Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, was born at Colonus, a village about one mile to the north-west of Athens, in the year 495 B.C. This date makes him thirty years younger than Æschylus, and fifteen older than Euripides. His father was a man of substance, capable of giving the best education, intellectual and physical, to his son; and the education in vogue at Athens when Sophocles was a boy was that which Aristophanes praised so glowingly in the speeches of the Dikaios Logos. Therefore, in the case of this most perfect poet, the best conditions of training (t??f?) were added to the advantages of nature (f?s??), and these two essential elements of a noble manhood, upon which the theorists of Greece loved to speculate, were realized by him conjointly in felicitous completeness. Early in life Sophocles showed that nature had endowed him with personal qualities peculiarly capable of conferring lustre on a Greek artist of the highest type. He was exceedingly beautiful and well-formed, and so accomplished in music and gymnastics that he gained public prizes in both these branches of a Greek boy's education. His physical grace and skill in dancing caused him to be chosen, in his sixteenth year, to lead the choir in celebration of the victory of Salamis. According to Athenian custom, he appeared on this occasion naked, crowned, and holding in his hand a lyre:

These facts are not unimportant, for no Greek poet was more thoroughly, consistently, and practically e?f???, according to the comprehensive meaning of that term, which denotes physical, as well as moral and intellectual, distinction. The art of Sophocles is distinguished above all things by its faultless symmetry, its grace and rhythm, and harmonious equipoise of strength and beauty. In his own person the poet realized the ideal combination of varied excellences which his tragedies exhibit. The artist and the man were one in Sophocles. In his healthful youth and sober manhood, no less than in his serene poetry, he exhibited the pure and tempered virtues of e?f??a. We cannot but think of him as specially created to represent Greek art in its most refined and exquisitely balanced perfection. It is impossible to imagine a more plastic nature, a genius more adapted to its special function, more fittingly provided with all things needful to its full development, born at a happier moment in the history of the world, and more nobly endowed with physical qualities suited to its intellectual capacity.

In 468 B.C. Sophocles first appeared as a tragic poet in contest with Æschylus. The advent of the consummate artist was both auspicious and dramatic. His fame, as a gloriously endowed youth, had been spread far and wide. The supremacy of his mighty predecessor remained as yet unchallenged. Therefore the day on which they met in rivalry was a great national occasion. Party feeling ran so high that Apsephion, the Archon Eponymus, who had to name the judges, chose no meaner umpires than the general Cimon and his colleagues, just returned from Scyros, bringing with them the bones of the Attic hero Theseus. Their dignity and their recent absence from the city were supposed to render them fair critics in a matter of such moment. Cimon awarded the victory to Sophocles. It is greatly to be regretted that we have lost the tragedies which were exhibited on this occasion; we do not know, indeed, with any certainty, their titles. As Welcker has remarked, the judges were called to decide, not so much between two poets as between two styles of tragedy; and if Plutarch's assertion, that Æschylus retired to Sicily in consequence of the verdict given against him, be well founded, we may also believe that two rival policies in the city were opposed, two types of national character in collision. Æschylus belonged to the old order. Sophocles was essentially a man of the new age, of the age of Pericles and Pheidias and Thucydides. The incomparable intellectual qualities of the Athenians of that brief blossom-time have so far dazzled modern critics that we have come to identify their spirit with the spirit itself of the Greek race. Undoubtedly the glories of Hellas, her special geist in art and thought and state-craft, attained at that moment to maturity through the felicitous combination of external circumstances, and through the prodigious mental greatness of the men who made Athens so splendid and so powerful. Yet we must not forget that Themistocles preceded Pericles, while Cleon followed after; that Herodotus came before Thucydides, and that Aristotle, at a later date, philosophized on history; that Æschylus and Euripides have each a shrine in the same temple with Sophocles. And all these men, whose names are notes of differences deep and wide, were Greeks, almost contemporaneous. The later and the earlier groups in this triple series are, perhaps, even more illustrative of Greece at large; while the Periclean trio represent Athenian society, in a special and narrow sense, at its most luminous and brilliant, most isolated and artificial, most self-centred and consummate point of a?t???e?a or internal adequacy. Sophocles was the poet of this transient phase of Attic culture, unexampled in the history of the world for its clear and flawless character, its purity of intellectual type, its absolute clairvoyance, and its plenitude of powers matured, but unimpaired, by use.

From the date 468 to the year of his death, at the age of ninety, Sophocles composed one hundred and thirteen plays. In twenty contests he gained the first prize; he never fell below the second place. After Æschylus he only met one formidable rival, Euripides. What we know about his life is closely connected with the history of his works. In 440 B.C., after the production of the Antigone, he was chosen, on account of his political wisdom, as one of the generals associated with Pericles in the expedition to Samos. But Sophocles was not, like Æschylus, a soldier; nor was he in any sense a man of action. The stories told about his military service turn wholly upon his genial temperament, serene spirits, unaffected modesty, and pleasure-loving personality. So great, however, was the esteem in which his character for wisdom and moderation was held by his fellow-citizens that they elected him in 413 B.C. one of the ten commissioners of public safety, or p???????, after the failure of the Syracusan expedition. In this capacity he gave his assent to the formation of the governing council of the Four Hundred two years later, thus voting away the constitutional liberties of Athens. It is recorded that he said this measure was not a good one, but the best under bad circumstances. It should, however, be said that doubt has been thrown over this part of the poet's career; it is not certain that the Sophocles in question was in truth the author of Antigone.

One of the best-authenticated and best-known episodes in the life of Sophocles is connected with the Œdipus ColoneÜs. As an old man, he had to meet a lawsuit brought against him by his legitimate son Iophon, who accused him of wishing to alienate his property to the child of his natural son Ariston. This boy, called Sophocles, was the darling of his later years. The poet was arraigned before a jury of his tribe, and the plea set up by Iophon consisted of an accusation of senile incapacity. The poet, preserving his habitual calmness, recited the famous chorus which contains the praises of Colonus. Whereupon the judges rose and conducted him with honor to his house, refusing for a moment to consider so frivolous and unwarranted a charge.

Personally Sophocles was renowned for his geniality and equability of temper; e?????? ?? ????d' e?????? d' ??e? is the terse and emphatic description of his character by Aristophanes. That he was not averse to pleasures of the sense is proved by evidence as good as that on which such biographical details of the ancients generally rest. To slur these stories over because they offend modern notions of propriety is feeble, though, of course, it is always open to the critic to call in question the authorities; and in this particular instance the witnesses are far from clear. The point, however, to be remembered is that, supposing them true to fact, Sophocles would himself have smiled at such unphilosophical partisanship as seeks to overthrow them in the interest of his reputation. That a poet, distinguished for his physical beauty, should refrain from sensual enjoyments in the flower of his age is not a Greek, but a Christian notion. Such abstinence would have indicated in Sophocles mere want of inclination. The words of Pindar are here much to the purpose:

All turned upon the ?at? ?a????, and no one had surely a better sense of the ?a????, the proper time and season for all things, than Sophocles. He showed his moderation—which quality, not total abstinence, was virtue in such matters for the Greeks—by knowing how to use his passions, and when to refrain from their indulgence. The whole matter is summed up in this passage from the Republic of Plato: "How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when, in answer to the question, 'How does love suit with age, Sophocles—are you still the man you were?' 'Peace,' he replied; 'most gladly have I escaped from that, and I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.'"

A more serious defect in the character of Sophocles is implied in the hint given by Aristophanes, that he was too fond of money. The same charge was brought against many Greek poets. We may account for it by remembering that the increased splendor of Athenian life, and the luxuriously refined tastes of the tragedian, must have tempted him to do what the Greeks very much disliked—make profit by the offspring of his brain. To modern notions nothing can sound stranger than the invectives of the philosophers against sophists who sold their wisdom; it can only be paralleled by their deeply rooted misconceptions about interest on capital, which even Aristotle regarded as unnatural and criminal. That Sophocles was in any deeper sense avaricious or miserly we cannot believe: it would contradict the whole tenor of the tales about his geniality and kindness.

Unlike Æschylus and Euripides, Sophocles never quitted Athens, except on military service. He lived and wrote there through his long career of laborious devotion to the highest art. We have, therefore, every right, on this count also, to accept his tragedies as the purest mirror of the Athenian mind at its most brilliant period. Athens, in the age of Pericles, was adequate to the social and intellectual requirements of her greatest sons; and a poet whose earliest memories were connected with Salamis may well have felt that even the hardships of the Peloponnesian war were easier to bear within the sacred walls of the city than exile under the most favorable conditions. No other centre of so much social and political activity existed. Athens was the Paris of Greece, and Sophocles and Socrates were the Parisians of Athens. At the same time the stirring events of his own lifetime do not appear to have disturbed the tranquillity of Sophocles. True to his destiny, he remained an artist; and to this immersion in his special work he owed the happiness which Phrynichus recorded in these famous lines:

The change effected by Sophocles in tragedy tended to mature the drama as a work of pure art, and to free it further from the Dionysiac traditions. He broke up the trilogy into separate plays, exhibiting three tragedies and a satyric drama, like Æschylus before him, but undoing the link by which they were connected, so that he was able to make each an independent poem. He added a third actor, and enlarged the number of the chorus, while he limited its function as a motive force in the drama. These innovations had the effect of reducing the scale upon which Æschylus had planned his tragedies, and afforded opportunities for the elaboration of detail. It was more easy for Sophocles than it had been for Æschylus to exhibit play of character through the interaction of the dramatis personÆ. Tragedy left the remote and mystic sphere of Æschylean theosophy, and confined herself to purely human arguments. Attention was concentrated on the dialogue, in which the passions of men in action were displayed. The dithyrambic element was lost; the choric odes providing a relief from violent excitement, instead of embodying the very soul and spirit of the poet's teaching. While limiting the activity of the chorus, Sophocles did not, like Euripides, proceed to disconnect it from the tragic interest, or pay less attention than his predecessors to its songs. On the contrary, his choric interludes are models of perfection in this style of lyric poetry, while their subject-matter is invariably connected with the chief concerns and moral lessons of the drama.

