“ The love of glory is his ruling passion, and disappointment in the pursuit of honour has goaded him to phrenzy. Through the interposition of the gods his vengeance has been baffled in a manner which must for ever expose him to the derision of his enemies. The delight and exultation which he expresses at his imaginary triumph serve to measure the greatness of his defeat, and the bitterness of the anguish which awaits him with the return of reason. Ulysses himself cannot witness so tremendous a reverse, so complete a prostration, even of a rival, without pity. ”

“ The royal house has been hitherto exempt from the overwhelming evil. The king, happy in the affection of his consort, and surrounded by a flourishing family, seems alone to stand erect above the flood of evils with which his people are struggling, and under which they are ready to sink. To his fortune and wisdom the afflicted city now looks for deliverance. It has not been forgotten that, on a former occasion, when Thebes was smitten with a scourge almost equally grievous, the marvellous sagacity of Œdipus solved the enigma on which its fate depended. ”

“ There is a malignant, or at least a wanton irony, in the practical sense, by which a man humours the folly of another, for the purpose of rendering it more extravagant and incorrigible, whether it be with the further aim of extracting materials for ridicule from it, or of turning it to some still less liberal use. Specimens of this kind are perpetually occurring in society, and ancient and modern comedy is full of them. But this same irony has a darker side, which can excite only detestation and horror, as something belonging rather to the nature of a fiend than of a man. ”

“ But his resentment, vehement as it is, at Creon's ingratitude, is almost forgotten in his abhorence and contempt of the hoary impostor who has sold himself to the traitor. Even his boasted art is a juggle and a lie. Else, why was it not exerted when the Sphinx propounded her fatal riddle? The seer then was not Tiresias but Œdipus. The lips then closed by the consciousness of ignorance have now been opened by the love of gold. His age alone screens him from immediate punishment: the partner of his guilt will not escape so easily. ”

“ But long as he had sighed for deliverance from his miserable solitude, intolerable as are the torments he endures, ambitious as he is of martial renown, and impatient of wasting the arrows of Hercules on birds and beasts, there is a feeling stronger than any of these which impels him to reject the proffered good with disdain and even loathing, and to prefer pining to his life's end in lonely, helpless, continually aggravated wretchedness. ”

“ The irony in which Sophocles appears to us to have displayed the highest powers of his art, is not equally conspicuous in all his remaining plays, though we believe the perception of it to be indispensable for the full enjoyment of every one of them. We shall for this reason be led to dwell less upon some of his greatest masterpieces, than upon works which are commonly deemed of inferior value. But we shall begin with those in which the poet's intention is most apparent, and shall thus perhaps be enabled to find a clue to it where it is less clearly disclosed. ”

“ And such, we conceive, though without any of the feelings that sometimes sadden our retrospect, must have been the look which a superior intelligence, exempt from our passions, and capable of surveying all our relations, and foreseeing the consequences of all our actions, would at the time have cast upon the tumultuous workings of our blind ambition and our groundless apprehensions, upon the phantoms we raised to chase us, or to be chased, while the substance of good and evil presented itself to our view, and was utterly disregarded. ”

“ For Ajax has no sooner recovered his senses than the thought of death occurs to him as absolutely necessary. But he contemplates it, not as an evil, but as a certain remedy and refuge. He finds consolation in the consciousness of his unalterable resolution not to survive his shame, and in the conviction that no human power can prevent the execution of his purpose. ”

“ Hercules appears distracted not only by his bodily torments, but also by furious passions: by the sense of an unmerited evil, perfidiously inflicted by a hand which he had loved and trusted. The discovery of Dejanira's innocence likewise reveals to him the real nature and causes of his situation: it exhibits his fate, though outwardly hard and terrible, as the fulfilment of a gracious and cheering prediction. Henceforth his murmurs cease, his angry passions subside. He himself indeed does not yet penetrate into the depth of the mystery ”

“ Duly to estimate the art of Sophocles, and rightly to understand his designs, we must take into account the resistance of the elements which he had to transform and fashion to his purposes. When we consider their nature we shall not perhaps be surprized to find that he sometimes contents himself with slight indications of his meaning, and that everything does not appear exactly to harmonize with it. We shall rather admire the unity that pervades works framed out of such a chaos, and the genius which could stamp the ancient legends with a character so foreign to their original import. ”

“ But we should have been more reluctant to admit that this nation itself, which stands so solitary and unapproachable in its peculiar excellence, attained its highest glory, when, by the loss of its freedom and its power, it was enabled to diffuse a small portion of its spirit through the Roman world: had it not been that it was the destiny of this Roman world to crumble into dust, and to be trampled by hordes of barbarians, strangers to arts and letters. ”

“ He not only contemplates the past in the light of truth, but feels himself instinct with prophetic powers. He is conscious of a charmed life, safe from the malice of man and the accidents of nature, and reserved by the gods for the accomplishment of high purposes. The first incident that occurs to him marks in the most signal manner the elevation to which he has been raised by his apparent fall, and the privilege he has gained by the calamity which separates him from the rest of mankind. He has been driven out of Thebes as a wretch polluted, and polluting the land. ”

“ Compared with Hercules, Dejanira is a very insignificant person: not indeed in the eyes of a modern reader, of whom Hermann's remark may be perfectly true, that the sympathy of the spectators is directed more to her than to the hero. In her we find much to admire, to love, and to pity: in him we see nothing but a great spirit almost overpowered by the intensity of bodily suffering. But the question is, was this the light in which they were viewed by the spectators for whom Sophocles wrote. ”

