The production of this book has been delayed by various causes, which require particular notice on the occasion of its appearance. It is well known that Sir Richard Jebb intended ultimately to include the Fragments in his edition of Sophocles; and in pursuance of this intention he delivered at Cambridge in the Michaelmas Term of 1895 a course of lectures on 132 selected fragments. The Ajax, the last to be published of the seven extant plays, appeared in the autumn of 1896; and it was then anticipated that the publication of the Fragments would be undertaken in due sequence. But the discovery of the Bacchylides papyrus drew the editor's attention in another direction, and, during the remainder of his life, the time which he could spare from public duties was mainly devoted to the preparation of a comprehensive edition of the Poems and Fragments of Bacchylides, which was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1905. Thus it fell out that, when after Sir Richard Jebb's death the task of completing the edition of Sophocles devolved upon Dr Walter Headlam, the material available for his use consisted solely of the notes prepared for the lectures already mentioned.

Once again misfortune attended the prosecution of the scheme, in consequence of the premature death of Dr Headlam before he was able to put into shape the preliminary labour which for a number of months he had expended upon the text. Towards the end of 1908 I was entrusted by the Syndics of the University Press with the papers of both scholars, in order that the work so long deferred might be brought to a conclusion.