r instance, a case such as
the following fragment of Euripides:

[Greek: ta men didakta manthano, ta d' eureta
zeto, ta d' eukta para theon etesamen.]

There is but little difficulty in turning this into English verse with
but slight resort to paraphrase:

I learn what may be taught;
I seek what may be sought;
My other wants I dare
To ask from Heaven in prayer,

But in a large majority of cases paraphrase is almost imposed on the
translator by the necessities of the case. Mr. William Cory's rendering
of the famous verses of Callimachus on his friend Heraclitus, which is
too well known to need quotation, has been justly admired as one of the
best and most poetic translations ever made from Greek, but it can
scarcely be called a translation in the sense in which that term is
employed by purists. It is a paraphrase.

It is needless to dwell on the difficulty of finding any suitable words
capable of being adapted to the necessities of English metre and rhythm
for the numerous and highly poetic adjectives in which the Greek
language abounds. It would tax the ingenuity of any translator to weave
into his verse expressions corresponding to the [Greek: halierkees
ochthai] (sea-constraining cliffs) or the [Greek: Mnamosynas
liparampykos] (Mnemosyne of the shining fillet) of Pindar. Neither is
the difficulty wholly confined to poetry. A good many epithets have from
time to time been applied to the Nile, but none so graphic or so
perfectly accurate as that employed by Herodotus,[43] who uses the
phrase [Greek: hupo tosoutou te potamou kai outo ergatikou]. The English
translation "that vast river, so constantly at work" is a poor
equivalent for the original Greek. German possesses to a greater degree
than any other modern language the word-coining power which was such a
marked characteristic of Greek, with the result that it offers special
difficulties to the translator of verse. Mr. Brandes[44] quotes the
following lines of the German poet Buecher:

Welche Heldenfreudigkeit der Liebe,
Welche Staerke muthigen Entsagens,
Welche himmlisch erdentschwungene Triebe,
Welche Gottbegeistrung des Ertragens!
Welche Sich-Erhebung, Sich-Erwiedrung,
Sich-Entaeussrung, voell'ge Hin-sich-gebung,
Seelenaustausch, Ineinanderlebung!

It is probable that these lines have never been translated into English
verse, and it is obvious that no translation, which did not largely
consist of par