The extant plays of Sophocles are all later than the year 440 B.C. They may safely be said to belong to the period of his finished style; or, in the language of art criticism, to his third manner. What this means will appear from a valuable passage in Plutarch: "Sophocles used to say that, when he had put aside the tragic pomp of Æschylus, and then the harsh and artificial manner of his own elaborate style, he arrived in the third place at a form of speech which is best suited to portray the characters of men, and is the most excellent." Thus it would appear that Sophocles had begun his career as a dramatist by the study of the language of Æschylus; finding that too turgid and emphatic, he had fallen into affectation and refinement, and finally had struck the just medium between the rugged majesty of his master and the mannered elegance which was in vogue among the sophists. The result was that peculiar mixture of grace, dignity, and natural eloquence which scholars know as Sophoclean. It is interesting to notice that the first among the extant tragedies of Sophocles, the Antigone, is more remarkable for studied phrase and verbal subtleties than his later plays. The Œdipus ColoneÜs, which is the last of the whole series, exhibits the style of the poet in its perfect purity and freedom. A curious critical passage in Plutarch seems to indicate that the ancients themselves observed the occasional euphuism of the Sophoclean style as a blemish. It runs thus: ??a?t? d' ?? t?? ????????? ?? t?? ?p??es?? ... ????p?d?? d? t?? ?a????, S?f??????? d? t?? ???a??a?.[131] "One might censure the garrulity of Euripides and the inequality of Sophocles." I am not, however, certain whether this or "linguistic irregularity" is the right meaning of the word ???a??a. Another censure, passed by Longinus upon Sophocles, points out a defect which is the very last to be observed in any of the extant tragedies: "Pindar and Sophocles at one time burn everything before them in their fiery flight, but often strangely lack the flame of inspiration, and fall most grievously to earth."[132] Then he adds: "Certainly no wise critic would value all the plays of Ion put together at the same rate as the single tragedy of Œdipus." The importance of these critiques is to prove that the ancients regarded Sophocles as an unequal, and in some respects a censurable poet, whence we may infer that only masterpieces belonging to his later style have been preserved to us, since nothing, to a modern student, is more obvious than the uniform sustained perfection of our seven inestimably precious tragedies. A certain tameness in the TrachiniÆ, and a relaxation of dramatic interest in the last act of the Ajax, are all the faults it is possible to find with Sophocles.

What Sophocles is reported to have said about his style will apply to his whole art. The great achievement of Sophocles was to introduce regularity of proportion, moderation of tone, and proper balance into tragedy. The Greek phrases s?et??a, s?f??s???, et???t??—proportion of parts, self-restraint, and moderation—sum up the qualities of his drama when compared with that of Æschylus. Æschylus rough-hewed like a Cyclops, but he could not at the same time finish like Praxiteles. What the truth of this saying is, I have already tried to show.[133] Sophocles attempted neither Cyclopean nor Praxitelean work. He attained to the perfection of Pheidias. Thus we miss in his tragedies the colossal scale and terrible effects of Æschylean art. His plays are not so striking at first sight, because it was his aim to put all the parts of his composition in their proper places, and to produce a harmony which should not agitate or startle, but which upon due meditation should be found complete. The s?f??s???, or moderation, exhibited in all his work, implies by its very nature the sacrifice of something—the sacrifice of passion and impetuosity to higher laws of equability and temper. So perfect is the beauty of Sophocles, that, as in the case of Raphael or Mozart, it seems to conceal the strength and fire which animate his art.

Aristotle, in the Poetics, observes that "Poetry is the proper affair of either enthusiastic or artistic natures," e?f???? ? a?????. Now Æschylus exactly answers to the notion of the a?????, while Sophocles corresponds to that of the e?f???. To this distinction between the two types of genius we may refer the partiality of Aristotle for the younger dramatist. The work of the artistic poet is more instructive and offers more matter for profitable analysis, for precept and example, than that of the divinely inspired enthusiast. Where creative intelligence has been used consciously and effectively to a certain end, critical intelligence can follow. It is clear that in the Poetics, which we may regard as a practical text-book for students, the philosopher is using the tragedy of Sophocles, and in particular the Œdipus Tyrannus, as the standard of perfection. Whatever he has to say about the handling of character, the treatment of the fable, the ethics of the drama, the catastrophes and recognitions (pe??p?te?a? and ??a?????se??), that absorbed so large a part of his dramatic analysis, he points by references to Œdipus. In Sophocles Aristotle found the es?t??, or intermediate quality, between two extremes, which, in Æsthetics as in morals, seemed to his Greek mind most excellent. Consequently he notes all deflections from the Sophoclean norm as faulty; and, since in his day Euripides led the taste of the Athenians, he frequently shows how tragic art had suffered by a deviation from the principles Sophocles illustrated. The chief point on which he insists is the morality of the drama. "The tragedies of the younger poets for the most part are unethical." With his use of the word ???? we must be careful not to confound the modern notion of morality: ???? means, indeed, with Aristotle as with us, the determination of the character to goodness or badness; but it also includes considerations of what is appropriate to sex and quality and circumstance in the persons of a work of fiction. The best modern equivalent for ????, therefore, is character. Since tragedy is an imitation of men acting according to their character, ????, in this wide sense, is the whole stuff of the dramatist, and a proper command of ???? implies real knowledge of mankind. Therefore, when Aristotle accuses the tragedies of Euripides and his school of being "unethical," he does not merely mean that they were prejudicial to good manners, but also that they were false to human nature, unscientific, and therefore inartistic; exceptional or morbid, wavering in their conception and unequal in their execution. The truly great poet, Sophocles, shows his artistic tact and taste by only selecting such characters as are suitable to tragedy. He depicts men, but men of heroic mould, men as they ought to be.[134] When Sophocles said that he portrayed men as tragedy required them to be, whereas Euripides drew them just as they are, he indicated the real solution of the tragic problem.[135] The point here raised by Aristotle has an intimate connection with its whole theory of tragedy. Tragic poetry must purify the passions of fear and pity; in other words, it must teach men not to fear when fear is vile, or to pity where pity would be thrown away. By exhibiting a spectacle that may excite the fear of really dreadful calamity, and compassion for truly terrible misfortune, tragedy exalts the soul above the ordinary miseries of life, and nerves it to face the darker evils to which humanity in its blindness, sin, and self-pride is exposed. Now this lesson cannot be taught by drawing men as they exist around us. That method drags the mind back to the trivialities of every day.

What Aristotle says about the ??? of tragedy may be applied to point the differences between Sophocles and Æschylus. He has not himself drawn the comparison; but it is clear that, as Euripides deflects on the one hand from the purely ethical standard, so also does Æschylus upon the other. Æschylus keeps us in the high and mystic region of religious fatalism. Sophocles transports us into the more human region of morality. His problem is to exhibit the complexities of life—"whatsoever has passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and reflexes of man's thoughts from within"—and to set forth men of noble mental stature acting in subjection to the laws appointed for the order of the world. His men and women are like ourselves, only larger and better in so far as they are simpler and more beautiful. Like the characters of Æschylus, they suffer for their sins; but we feel that the justice that condemns them is less mystic in its operation, more capable of philosophical analysis and scientific demonstration.

It must not be thought, therefore, that Sophocles is less religious than Æschylus. On the contrary, he shows how the will and passion of men are inevitably and invariably related to divine justice. Human affairs can only be understood by reference to the deity; for the decrees of Zeus, or of that power which is above Zeus, and which he also obeys, give their moral complexion to the motives and the acts of men. Yet, while Æschylus brings his theosophy in detail prominently forward, Sophocles prefers to maintain a sense of the divine background. He spiritualizes religion, while he makes it more indefinite. By the same process it is rendered more impregnable within its stronghold of the human heart and reason, less exposed to the attacks of logic or the changes of opinion. The keynote to his tragic morality is found in these two passages:[136]

The second is like unto the first in spirit:

The religious instinct in Sophocles has made a long step towards independence since the days of Æschylus. No more upon Olympus or at Delphi alone will the Greek poet worship. He has learned that "God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." The voice that speaks within him is the deity he recognizes. At the same time the Chorus of the Œdipus, part of which has just been quoted, and that of the Antigone, which bewails the old doom of the house of Labdacus, might, but for their greater calmness, have been written by Æschylus. The moral doctrine of Greek tragedy has not been changed, but humanized. We have got rid in a great measure of ancient demons, and brass-footed Furies, and the greed of earth for blood in recompense for blood. We have passed, as it were, from the shadow cast by the sun into the sunlight itself. And, in consequence of this transfiguration, the morality of Sophocles is imperishable. "Not of to-day nor of yesterday, but fixed from everlasting," are his laws. We may all learn of him now, as when Antigone first stood before the throne of Creon on the Attic stage. The deep insight into human life, that most precious gift of the Greek genius, which produced their greatest contributions to the education of the world, is in Sophocles obscured no longer by mystical mythology and local superstition. His wisdom is the common heritage of human nature.

The moral judgments of Æschylus were severe. Those of Sophocles, implicit in his tragic situations rather than expressed, are not less firm; but he seems to feel a more tender pity for humanity in its weakness and its blindness. The philosophy of life, profoundly sad upon the one side, but cheerful on the other, which draws lessons of sobriety and tempered joy from the consideration of human impotence and ignorance, is truly Greek. We find it nowhere more strongly set forth than by Sophocles and Aristophanes—by the comic poet in the Parabasis of the Birds, and in the songs of the MystÆ in the Frogs, by the tragic poet in his choruses, and also in what is called his irony.

