Le Théâtre des Grecs (1730)

This landmark edition of Greek tragedies in translation was re-edited, re-printed and augmented no less than five times between 1730 and 1789. The three volumes of the in-quarto first edition comprised Brumoy's translations of three tragedies by Sophocles (OEdipe Roi, Electre and Philoctète) and four by Euripides (Hippolyte, Alceste, Iphigénie à Aulis and Iphigénie en Tauride) along with three 'Dissertations' on Greek theatre and its relevance in the 18th century. The other tragedies as well as plays by Aeschylus and Aristophanes were summerised, commented on and compared to the tragedies translated in full. A 'pocket' edition came out two years later (6 volumes in-duodecimo) (Amsterdam: aux dépens de la Compagnie), followed by two parisian reprints, one in 1749 (Paris: Charles Nicolas Cochin), seven years after Brumoy's death, and the other in 1763 (Paris: Claude Jean-Baptiste Bauche), annotated by the Jesuit J. Fleuriau. Between 1784 and 1789, André-Charles Brotier and Guillaume de Rochefort undertook to complete Brumoy's Le Théâtre des Grecs with translations of every extant Greek tragedy. The thirteen in-octavo volumes of the new augmented edition comprised Prévost's 1782 translation of Euripides' complete plays (with corrections, minus Alceste, Hippolyte, and the two Iphigénie which Brumoy originally translated), Rochefort's Ajax, Les Trachiniennes, Antigone, OEdipe à Colonne (taken from his 1788 translation of Sophocles' complete plays); La Porte du Theil's Théâtre Complet d'Eschyle (published separately in 1795), and Brotier's complete Aristophanes (published independently as Théâtre d'Aristophane in 1889). Théâtre des Grecs was re-edited in 1820 with corrections and translated fragments from Menander and Euripides by Raoul-Rochette (sixteen volumes in-octavo). Source: BNF catalogue général, Pascal, J.-N. (2011) 'De la somme à l'encyclopédie. Parcours à travers un siècel d'édition du théâtre des grecs (1730-1826) Anabases Traditions et Réceptions de l'Antiquité 14, 113-131; Delcourt, Marie. Etude sur les traductions des tragiques grecs et latins en France depuis la Renaissance. 1925, p. 117, 171-179.