“ A last labour remains for him to achieve, in which he is destined either to fall, or to reap the reward of his toils in a life unembittered by pain or sorrow. Soon however she hears that the crisis has ended happily, and for a moment joy takes undivided possession of her breast. But the glad tidings are quickly followed by the announcement of a new calamity, the danger of losing the affections of Hercules, or of sharing them with another. ”

“ The resentment of Philoctetes is so just and natural, and his character so noble and amiable, he is so open and unsuspecting after all his experience of human treachery, so warm and kindly in the midst of all his sternness and impatience, that it would seem as if Sophocles had intended that he should be the object of our unqualified sympathy. ”

“ Still as a friend cannot be defended unless against an enemy who attacks him, the use of verbal irony must in all cases be either directly or indirectly polemical. It is a weapon properly belonging to the armoury of controversy, and not fitted to any entirely peaceable occasion. This is not the less true because, as the enginery of war is often brought out, and sham fights exhibited, for the public amusement in time of peace, so there is a sportive irony, which instead of indicating any contrariety of opinion or animosity of feeling, is the surest sign of perfect harmony and goodwill. ”

“ Finally his parting directions to Tecmessa and the Chorus are so little like those of a person who was anxious to conceal his design, that as Welcker truly observes, one might rather be disposed to complain of the improbability that their meaning should have been mistaken: if it were not that a prejudice once caught is known to be capable of blinding us to the clearest intimations of the truth. ”

“ But the reflexions which the spectacle suggests to him and Minerva, tend to divert our thoughts from what is peculiar and extraordinary in the situation of Ajax, and to fix them on the common lot of human nature. All mortal strength is weakness, all mortal prosperity vain and transient, and consequently all mortal pride is delusion and madness. ”

“ The bodily sufferings of Philoctetes are exhibited by the poet for no other purpose than to afford a measure of the indignation with which he is inspired by his wrongs, and of the energy of his will. It is no ordinary pain that torments him, but of a kind similar to that which extorted groans and tears from Hercules himself. Yet in his eagerness to escape from the scene of his long wretchedness, he makes an almost superhuman effort to master it, and conceal it from the observation of the bystanders. ”

“ The contest indeed between the two rivals for the possession or the friendship of the outcast, the violence of Creon and the earnest supplication of Polynices, serves to heighten our impression of the dignity with which Œdipus is now invested by the favour of the gods. But still, if the poet had not had a different purpose in view, he would probably have contented himself with a less elaborate picture of the struggle. As it is, Creon's arrogance and meanness place the magnanimity of the Attic hero in the strongest relief. ”

“ In the meanwhile the king has deliberated with his kinsman Creon, and now appears to proclaim his will and publish his measures. To the criminal, if he shall voluntarily discover himself, he offers leave to retire from the country with impunity: to whoever shall make him known, whether citizen or stranger, large reward and royal favour: but should this gracious invitation prove ineffectual, then he threatens the guilty with the utmost rigour of justice; and finally, should man's arm be too short, he consigns the offender by a solemn imprecation to the vengeance of the gods. ”

“ The land labours under a curse drawn upon it by the guilt of man: it is the stain of blood that has poisoned all the sources of life; the crime must be expiated, the pollution purged. Yet the oracle which declares the nature of the deed is silent as to the name of the criminal; he is denounced as the object of divine and human vengeance; but his person is not described, his abode is not disclosed, except by the intimation that the land is cursed by his presence. The sagacity of Œdipus is still required to detect the secret on which the safety of his people depends ”

“ But instead of dwelling on the numerous contrasts of this kind which history suggests in illustrating the fragile and transitory nature of all mortal greatness, we shall draw nearer to our main point, and shall at the same time be taking a more cheering view of our subject, if we observe, that, as all things human are subject to dissolution, so and for the same reason it is the moment of their destruction that to the best and noblest of them is the beginning of a higher being, the dawn of a brighter period of action. ”

“ On the answer we give to this question must evidently depend our apprehension of the poet's main design, and our enjoyment of the art he has exerted in its execution. Unquestionably the religion of Sophocles was not the religion of Homer, and the light in which he viewed destiny and providence was not that in which they are exhibited by the Homeric poems. In the interval which separated the maturity of epic and dramatic poetry, the human mind had taken some great strides: and men of a vigorous and cultivated intellect could no longer acquiesce in the simple theology of the Homeric age. ”

“ He is one of those persons whom we cannot help viewing with respect, even when we disapprove of their principles and conduct. He is a sober, experienced, politic statesman, who keeps the public good steadily in view, and devotes himself entirely to the pursuit of it. Throughout the whole of his proceedings, with regard to Philoctetes, he maintains this dignity, and expresses his consciousness of it. He is always ready to avow and justify the grounds on which he acts. From the beginning he has been impelled by no base or selfish motive ”

“ It is not however before the arrival of Tiresias that the effects of this inflexible and indiscriminate consistency become manifest. The seer declares that the gods have made known by the clearest signs that Creon's obstinacy excites their displeasure. He has reversed the order of nature, has entombed the living, and disinterred the dead. But still all may be well: nothing is yet irretrievably lost; if he will only acknowledge that he has gone too far, he may retrace his steps. The gods below claim Polynices, the gods above Antigone: it is not yet too late to restore them. ”

“ It is possible that many readers will think this a very exaggerated, if not a totally false description of the state of mind and feeling which Ajax discloses in the progress of the play. It has been very commonly supposed that the poet's aim was to exhibit in his character untameable pride and inflexible obstinacy, hardened and strained to the utmost by despair: a spirit which will not yield even to the gods, and instead of bowing beneath the stroke of their displeasure, rises the higher by the recoil, and asserts its own freedom and dignity by a voluntary death. ”