All that has been said about the art of Sophocles up to this point has tended to establish one position. His innate and unerring tact, his sense of harmony and measure, produced at Athens a new style of drama, distinguished for finish of language, for careful elaboration of motives, for sharp and delicate character-drawing, and for balance of parts. If we do not find in Sophocles anything to match the passion of Cassandra, the cry of Agamemnon, or the opening of the Eumenides, there is yet in his plays a combination of quite sufficient boldness and inventiveness with more exquisite workmanship than Æschylus could give. The breadth of the whole is not lost through the minuteness of the details. Unlike Æschylus, Sophocles opens very quietly, with conversations, for the most part, which reveal the characters of the chief persons or explain the situation. The passion grows with the development of the plot, and it is only when the play is finished that justice can be done to any separate part. Each of the seven tragedies presents one person, who dominates the drama, and in whom its interest is principally concentrated. Œdipus in his two plays, Antigone in hers, Philoctetes in his, Deianeira in the TrachiniÆ, Electra in her play, and Ajax in his, stand forth in powerful and prominent relief. Then come figures on the second plane, no less accurately conceived and conscientiously delineated, but used with a view to supporting the chief personages, and educing their decisive action.[137] A rÔle of this kind is given to Orestes in the Electra, to Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes, to Teucer in the Ajax, to Creon in the Antigone, to Teiresias in the Œdipus. Clytemnestra and Tecmessa, Odysseus and Theseus, play similar parts. Again, there is a third plane for characters still more subordinate, but no less artistically important, such as Jocasta, Ismene, Chrysothemis, Ægisthus, Hyllus. Then follow the numerous accessory persons—instrumenta dramatis—the guardian of the corpse of Polyneices, the shepherd of Laius, the tutor of Orestes, messengers and servants, all of whom receive their special physiognomy from the great master. In this way Sophocles made true Æsthetic use of the three agonistÆ. The principle on which these parts were distributed in his tragedies will be found to have deep and subtle analogies with the laws of bass-relief in sculpture. Poetry, however, being a far more independent art than sculpture, may employ a greater multiplicity of parts, and produce a far more complex effect than can be realized in bass-relief.

The Philoctetes might be selected as an example of the power in handling motives possessed by Sophocles. The amount of interest he has concentrated by a careful manipulation of one point—the contest for the bow of Herakles—upon so slight and stationary a plot, is truly wonderful. Not less admirable is the contrast between the youthful generosity of Neoptolemus and the worldly wisdom of Odysseus—the young man pliant at first to the crafty persuasions of the elder, but restored to his sense of honor by the compassion which Philoctetes stirs, and by the trust he places in him. Nothing more beautiful can be conceived than this moral revolution in the character of Neoptolemus. It suited the fine taste and exquisite skill of Sophocles not only to exhibit changes in circumstance and character, but also to compel a change of sympathy and of opinion in his audience. Thus, in the Ajax, he contrives to reverse the whole situation, by showing in the end Ajax sublime and Odysseus generous, though at first the one seemed sunk below humanity, and the other hateful in his vulgar scorn of a fallen rival. The art which works out psychological problems of this subtle kind, and which invests a plot like that of the Philoctetes with intense interest, is very far removed from the method of Æschylus. The difference between the two styles may, however, be appreciated best by a comparison of the Electra with the ChoËphoroe. In these two tragedies very nearly the same motives are employed; but what was simple and straightforward in Æschylus becomes complex and involved in Sophocles. Instead of Orestes telling the tale of his own death, we have the narrative of his tutor, confirmed and ratified by himself in person. Instead of Electra at once recognizing her brother, she is brought at first to the verge of despair by hearing of his death. Then Chrysothemis informs her of the lock of hair. This, however, cannot reassure Electra in the face of the tutor's message. So the situation is admirably protracted. Æschylus misses all that is gained for the development of character by the resolve of Electra, stung to desperation by her brother's death, to murder Ægisthus, and by the contrast between her single-hearted daring and the feebler acquiescent temper of Chrysothemis. Also the peripeteia whereby Electra is made to bewail the urn of Orestes, and then to discover him alive before her, is a stroke of supreme art which was missed in the ChoËphoroe. The pathos of the situation is almost too heart-rending; at one moment its intensity verges upon discord; but the resolution of the discord comes in that long cadence of triumphant harmony when the anagnorisis at length arrives. Nor is the ingenuity of Sophocles, in continuing and sustaining the interest of this one set of motives, yet exhausted. While the brother and sister are rejoicing together, the action waits, and every moment becomes more critical, until at last the tutor reappears and warns them of their perilous imprudence. To take another point: the dream of Clytemnestra is more mysterious and doubtful in the Electra than in the ChoËphoroe; while her appearance on the stage at the beginning of the play, her arguments with Electra, her guarded prayers to Phoebus, and her reception of the tutor's message, enable Sophocles fully to develop his conception of her character. On the other hand, Sophocles has sacrificed the most brilliant features of the ChoËphoroe—the dreadful scene of Clytemnestra's death, than which there is nothing more passionately piteous and spirit-quelling in all tragedy, and the descent of his mother's furies on the murderer. It was the object of Sophocles not so much to dwell upon the action of Orestes as to exhibit the character of Electra; therefore, at the supreme moment, when the cry of the queen is heard within the palace, he shows his heroine tremendous in her righteous hatred and implacable desire for vengeance. Such complete and exhaustive elaboration of motives, characters, and situations, as forms the chief artistic merit of the Electra, would, perhaps, have been out of place in the ChoËphoroe, which was only the second play in a trilogy, and had, therefore, to be simple and stationary, according to the principles of Æschylean art. The character of Clytemnestra, for example, needed no development, seeing that she had taken the first part in the Agamemnon. Again, it was necessary for Æschylus to insist upon the action of Orestes more than Sophocles was forced to do, in order that the climax of the ChoËphoroe might produce the subject of the Eumenides. In comparing Sophocles with his predecessor, we must never forget that we are comparing single plays with trilogies. This does not, however, make the Sophoclean mastery of motives and of plots the less admirable; it only fixes our attention on the real nature of the innovations adopted by the younger dramatist.

Another instance of the art wherewith Sophocles prepared a tragic situation, and graduated all the motives which should conduct the action to a final point, may be selected from the Œdipus ColoneÜs. It was necessary to describe the death of Œdipus, since the fable selected for treatment precluded anything approaching to a presentation on the stage of this supreme event. Œdipus is bound to die alone mysteriously, delivering his secret first in solitude to Theseus. A Messenger's speech was, therefore, imperatively demanded, and to render that the climax of the drama taxed all the resources of the poet. First comes thunder, the acknowledged signal of the end. Then the speech of Œdipus, who says that now, though blind, he will direct his steps unhelped. Theseus is to follow and to learn. Œdipus rises from his seat; his daughters and the king attend him. They quit the stage, and the Chorus is left alone to sing. Then comes the Messenger, and gives the sublime narration of his disappearance. We hear the voice that called—

We see the old man descending the mysterious stairs, Antigone and Ismene grouped above, and last, the kneeling king, who shrouds his eyes before a sight intolerable. All this, as in a picture, passes before our imagination. To convey the desired effect otherwise than by a narrative would have been impossible, and the narrative, owing to the expectation previously raised, is adequate.

To compare Sophocles with Euripides, after having said so much about the points of contrast between him and Æschylus, and to determine how much he may have owed in his later plays to the influence of the younger poet, would be an interesting exercise of criticism. That, however, belongs rather to an essay dealing directly with the third Greek dramatist in detail. It is sufficient here to notice a few points in which Sophocles seems to have prepared the way for Euripides. In the first place he developed the part of the Messenger, and made far more of picturesque description than Æschylus had done. Then, again, his openings suggested the device of the prologue by their abandonment of the eminently scenic effects with which Æschylus preferred to introduce a drama. The separation of the Chorus from the action was another point in which Sophocles led onward to Euripides. So also was the device of the deus ex machin in the Philoctetes, unless, indeed, we are to regard this as an invention adopted from Euripides.[138] Nor, in this connection, is it insignificant that Aristotle credits Sophocles with the invention of s??????af?a, or scene-painting. The abuse of scenical resources to the detriment of real dramatic unity and solidity was one of the chief defects of Euripidean art.

It may here be noticed that Sophocles in the TrachiniÆ took up the theme of love as a main motive for a drama. By doing so he broke ground in a region that had been avoided, as far as we can judge from extant plays, by Æschylus, and in which Euripides was destined to achieve his greatest triumphs. It is, indeed, difficult to decide the question of precedence between Sophocles and Euripides in this matter. Except on this account the TrachiniÆ is the least interesting of his tragedies. The whole play seems like a somewhat dull, though conscientious, handling of a fable in which the poet took but a slight interest. Compared with Medea or with PhÆdra, Deianeira is tame and lifeless. She makes one fatal and foolish mistake through jealousy, and all is over. Hyllus, too, is a mere silhouette, while the contention between him and Herakles about the marriage with Iole, at the end, is frigid. Here, if anywhere, we detect the force of the critique quoted above from Longinus. At the same time the TrachiniÆ offers many points of interest to the student of Greek sentiment. The phrase ta?t?? ? de???? ?e??? is significant, as expressing the pain and forceful energy which the Greeks attributed to passion; nor is the contrast drawn by Deianeira between p?s?? and ???? without value. The motive used by Sophocles in this tragedy was developed by Euripides with a comprehension so far deeper, and with a fulness so far more satisfactory, that the Hippolytus and the Medea must always take rank above it.

