Section IV is entirely new.

*By a gruesome error I stated in volume 3, p. xxxvi that Euripides would have been in his late fifties or older in 410 BC; this should have said his seventies. I apologize to any reader who may have been misled by an oversight which will, I trust, be corrected in later editions of the volume.