The deepest and most decisive quality in which the tragic art of Sophocles resembled that of Euripides is rhetoric. Sophocles was the first to give its full value to dramatic casuistry, to introduce sophistic altercations, and to set forth all that could be well said in support of a poor argument. A passage on this subject may be quoted from "Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe:"[139]

The special point selected by Goethe for criticism is the celebrated last speech of Antigone:

In truth this last speech of Antigone is exactly what the severer critics of Euripides would have selected in a play of his for condemnation. It exhibits, after all allowance for peculiar Greek sentiments, the rhetorical development of a sophistic thesis. In the simple thought there is pathos. But its elaboration makes it frigid.

Sophocles, though he made the subsequent method of Euripides not only possible but natural by the law of progressive evolution, was very far indeed from disintegrating the tragic structure as Euripides was destined to do. The deus ex machin of the Philoctetes, for example, was only employed because there was absolutely no other way to solve the situation. Rhetoric and wrangling matches were never introduced for their own sake. The choric odes did not degenerate into mere musical interludes. Description and narration in no case took the place of action, by substituting pictures to the ear under conditions where true art required dramatic presentation. It remains the everlasting glory of Sophocles that he realized the mean between Æschylus and Euripides, sacrificing for the sake of his ideal the passionate and enthusiastic extremes of the older dramatist, without imperilling the fabric of Greek tragedy by the suicidal innovations of Euripides. He and he alone knew how to use all forms of art, to express all motives, and to hazard all varieties, with the single purpose of maintaining artistic unity.

What remains to be said about Sophocles, and in particular about his delineation of character, may be introduced in the course of an analysis of his tragedies upon the tale of Thebes.

These three plays do not, like the three plays of Æschylus upon the tale of the AtridÆ, form a trilogy. That is to say, they are not so connected in subject as to form one continued series. A drama, for example, similar to the Seven against Thebes might be interpolated between the Œdipus ColoneÜs and Antigone; while the Œdipus Tyrannus might have been followed by a tragedy upon the subject of the king's expulsion from Thebes. Nor, again, are they artistically designed as a trilogy. There is no change of form, suggesting the beginning, middle, and ending of a calculated work of art, like that which we notice in the Oresteia. Moreover, the protagonist is absent from the Antigone, and, therefore, to call the three plays an Œdipodeia is impossible. Finally, they were composed at different periods: the Antigone is the first extant tragedy of Sophocles; the Œdipus ColoneÜs is the last.

So much it was necessary to premise in order to avoid the imputation of having treated the three masterpieces of Sophocles as in any true sense a trilogy. The temptation to do so is at first sight almost irresistible; for they are written on the same legend, and the same characters are throughout sustained with firmness, proving that, though Sophocles composed the last play of the series first and the second last of all, he had conceived them in his brain before he undertook to work them out in detail. Or, if this assumption seem unwarranted, we may at least affirm with certainty that at some point of time anterior to the production of the Antigone he had subjected the whole legend of the house of Laius to his plastic imagination, and had given it coherence in his mind. In other words, it was impossible for him to change his point of view about this mythus in the same way as Euripides when he handled that of Helen according to two different versions. It so happens, moreover, that the climax of the Œdipus Tyrannus prepares us, by the revolution in the character of the protagonist, for the Œdipus ColoneÜs; while the last act of the second tragedy, by the prominence given to Antigone, serves as a prelude to the third and final play.

The house of Laius was scarcely less famous among the Greeks than the house of Atreus for its overwhelming disasters, the consequences of an awful curse which rested on the family. Laius, the son of Labdacus, was supposed to have introduced an unnatural vice into Hellas; and from this first crime sprang all the subsequent disasters of his progeny. He took in marriage Jocasta, the sister of Prince Creon, and swayed the State of Thebes. To him an oracle was given that a son of his by Jocasta should kill him. Yet he did not therefore, in obedience to the divine warning, put away his wife or live in chastity. A boy was born to the royal pair, who gave him to one of their shepherds, after piercing his feet and tying them together, and bound the hind to expose him on CithÆron. Thus they hoped to defeat the will of heaven. The shepherd, moved by pity, saved the baby's life and handed him over to a friend of his, who used to feed his master's sheep upon the same hill-pastures. This man carried the infant, named Œdipus because of his wounded and swollen feet, to Polybus of Corinth, a childless king, who brought him up as his own son. Œdipus when he had grown to manhood, was taunted with his obscure birth by his comrades in Corinth. Thereupon he journeyed alone to Delphi to make inquiry concerning his parentage from Phoebus. Phoebus told him naught thereof, but bade him take heed lest he slay his father and wed his mother. Œdipus, deeming that Polybus was his father and Merope his mother, determined to return to Corinth no more. At that time Thebes was troubled with the visitation of the Sphinx, and no man might rede her riddle. Œdipus, passing through the Theban land, was met in a narrow path, where three roads joined, by an old man on a chariot attended by servants. The old man spoke rudely to him, commanding him to make way for his horses, and one of the servants struck him. Whereupon Œdipus slew the master, knowing not that he was his own father, Laius, and the men too, all but one, who fled. Thereafter he passed on to Thebes, and solved that riddle of the Sphinx, and the Thebans made him their king, and gave him the lady Jocasta to be his wife. Thus were both the oracles accomplished, and yet Œdipus and Jocasta remained ignorant of their doom. For many years Œdipus ruled Thebes like a great and warlike prince; and to him and Jocasta in wedlock were born two daughters and two sons—Antigone and Ismene, Polyneices and Eteocles. These grew to youth, and a seeming calm of fair weather and prosperity abode upon their house. Yet the gods were mindful of the abomination, and in course of time a plague was sent, which ravaged the people of Thebes. Sorely pressed by calamity, Œdipus sent his brother-in-law Creon to inquire at Delphi of the causes of the plague and of the means of staying it. This brings us to the opening of Œdipus the King. At this point something should be said about the mythus itself and about the position of the several persons at the commencement of the tragedy.

The fable is obviously one of those which Max MÜller and his school describe as solar. Œdipus, who slays his father and weds his mother, may stand for the Sun, who slays the Night and is married to the Dawn. We know how all legends can fall into this mould, and how easy it is to clap the Dawn on to the end of every Greek tale, like the ???????? ?p??ese? of the Frogs. This, however, is nothing to our purpose; for Sophocles had never heard of solar myths. The tale of Thebes supplied him with the subject of three dramas; he used it as a story well suited for displaying passions in their strongest and most tragic workings. As usual, he was not contented with merely following the traditional version of the legend, nor did he insist upon its superstitious elements. That the gods had a grudge against the LabdacidÆ, that the oracles given to Laius and Œdipus were not warnings so much as sinister predictions of a doom inevitable, that the very powers who uttered them were bent on blinding the victims of fate to their true import, were thoroughly Greek notions, consistent with the divine f?????, or envy, of Herodotus, and not wholly inconsistent with the gloomy theology of Æschylus. But it was no part of the method of Sophocles to emphasize this horrible doctrine of destiny. On the contrary, he moralized it. While preserving all the essential features of the myth, he made it clear that the characters of men constitute their fatality.

As our own Fletcher has nobly written:

What to the vulgar apprehension appears like doom, and to the theologian like the direct interposition of the Deity, is to the tragic poet but the natural consequence of moral, physical, and intellectual qualities. These it is his function to set forth in high and stately scenes, commingling with his psychological analysis and forcible dramatic presentation somewhat of the old religious awe.

It may be urged that this is only shifting the burden of necessity, not removing it. It is, perhaps, impossible scientifically to avoid a fatalistic theory of some sort, since in one sense it is true that

Yet practically we do not act upon such theories, and, from the point of view of ethics, there is all the difference in the world between showing how the faults and sins of men must lead them to fearful ends, and painting them in the grip of a remorseless and malignant deity.

Laius was warned that his son by Jocasta would kill him. Yet he begat a son; and in his presumptuous disregard of heaven, thinking, forsooth, that by mere barbarity a man may cheat the Omnipotent, and that the All-seeing cannot save a child of prophecy and doom, he exposed this son upon CithÆron. The boy lived. Thus the crime of Laius is want of self-restraint in the first instance, contempt of God in the second, and cruelty in the third. After this, Œdipus appears upon the theatre of events. He, too, receives oracular warning—that he will slay his sire and wed his mother. Yet, though well aware of the doubt which rests upon his own birth—for it was just on this account that he went to Delphi—he is satisfied with avoiding his supposed parents. The first man whom he meets, while the words of the oracle are still ringing in his ears, he slays; the first woman who is offered to him in marriage, though old enough to be his mother, he weds. His crime is haste of temper, heat of blood, blind carelessness of the divine decrees. Jocasta shows her guilty infatuation in another form. Not only does she participate in the first sin of Laius, but she forgets the oracle which announced that Laius should be slain by his own son. She makes no inquiry into the causes of his death. She does not investigate the previous history of Œdipus, or observe the marks upon his feet, but weds him heedlessly. Here, indeed, the legend itself involves monstrous improbabilities—as, for instance, that Jocasta, while a widow of a few days, should have been thus wedded to a stranger young enough to be her son, that the Thebans should have made no strict search for the murderer of their king, that Œdipus himself should have heard nothing about the death and funeral of Laius, but should have stepped incuriously into his place and sat upon his throne without asking further questions either of his wife or of his subjects. Previous to the opening of Œdipus the King, there is, therefore, a whole tissue of absurdities; and to these Aristotle is probably referring when he says: ?????? d? ?d?? e??a? ?? t??? p???as??, e? d? ?, ??? t?? t?a??d?a?, ???? t? ?? t? ??d?p?d? t? S?f???????.

Granting this, the vigorous logic wherewith the conclusions are wrought out by Sophocles leaves nothing to be desired on the score of truth to nature. There is, indeed, no work of tragic art which can be compared with the Œdipus for the closeness and consistency of the plot. To use the critical terms of the Poetics, it would rank first among tragedies for its ???? and for the s?stas?? p?a??t??, even were its ??? far less firmly traced. The triumph of Sophocles has been, however, so to connect the ??? of his persons with the p???ata, characters with plot, as to make the latter depend upon the former; and in this kind of ethical causality lies the chief force of his tragic art.

If questioned concerning the situation of events previous to the play of Œdipus, it is possible that Sophocles would have pointed out that the ?a?t?a, or error common to all the dramatis personÆ, was an unwarrantable self-confidence. One and all they consult the oracle, and then are satisfied with taking the affairs they had referred to Phoebus into their own hands. Unlike the Orestes of Æschylus, they do not endeavor to act up to the divine commands, and, having done so, place themselves once more beneath the guidance of the god. The oracle is all-important in the three plays on the tale of Thebes, and Sophocles seems to have intended to inculcate a special lesson with regard to the submission of the human will. Those who inquire of a god, and who attempt to thwart his decrees by human skill and foresight, will not prosper. The apparent success of their shifty schemes may cause them to exclaim: "The oracle was false; how weak are those who look for its accomplishment!" Thus they are lured by their self-conceit into impiety. In the end, too, the oracle is found to be fearfully exact. Those, therefore, who take the step of consulting Phoebus must hold themselves responsible to him, must expect the fulfilment of his prophecy; or if they seek to avert the promised evils, they must, at all events, not do so by criminal contrivances and petty lawlessness, such as man thinks that he may practise upon man. It was thus that Sophocles conceived of the relation of human beings to the deity. He delights in exhibiting the blindness of arrogance and self-confidence, and in showing that characters determined by these qualities rush recklessly to their own doom. At the same time he draws a clear distinction between the man who is hardened in godless folly and one who errs through simple haste. The impiety of Jocasta ends in suicide. Œdipus, who has been impetuous and self-willed, finds a place for repentance, and survives his worst calamities, to die a god-protected and god-honored hero.

The opening scene of the Œdipus serves a double purpose. While it places the spectators at the exact point in the legend selected by the poet for treatment, it impresses them with the greatness and the majesty of the king. Thebes is worn out with plague. The hand of Heaven lies heavily upon the citizens. Therefore the priest of Zeus approaches the hero who once before had saved them from the Sphinx, and who may now—fit representative of God on earth—find out a remedy for this intolerable evil. Œdipus appears upon the stage, a confident and careful ruler, sublime in the strength of manhood and the consciousness of vast capacity, tender for the afflictions of his people, yet undismayed by their calamity. He is just the man to sustain a commonwealth by his firm character and favoring fortune. Flawless in force of will and singleness of purpose, he seems incapable of failure. To connect the notions of disgrace or guilt or shame with such a king is utterly impossible. Yet, even so, Sophocles has hinted in the speech of Œdipus a something overmuch of confidence and courage:

Even here the irony, for which the play is famous, begins to transpire. Œdipus believes that his grief is sympathy for a vexed people committed to his charge. Little does he know that, while he is pluming himself upon his watchful care for others, he himself is the head and front of all offending. In the word ???, almost negligently uttered, lies the kernel of the future revelation. While he is informing the suppliants that Creon has gone to Delphi for advice, the prince arrives. A garland of good augury is on his brow; and in this sign of an auspicious embassy we discern another stroke of tragic irony. Phoebus has declared that the presence in Thebes of the hitherto unpunished, unregarded murderer of Laius is the cause of the plague. Œdipus, when he fully understands the matter, swears to discover the offender. The curse which he pronounces on this guilty man is terrible—terrible in its energy of interdiction and excommunication from all rites of hospitality, from human sympathy, from earth and air and water and the fruits of the field—but still more terrible through the fact that all these maledictions are uttered on his own head. The irony of the situation—if we are justified in giving this word to the contrast between what seems and what really is—between Œdipus as he appears to the burghers and Œdipus as he is known to us—rises in the emphatic eloquence of his denunciation to a truly awful height. At the same time his obvious sincerity enlists our sympathy upon his side. We feel beforehand that the man who speaks thus will, when his eyes are opened, submit to his self-imprecated doom. It now remains to detect the murderer. Thinking that his faculty of divination may be useful, Œdipus has already sent for the blind seer Teiresias. Teiresias is one of the great creations of Sophocles. Twice he appears, once in this play, once in the Antigone, each time in conflict with infatuated kings. He is so aged, and the soul within him is so fixed on things invisible, that he seems scarcely human. We think of him as of one who dwells apart, not communing in ordinary social ways with men, but listening to the unspoken words of God, and uttering his wisdom in dark parable to those who heed him not. The Greek poets frequently exhibited the indifference of prosperous persons to divine monitions. Cassandra's prophecies were not attended to; the Delphic oracle spoke in vain; and Teiresias is only honored when it is too late. Sophocles, while maintaining the mysterious fascination of the soothsayer, has marked his character by some strong touches of humanity. He is proud and irritable to excess. His power of sarcasm is appalling, and his indignation is inexorable. Between two stubborn and unyielding natures like the seer and king sparks of anger could not fail to be struck; the explosion that follows on their meeting serves to display the choleric temper of Œdipus, which formed the main trait of his character, the pith of his ?a?t?a.

Œdipus greets Teiresias courteously, telling him that he, the king, is doing all he can to find the murderer of Laius, and that the soothsayer must spare no pains. To this generous patronage and protective welcome Teiresias, upon whose sightless soul the truth has suddenly flashed, answers with deep sighs, and requests to be led home again. This naturally nettles Œdipus. The hastiness that drew him into his first fault renders him now ungovernable. Teiresias keeps saying it will be better for the king to remain ignorant, and the king retorts that he is only a blind dotard; were he not blind, he, and no other, might be suspected of the murder. This provokes an oracular response:

Thus the real state of affairs is suddenly disclosed; and were Œdipus of a submissive temper, he would immediately have proceeded to the discovery of the truth. This would, however, have destroyed the drama, and have prevented the unfolding of the character of the king. Instead, therefore, of heeding the seer's words, Œdipus rushes at once to the conclusion that Creon and Teiresias are plotting to overthrow him in his tyranny. The quarrel waxes hot. Each word uttered by Teiresias is pregnant with terrific revelation. The whole context of events, past, present, and future, is painted with intense lucidity in speech that has the trenchant force of oracular conviction; yet Œdipus remains so firmly rooted in his own integrity and in the belief which he has suddenly assumed of Creon's treason, that he turns deaf ears and a blind soul to the truth. At last the seer leaves him with this denunciation:

The next scene is one of altercation between Œdipus and Creon. Œdipus, full of rage, still haunted by the suspicion of treason, yet stung to the quick by some of the dark speeches of the prophet, vehemently assails the prince, and condemns him to exile. Creon—who, of course, is innocent, but who is not meant to have a generous or lofty soul—defends himself in a dry and argumentative manner, until Jocasta comes forth from the palace and seeks to quell their conflict. Œdipus tells her haughtily that he is accused of being the murderer of Laius. She begins her answer with a frivolous and impious assertion that all oracles are nonsense. The oracle uttered against Laius came to nothing, for his son died on Mount CithÆron, and robbers slew him near Thebes long afterwards, where three ways meet. These words, ?? t??p?a?? ?a??t???, stir suspicion in the mind of Œdipus. He asks at once: "Where was the spot?" "In Phokis, where one goes to Delphi and to Daulia." "What was Laius like?" "Not unlike you in shape," says Jocasta, "but white-haired." "Who were with him?" "Five men, and he rode a chariot." "Who told you all this?" "One who escaped, and who begged me afterwards to send him from the palace, and who now keeps a farm of ours in the country." Each answer adds to the certainty in the mind of Œdipus that it was Laius whom he slew. The only hope left is to send for the servant, and to find out whether he adheres to his story of there having been more robbers than one. If he remains firm upon this point, and does not confess that it was one solitary man who slew his master and his comrades, then there is a chance that he, the king, may not be guilty. Jocasta, with her usual levity, comforts him by insisting that he spoke of robbers, in the plural, and that he must not be suffered to retract his words.

While they are waiting for the servant, a messenger arrives from Corinth with good news. Polybus, the king, is dead, and Œdipus is proclaimed his successor. "Where now," shouts impious Jocasta, "are your oracles—that you should slay your father? See you not how foolish it is to trust to Phoebus and to auguries of birds? Chance is the lord of all. Let us, therefore, live our lives as best we can." Awful is the irony of these short-sighted jubilations; and awful, as Aristotle has pointed out,[140] is the irony which makes this messenger of apparently good tidings add the last link to the chain of evidence that will overwhelm Œdipus with ruin. Œdipus exclaims: "Though my father is dead, I may not return to Corinth: Merope still lives." "What," says the messenger, "do you fear her because she is your mother? Set your mind at ease. She is no mother of yours, nor was Polybus your father. I gave you to them as a gift, when you were yet an infant." "Where did you find me?" cries the king. "Upon CithÆron, a shepherd of the house of Laius gave you to me; your feet were pierced, and I believe that you were born in the royal household." Terrible word, CithÆron! It echoes through this tragedy with horror—its scaurs and pastures, the scene of the first crime. And now those two hinds, who had met there once, apparently by chance, with the child of doom between them, are being again, as though by chance, brought face to face, with the man of doom between them, in order to make good the words of Teiresias:

Jocasta is struck dumb by the answers of the messenger. She, and she alone, knows now at last the whole truth; but she does not speak, while Œdipus continues asking who the shepherd of the house of Laius was. Then she utters words of fearful import, praying the king to go no farther, nor to seek what, found, will plunge his soul into despair like hers. After this, finding her suit ineffectual, she retires into the palace. The chorus are struck by the wildness of her gestures, and hint their dread that she is going to her doom of suicide. But Œdipus, not yet fully enlightened, and preoccupied with the problem which interests himself so deeply, only imagines that she shrinks from the possible proof of his base birth. As yet, he does not suspect that he is the own son of Laius; and here, it may be said in passing, the sole weakness of the plot transpires. Neither the oracle first given to him at Delphi, nor the plain speech of Teiresias, nor the news of the Corinthian messenger, nor the pleadings of Jocasta, are sufficient to suggest the real truth to his mind. Such profundity of blindness is dramatically improbable. He is, however, soon destined to receive illumination. The servant of Laius, who gave Jocasta intelligence of the manner of her husband's death, is now brought upon the stage; and in him the Corinthian messenger recognizes the same shepherd who had given him the infant on CithÆron. Though reluctant to confess the truth so long concealed, the shepherd is at last forced to reveal all he knows; and in this supreme moment Œdipus discovers that he is not only the murderer of his own father, but also that Jocasta is his mother. In the madness of this revelation he rushes to the palace. The chorus are left alone to moralize upon these terrible events. Then another messenger arrives. Jocasta has hanged herself within her bedchamber. Œdipus, breaking bars and bolts in the fire of his despair, has followed her. Around him were the servants, drawn together by the tumult. None, however, dared approach him. Led by an inner impulse, he found the place where his wife and mother hung, released the corpse, and tearing from her dress the golden buckles, cut out both his eyes, crying aloud that no longer should they look upon the light or be witness to his woe, seeing that when they might have aided him they were as good as blind. Thus one day turned the prosperity of Œdipus to "wailing, woe, death, disgrace, all evils that have name—not one is absent." The speech of the messenger narrating these events is a splendid instance of the energy of Sophocles, when he chooses to describe a terrible event appallingly. It does not convey the Æschylean mystery of brooding horror; but the scene is realized in all its incidents, briefly, vividly, with ghastly clearness. Meanwhile, the voice of Œdipus himself is heard. He bids the palace-doors be opened, in order that all Thebes may see the parricide, the monster of unhallowed, indescribable abominations. So the gates are rolled asunder: and there lies dead Jocasta; and sightless Œdipus, with bloody cheeks and beard, stands over her, and the halls are filled with wailing women and woe-stricken men.

Here, if this had been a modern tragedy, the play of Œdipus Tyrannus might have ended; but so abrupt and scenical a conclusion did not suit the art of Sophocles. He had still further to develop the character of Œdipus, and to offer the prospect of that future reconciliation between the fate and the passions of his hero which he had in store. For this purpose the last two hundred lines of the drama, though they do not continue the plot, but rather suggest a new and secondary subject of interest, are invaluable. Hitherto we have seen Œdipus in the pride of monarchy and manhood, hasty, arrogant, yet withal a just and able ruler. He is now, through a pe??p?te?a, or revolution of circumstances, more complete than any other in Greek tragedy, revealed in the very depth of his calamity, still dignified. There is no resistance left in the once so strong and stubborn man. The hand of God, weighing heavily upon him, has bowed his head, and he is humble as a little child. Yet the vehemence that marked his former phase persists. It finds vent in the passionate lucidity wherewith he examines all the details of the pollution he has unwittingly incurred, and in the rage with which he demands to have his own curse carried out against him. Let him be cast from the city, sent forth to wander on the fells of CithÆron—???? ???a???? ??t??. It was the highest achievement of tragic art to exhibit so suddenly, and by so sharp a transition, this new development of the king's nature. Saul of Tarsus, when blinded by the vision, was not more immediately converted from one mood into another, more contrite in profound sincerity of sorrow. Still in the altered Œdipus we see the same man, the same temperament; though all internal and external circumstances have been changed, so that henceforward he will never tread the paths of life as once he did. The completeness of his self-abandonment appears most vividly in the dialogue with Creon, upon whose will his immediate fate depends. When Creon, whom he had lately misjudged and treated with violent harshness, comes and greets him kindly, the wretched king tastes the very bitterness of degradation, yet he is not abject. He only prays once more, with intensest urgency of pleading, to have the uttermost of the excommunication he had vowed, executed upon his head. Thinking less of himself than of the miserable beings associated with him in disaster, he beseeches Creon to inter the queen, and, for his boys, to give them only a fair chance in life—they will be men, and may carve out their own fortunes in the world; but for his two poor girls, left desolate, a scorn and mockery to all men, he can only pray that they may come to him, be near him, bear the burden of their misery by their father's side. The tenderness of Œdipus for Ismene and Antigone, his yearning to clasp them, is terribly—almost painfully—touching, when we remember who they were, how born, the children of what curses. The words with which the king addresses them are even hazardous in their directness. Yet it was needful that humanity should by some such strain of passion be made to emerge from this tempest of soul-shattering woes; and thus, too, a glimpse of that future is provided which remained for Œdipus, if sorrowful, assuaged at least by filial love. In reply to all his eloquent supplications Creon answers that he will not take upon himself the responsibility of dealing with his case. Nothing can be done without consulting the oracle at Delphi. Œdipus has, therefore, to be patient and endure. The strong hero, who saved Thebes from the Sphinx and swayed the city, is now in the hands of tutors and governors awaiting his doom. He submits quietly, and the tragedy is ended.

The effect of such a tragedy as Œdipus the King is to make men feel that the earth is shaken underneath them, and that the heavens above are big with thunder. Compassion and fear are agitated in the highest degree; old landmarks seem to vanish; the mightiest have fallen, and the most impious, convinced of God, have been goaded to self-murder. Great, indeed, is the tragic poet's genius who can make the one sure point amid this confusion the firmness of its principal fore-destined victim. That is the triumph of Sophocles. Out of the chaos of the Œdipus Tyrannus springs the new order of the Œdipus ColoneÜs; and here it may be said that perhaps the most valid argument in favor of the Æschylean trilogy as a supreme work of dramatic art is this—that such a tragedy as the first Œdipus demanded such another as the second. The new motives suggested in the last act were not sufficiently worked out to their conclusion; much that happened in the climax of the Tyrannus seemed to necessitate the ColoneÜs.

The interest of the Œdipus Tyrannus centres in its plot, and that is my only excuse for having dwelt so long on the structure of a play familiar to every student. That of the Œdipus ColoneÜs is different. It has, roughly speaking, no plot. It owes its perfect, almost superhuman, beauty to the atmosphere which bathes it, as with peace after tempest, with the lucid splendors of sunset succeeding to a storm-vexed and tumultuous day. The scene is laid, as the name indicates, in the village birthplace of the poet. Years are supposed to have elapsed since the conclusion of the former tragedy; Œdipus, after being detained in Thebes against his will at first, has now been driven forth by Creon, and has wandered many miles in blindness, led by his daughter's hand. The ethical interest of the play, so far as it is not absorbed by Œdipus himself, centres principally in Antigone, whereby we are prepared for her emergence into fullest prominence in the tragedy which bears her name. Always keeping in mind that these three plays are not a trilogy, I cannot but insist again that much is lost, especially in all that concerns the unfolding of Antigone's character, by not reading them in the order suggested by the fable. At the same time, though Antigone engrosses our sympathy and attention, Sophocles has varied the drama by a more than usual number of persons. The generous energy of Theseus forms a fine contrast to the inactivity forced upon Œdipus by the conditions of the subject, and also to the meanness of Creon; while the episodes of Ismene's arrival, of Antigone's abduction, and of the visit of Polyneices, add movement to what might else have been too stationary. It should also be said that all these subsidiary sources of interest are used with subtle art by Sophocles for enhancing the dignity of Œdipus, for arousing our sympathy with him, and for bringing into prominence the chief features of his character. None can, therefore, be regarded as superfluous, though, strictly speaking, they might have been detached without absolute destruction of the drama, which is more than can be said about the slightest incidents of Œdipus Tyrannus. As regards Œdipus himself, that modification of his fiery temperament which Sophocles revealed at the end of the first tragedy has now become permanent. He is schooled into submission; yet he has not lost the old impetuosity that formed the groundwork of his nature. He is still quick to anger and vehement in speech, but both his anger and his vehemence are justified by the occasion. Something, moreover, of fateful and mysterious, severing him from the common race of men and shrouding him within the seclusion of his dread calamity, has been added. The terror of his dreadful past, and the prospect of his august future, environ him with more than kingly dignity. The skill of Sophocles as a dramatic poet is displayed in all its splendor by the new light thrown upon the central figure of Œdipus. The effect of unity is not destroyed: those painful shocks to our sense of probability so frequent when inferior dramatists—poets of the rank of Fletcher or of Jonson—attempt to depict a nature altered by internal reformation or by force of circumstance do not occur. The Œdipus of both the tragedies remains one man; we understand the change that has been wrought in him; and while we feel that it is adequate and natural, we marvel at the wisdom of the poet who could vary his design with so much firmness.

The oracle, which continues to play an important part in this tale of Thebes, has warned Œdipus that he will end his days within the precincts of the Semnai Theai, or august goddesses of retribution. In his new phase the man of haste and wrath is no longer heedless of oracles; nor does he let their words lie idle in his mind. It is, therefore, with a strong presentiment of approaching death that he discovers early in this play that his feet, led by Antigone, have rested in the grove of the Furies at Colonus. The place itself is fair. There are here no harpy-gorgons with bloodshot eyes, and vipers twining in their matted hair. The meadows are dewy, with crocus-flowers and narcissus; in the thickets of olive and laurel nightingales keep singing; and rivulets spread coolness in the midst of summer's heat. The whole wood is hushed, and very fresh and wild. A solemn stillness broods there; for the feet of the profane keep far away, and none may tread the valley-lawns but those who have been purified. The ransomed of the Lord walk there. This solemnity of peace pervades the whole play, forming, to borrow a phrase from painting, the silver-gray harmony of the picture. In thus bringing Œdipus to die among the unshowered meadows of those Dread Ladies, whom in his troubled life he found so terrible, but whom in his sublime passage from the world he is about to greet resignedly, we may trace peculiar depth of meaning. The thought of death, calm but austere, tempers every scene in the drama. We are in the presence of one whose life is ended, who is about to merge the fever of existence in the tranquillity beyond. This impression of solemnity is heightened when we remember that the poet wrote the ColoneÜs in extreme old age. Over him, too, the genius of everlasting repose already spread wings in the twilight, and the mysteries of the grave were nearer to him and more daily present than to other men.

A country fellow, who perceives Œdipus seated by his daughter on a marble bench within the sacred precinct, bids them quit the spot, for it is hallowed. Œdipus, however, knowing that his doom shall be fulfilled, asks that he may be confronted with the elders of the place. They come and gaze with mingled feelings of distrust and awe on the blind hero, august in desolation. Before they can converse with him, Œdipus has to quit the recesses of the grove, and gain a spot where speech and traffic are permitted. Then, in answer to their questions, he informs them who he is—Œdipus. At that name they start back in horror, demanding that he shall carry the abomination of his presence from their land. This affords the occasion for a splendid speech from the old man, one of the most telling passages of eloquence in Sophocles, in which he appeals to the time-long hospitality and fame for generosity of Athens. Athens was never known to spurn the suppliant or expel the stranger, and the deeds of Œdipus they so much dread are sufferings rather:

The Chorus, moved by the mingled impetuosity and sound reasoning of their suitor, perceive that the case is too grave for them to decide. Accordingly, they send a messenger for Theseus; but, before he can be summoned, Ismene arrives on horseback with the news that her brothers are quarrelling about the throne of Thebes. Eteocles, the younger, has usurped the sovereignty, while Polyneices has fled to Argos to engage the chiefs of the Achaians in his cause. Both parties, meantime, are eager to secure the person of Œdipus, since an oracle has proclaimed that with him will victory abide. Œdipus, hearing these tidings, bursts into a strain of passionate denunciation, which proves that the old fire of his temper is smouldering still unquenched. When he was forlorn and in misery, his unnatural sons took no thought of him. They sent him forth to roam a pariah upon the earth, leaving to his daughters the care and burden of supporting him. Now, basely anxious for their selfish profit, they come to claim possession of his old, world-wearied flesh. Instead of blessings, they shall meet with curses. Instead of the fair land of Thebes to lord it over, they shall barely get enough ground to die and be buried in. He, meanwhile, will abide at Athens, and bequeath a heritage of help and honor to her soil.

The Chorus now call upon Œdipus to perform the rites of purification required by the Eumenides—rites which Sophocles has described with the loving minuteness of one to whom the customs of Colonus were from boyhood sacred. Ismene goes to carry out their instructions, and in her absence Theseus arrives upon the scene. Theseus, throughout the drama, plays towards Œdipus the part of a good-hearted hospitable friend. His generosity is ethically contrasted with the meanness of Creon and the selfishness of Polyneices, while, artistically, the practical energy of his character serves for a foil to the stationary dignity of the chief actor. Sophocles has thus contrived to give weight and importance to a personage who might, in weaker hands, have been degraded into a mere instrument. Œdipus assures the Attic king that he will prove no useless and unserviceable denizen. The children of Erechtheus, whose interests rank first in the mind of Theseus, will find him in the future a powerful and god-protected sojourner within their borders. His natural sympathy for the persecuted and oppressed having been thus strengthened by the prospect of reciprocal advantage, Theseus formally accepts Œdipus as a suppliant, and promises him full protection. At this point, forming, as it were, a halting-place in the action of the play, Sophocles introduced that famous song about Colonus, which no one has yet succeeded in translating, but which, for modern ears, has received new value from the music of Mendelssohn.

What follows, before the final climax of the drama, consists of the efforts made by Creon, on the part of Eteocles, and by Polyneices, to enlist Œdipus respectively upon their sides in the war of succession to the Theban throne. Creon displays his heartless, cunning, impudent, sophistical, and forceful character, while Œdipus opposes indignation and contempt, unmasking his hypocrisy, and stripping his specious arguments of all that hides their naked selfishness. In this scene we feel that Sophocles is verging upon the Euripidean manner. A little more would make the altercation between Creon and Œdipus pass over into a forensic wrangling-match. As it is, the chief dramatic value of the episode is to exhibit the grandeur of the wrath of Œdipus in its righteous heat when contrasted with the wretched shifts of a mere rhetorical sophist.

After Creon, by the help of Theseus, has been thwarted in his attempt to carry off Antigone, Polyneices approaches with crocodile tears, fawning intercessions, and fictitious sorrow for his father's desolation. Œdipus flashes upon his covert egotism the same light of clear unclouded insight which had unmasked Creon. "What," he asks, "is the value of tears now, of prayers now? Dry were your eyes, hard as stone your heart, dumb your lips, when I went forth from Thebes unfriended. Here is your guerdon: Before Thebes's walls you shall die, pierced by your brother's hand, and your brother by yours." The imprecation of the father upon the son would be unnatural, were it not for the son's falseness, who behaved like a Regan to Œdipus in his calamity, and who now, when the old man has become a mysteriously important personage, seeks to make the most of him for his own uses.

The protracted dialogues with Creon and Polyneices serve to enhance the sublimity of Œdipus. He, all the while, is seated, a blind, travel-stained, neglected mendicant, upon the marble bench of the Eumenides. There is horror in his very aspect. Hellas rings with the abominations connected with his name. Yet, to this poor pariah, to this apparent object of pity and loathing, come princes and warriors capable of stirring all the States of Greece in conflict. He rejects them, firm in his consciousness of heaven-appointed destiny. Sophocles seems bent on showing how the wrath of God may be turned aside from its most signal and notorious victims by real purity of heart and nobleness of soul; how, from the depths of degradation and affliction, the spirit of man may rise; and how the lot of demigods may be reserved for those whom the world ignorantly judges worthy of its scorn. Œdipus of late stood like the lightning-blasted tree that travellers dread—the evitandum bidental of Roman superstition. His withered limbs have now more health and healing in them than the leaf-embowered forest oak.

The treatment of Polyneices in the Œdipus ColoneÜs supplies a good example of the Sophoclean tendency to humanize the ancient myths of Hellas. The curse pronounced by Œdipus formed an integral element of that portion of the legend which suggested to Æschylus the Seven against Thebes. By its force, the whole weight of the doom that overhangs the house of Laius is brought to bear upon the suicidal brethren, both of whom rush helplessly, with eyes open, to meet inevitable fate.

are the opening words of the prayer of Eteocles in that tragedy; while phrases like these, ? p???? d??? ???? pa?a???s? s???e?? ?a???? and ? ??a??a ?a? te?e?a ???e?? ??d?p?? t' ???, form the burden of the choric songs. Sophocles does not seek to make the wrath of Œdipus less terrible; he adheres to the old outline of the story, and heightens the tragic horror of the curse by framing for it words intense by reason of their very calculated calmness (1383-1396). At the same time he shows how the obstinate temper of Polyneices, and his sense of honor, are necessary to its operation. After the dreadful sentence, dooming him to self-murder by his brother's spear, has been pronounced, Polyneices stands before his father and his sister like one stunned. Antigone, with a woman's instinct, entreats him to choose the only way still left of safety. He may disband the army, and retire from the adventure against Thebes. To this her brother answers:

when she persists, he repeats ? pe??' ? ? de?. Thus, instead of bringing into strong relief the operation of blind fate, Sophocles places in the foreground the human agencies which contribute to the undoing of Polyneices. His crime of unfilial egotism, his dread of being thought a coward, and his honor rooted in dishonor, drive him through the tempest of his father's curse upon the rock of doom. The part played by Antigone in this awful scene of altercation between her father and her brother, first interceding for mercy, and then striving to break the stubborn will of the rebellious youth,[141] prepares our minds for the tragedy in which she will appear as protagonist. Hitherto she has been remarkable for filial love. She now shows herself a gentle and tender sister to one who had deeply wronged her. The absolute unselfishness which gives to her the beauty as of some clear, flawless jewel shines forth by anticipation in the ColoneÜs, enlisting our warmest sympathies upon her side, and tempering the impression of hardness that might be produced by a simple study of the Antigone.

When Polyneices, with the curse still ringing in his ears, has fled forth, Cain-like, from the presence of his father, thunder is heard, and the end approaches. The chief actors, led by the blind hero, move from the stage in order suited to the processional gravity of the Greek theatre, while the speech of the Messenger, conveying to the Chorus the news of the last minutes in the life of Œdipus, prepares the spectators for the reappearance of his daughters on the scene. As in the Œdipus Tyrannus, so now a new motive of interest is introduced in the last act of the drama. The Antigone is imperatively demanded as a sequel. Our attention is riveted upon Antigone, who in losing her father has lost all. Her first thought is that he died nobly, peacefully, at one with God. Her next thought is that she shall never see him again, never more bear the sweet burden of anxiety and pain for him, never even have access to his hidden tomb. Her third thought is a longing to be dead with him, enfolded in oblivion of the fate which persecutes her kith and kin. Life stretches before her boundless, homeless, comfortless, nor has she now a single memory for him whose love might have consoled a woman of less stubborn soul—for HÆmon. It is characteristic of his whole conception of Antigone that Sophocles introduced no allusion to that underplot of love at this point. When Theseus reproves her for despair, she awakes to fresh unselfishness: "Send me to Thebes," she cries, "that I may stay, if possible, my brothers' strife." Throughout this final scene the single-hearted heat and firm will of Antigone, her desire for action, and her readiness to accept responsibility are contrasted with Ismene's yielding temper and passivity. We are thus prepared for the opening of the third drama, which, though written first by Sophocles, is the artistic close and climax of the tale of Thebes.

The most perfect female character in Greek poetry is Antigone. She is purely Greek, unlike any woman of modern fiction, except perhaps the Fedalma of George Eliot. In her filial piety, in her intercession for Polyneices at the knees of Œdipus, in her grief when her father is taken from her, she does, indeed, resemble the women whom most men among us have learned to honor in their sisters or their daughters or their mother. Of such women the Greek maiden, with her pure calm face and virginal straight lines of classic drapery, is still the saint and patroness. But what shall we say of the Antigone of this last drama, of the sister who is willing, lest her brother lie unburied on the Theban plain, to lay her own life down, disobeying the law of her sovereign, defying Creon to the face, appealing against unjust tribunals to the judgment-seat of powers more ancient than the throne of Zeus himself, and marching to her living tomb with dauntless strength in order that the curse-attainted ghost of Polyneices shall have rest in Hades? To the modern mind she appears a being from another sphere. A strain of unearthly music seems to announce her entrance and her exit on the stage. That the sacrifice of the sister's very life, the breaking of her plighted troth to HÆmon, should follow upon the sprinkling of those few handfuls of dust—that she should give that life up smilingly, nor ever in her last hours breathe her lover's name—is a tragic circumstance for which our sympathies are not prepared: we can neither divest our minds of the fixed modern prejudice that the first duty of a woman is to her husband, nor can we fully enter into the antique superstition of defrauded sepulture. Yet it is necessary to do both of these things, to sequester Antigone from the sphere of modern obligations, and to enter hand in hand with her the inner sanctuary of antique piety, in order to do justice to the conception of Sophocles. This effort of the imagination may be facilitated by remembering, first, that Antigone inherited her father's proud self-will—

and, secondly, that disaster after disaster, the loss of Œdipus, the death of her two brothers, has come huddling upon her in a storm of fate, so that life is, in a manner, over for her, and she feels isolated in a cold and cruel world. This combination of her character and her circumstances renders her action in the Antigone conceivable. Without the hardness she inherited from Œdipus, she could not have gone through her tragic part. Without the vow she registered above her father's grave, to bring help to her brethren, seeing that they alone were left, the sentiment of her last speech would sound rhetorical. Moreover, the poet who breathed into her form a breath of life so fiery has himself justified us in regarding her act as one removed from the plain path of virtue. Antigone was no Hindoo widow to die upon a husband's pyre. Her heroism, her resistance offered to the will of Creon, had in it a splendid criminality. It was just the casuistry of the conflict between public and private obligations, between the dictates of her conscience and the commands of her sovereign, that enabled Sophocles to render the peculiar stoicism of her character pathetic. In spite of all these considerations, it is probable that she will strike a modern reader at the first as frigid. Especially, if he have failed to observe the nuances of her portrait in the Œdipus ColoneÜs, he will be inclined to wish that Sophocles had softened here and there the outlines of her adamantine statue. Yet, after long contemplation of those perfect lineaments, we come to recognize in her a purity of passion, a fixity of purpose, a loyalty of kinship, a sublime enthusiasm for duty, simply conceived and self-justified in spite of all conventions to the contrary, which soar above the strain of modern tragic sentiment. Even Alfieri, in the noble drawing he has sketched from the Sophoclean picture, could not abstain from violating its perfection by this sentimental touch of common feeling:

No such words are to be found in Sophocles upon the lips of the dying Antigone. She is all for her father and her brothers. The tragedy of HÆmon belongs to Creon, not to her. Her furthest concessions to the sympathies which might have swayed a weaker woman are found in this line,

and in the passage of the Kommos where she bewails her luckless lot of maidenhood. For the rest, Sophocles has sustained her character as that of one "whom, like sparkling steel, the strokes of chance made hard and firm." This steely durability, this crystalline sparkle, divide her not only from the ideal raised by romance for womanhood, but distinguish her, as the daughter of Œdipus, from the general sisterhood even of Greek heroines.

The peculiar qualities of Antigone are brought into sharp relief by the milder virtues of Ismene, who thinks it right to obey Creon, and who has no spirit for the deed of daring, but who is afterwards eager to share the punishment of her sister. Antigone repels her very sternly, herein displaying the force of her nature under its less amiable aspect: "Have courage! Thou livest, but my soul long since hath died." The glory of the act is hers alone. Ismene has no right to share it when the risks are past, the penalty is paid. Antigone's repulsion of her sister seems to supply the key to her own heroism. "Œdipus," she says, "is dead; my brethren are dead: for them I lived, and in their death I died to life; but you—your heart is not shut up within your father's and your brother's grave; it is still warm, still eager for love and the joys of this world. Live, then. For me it would be no more possible to live such life as yours than for the clay-cold corpse upon the bier."

The character of Creon, darkened in its tone and shadow to the utmost with a view to affording a foil of another species for Antigone, was thought worthy of minute and careful treatment by Sophocles. In the Œdipus Tyrannus he is wronged rather than wronging. While suffering from the unjust suspicion and hasty language of the king, he pleads his cause with decent gravity and shows no sign of either arrogance or cowardice. At the end, when Œdipus has fallen, his own behavior is such as would not disgrace a generous as well as prudent prince. The neutrality for good or evil which distinguishes Creon in this play, marking him out in contrast with the fiery heat of Œdipus, the impious irony of Jocasta, is, to say the least, respectable. In the Œdipus ColoneÜs he plays a consistently mean and odious part; his pragmatical display of rhetoric before the burghers of Colonus, when tested by his violent and cruel conduct towards Antigone, proves him to be a hollow-hearted and specious hypocrite. The light here reflected back upon his respectability in the Tyrannus is decidedly unfavorable. In the Antigone Creon becomes, if possible, still more odious; only our animosity against him is tempered by contempt. To the faults of egotism, hardness, and hypocritical prating, are now added the infatuation of self-will and the godless hatred of a dead foe. There is, indeed, a show of right in the decree published concerning the two brothers, one of whom had brought a foreign army against Thebes; but it would be sophistry to maintain that Creon was actuated by patriotic motives. The defeat and death of Polyneices were punishment enough. By pursuing his personal spite beyond the grave Creon insults the common instincts of humanity, the sympathies of the people, and the supposed feelings of the gods, who cannot bear to gaze upon abominations. The pathetic self-devotion of Antigone, the voice of the city, the remonstrances of HÆmon, and the warnings of Teiresias are all thrown away upon his stubborn and conceited obstinacy. He shows himself, in short, to be a tyrant of the orthodox sort. Like a tyrant, he is, moreover, absurdly suspicious: the guardian has, he thinks, been bought; Ismene must be hatching treason; HÆmon prefers a woman to his duty; Teiresias is plotting for the sake of gain against him. When it is just too late, he gives way helplessly and feebly, moved to terror by the dark words of the seer. Creon is, therefore, a mixed character, great neither for good nor for evil, weak through wilfulness, plausible in words and wavering in his determinations, a man who might have passed for excellent if he had never had to wield a kingdom's power. His own description of himself—?ta??? ??d?a—suits him not only in the utter collapse of his character and rain of his fortunes, but also in the height of his prosperity and fulness of his seeming strength.

Sophocles might fairly be censured for having made the misery of Creon the climax of a drama which ought to have had its whole interest centred in Antigone. Our sympathies have not been sufficiently enlisted on the side of HÆmon to make us care much about his death. For Eurydice it is impossible to rouse more than a languid pity. Creon, we feel, gets no more than he deserves; instead of being sorry for him, we are only angry that he was not swept away into the dustheap of oblivion sooner. It was surely a mistake to divert the attention of the audience, at the very end of the tragedy, from its heroine to a character which, like that of Creon, rouses impatient scorn as well as antipathy. That Sophocles had artistic reasons for not concluding this play with the death of Antigone may be readily granted by those who have made the crises of the Ajax, the Œdipus Tyrannus, and the Œdipus ColoneÜs the subject of special study. He preferred, it seems, to relax the strained sympathies of his audience by a prolongation of the drama on an altered theme. Yet this scarcely justifies the shifting of the centre of interest attempted in the Antigone. We have to imagine that the inculcation of a moral lesson upon the crime of ?s?e?a was the poet's paramount object.[142] If so, he sacrificed dramatic effect to ethics.

It should be noticed that Antigone, in whom the fate of the family of Laius is finally accomplished, falls an innocent victim. Her tragedy is no immediate consequence of the Œdipodean curse. While her brethren were wilfully involved in the doom of their house, she perished in the cause of divine charity. Finding that the immutable ordinances of Heaven clashed with the arbitrary volition of a ruler, she preferred to obey the law of conscience and to die at the behest of a pride-maddened tyrant. She is technically disobedient, morally most duteous. Thus the Antigone carries us beyond the region of hereditary disaster into the more universal sphere of ethical casuistry. Its tragic interest depends less upon the evolution of the law of ancestral guilt than on the conflict of two duties. By suggesting the casuistical question to his audience, while he freed his heroine from all doubt upon the subject, Sophocles maintained the sublime simplicity which distinguishes Antigone above all women of romance. The retribution that falls on Creon furnishes a powerful example of the Greek doctrine of Nemesis; but over Antigone herself Nemesis exerts no sway. In her action there was nothing unconsidered; in her doom there was nothing unforeseen.

[129] "Fain would I be a fair lyre of ivory, and fair boys carrying me to Dionysus's choir."