Sophocles

“ The ideal of the tragic poet may be less perfect; or rather he does not attempt to set before us abstractedly any single ideal. But the grand types of character which he presents to the world are not merely imaginary. They are creatures of flesh and blood, men and women,to whom the unsullied purity of their homes, the freedom and power of their country, the respect and love of their fellow-citizens, are inestimably dear. ”

“ Without thine edict;—if before the time,
I count it gain. Who does not gain by death,
That lives, as I do, amid boundless woe?
Slight is the sorrow of such doom to me.
But had I suffered my own mother’s child,
Fallen in blood, to be without a grave,
That were indeed a sorrow. ”

“ All the evil Oedipus bequeathed? All horror,
All pain, all outrage, falls on us! And now
The General's proclamation of to-day—
Hast thou not heard?—Art thou so slow to hear
When harm from foes threatens the souls we love?
⁠Ismene. No word of those we love, Antigone,
Painful or glad, hath reached me, since we two
Were utterly deprived of our two brothers,
Cut off with mutual stroke, both in one day. ”

“ They hid his corse, and honoured him so highly,
Who came to set on fire their pillared shrines,
With all the riches of their offerings,
And to make nothing of their land and laws?
Or, hast thou seen them honouring villany?
That cannot be. Long time the cause of this
Hath come to me in secret murmurings
From maleontents of Thebes, who under yoke
Turned restive, and would not accept my sway.
Well know I, these have bribed the watchmen here
To do this for some fee. For nought hath grown
Current among mankind so mischievous
As money. ”

“ One might suppose, in reading some modern writers, that the Nymphs and Fauns, the River-Gods and Pan, were at least as prominent in all Greek poetry as Zeus, Apollo, and Athena, or that Apollo was only the sweet singer and not also the prophet of retribution.
The fresh and unimpaired enjoyment of the Beautiful is certainly the aspect of ancient life and literature which most attracted the humanists of the sixteenth century, and still most impresses those amongst ourselves who for various reasons desire to point the contrast between Paganism and Judaism. ”

“ Nothing;—to my delight, and to my grief.
One’s self to escape disaster is great joy;
Yet to have drawn a friend into distress
Is painful. But mine own security
To me is of more value than aught else.
⁠Cr. Thou, with thine eyes down-fastened to the
⁠earth!
Dost thou confess to have done this, or deny it?
⁠Ant. I deny nothing. I avow the deed.
⁠Cr. (to Watchman) . Thou may’st betake thyself
⁠whither thou wilt,
Acquitted of the grievous charge, and free.
(To Antigone) And thou,—no prating talk, but briefly
⁠tell,
Knew'st thou our edict that forbade this thing? ”

“ Another aspect of that world-old marvel, 'the love of women,' was presented in Aias' captive bride, Tecmessa. This softer type also attains to heroic grandeur in Dêanira, the wronged wife of Heracles, whose fatal error is caused by the innocent working of her wounded love.
It is strange that so acute a critic as A. W. Schlegel should have doubted the Sophoclean authorship of the Trachiniae. If its religious and moral lessons are even less obtrusive than those of either Oedipus and of the Antigone, there is no play which more directly pierces to the very heart of humanity. ”

“ Men who were weary of conventionality and of the weight of custom 'heavy as frost and deep almost as life,' have longed for the vision of 'Oread or Dryad glancing through the shade,' or to 'hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.' Meanwhile, that in which the Greeks most resembled us, 'the human heart by which we live,' for the very reason that it lies so near to us, is too apt to be lost from our conception of them. ”

“ The most valuable part of every literature is something which transcends the period and nation out of which it springs.
On the other hand, much that at first sight seems primitive in Greek tragedy belongs more to the subject than to the mode of handling. The age of Pericles was in advance of that in which the legends were first Hellenized and humanized, just as this must have been already far removed from the earliest stages of mythopoeic imagination. The reader of Aeschylus or Sophocles should therefore be warned against attributing to the poet’s invention that which is given in the fable. ”

“ The subject, as he has chosen to treat it, is the heroic endurance of a woman who devotes her life to the vindication of intolerable wrongs done to her father, and the restoration of her young brother to his hereditary rights. Hers is the human agency which for this purpose works together with Apollo. But the divine intention is concealed from her. She suffers countless indignities from her father's enemies, of whom her own mother is the chief. ”

“ Such counsels of perfection as 'Love your enemies,' or 'A good man can harm no one, not even an enemy',—are beyond the horizon of tragedy, unless dimly seen in the person of Antigone. The co-existence of savage vindictiveness with the most affectionate tenderness is characteristic of heroes and heroines alike, and produces some of the most moving contrasts. ”

“ Was not Eteocles thy brother too?
⁠Ant. My own true brother from both parents' blood.
⁠Cr. This duty was impiety to him.
⁠Ant. He that is dead will not confirm that word.
⁠Cr. If you impart his honours to the vile.
⁠Ant. It was his brother, not a slave, who fell.
⁠Cr. But laying waste the land for which he
⁠fought.
⁠Ant. Death knows no difference, but demands his
⁠due.
⁠Cr. Yet not equality 'twixt good and bad.
⁠Ant. Both may be equal yonder; who can tell?
⁠Cr. An enemy is hated even in death.
⁠Ant. Love, and not hatred, is the part for me. ”

“ But on turning from the forms of Greek art to the substance of Greek literature, we find that Beauty, although everywhere an important element, is by means the sole or even the chief attribute of the greatest writings, nor is the Hellenic consciousness, confined within the life of Nature. unless this term is allowed to comprehend man with all his thoughts and aspirations. ”

“ Considered simply as works of art, the plays of Sophocles stand alone amongst dramatic writings in their degree of concentration and complex unity.
⁠1. The interest of a Sophoclean drama is always intensely personal, and is almost always centred in an individual destiny. In other words, it is not historical or mythical, but ethical. Single persons stand out magnificently in Aeschylus. But the action is always larger than any single life. Each tragedy or trilogy resembles the fragment of a sublime Epic poem. ”

“ Thy father's, be his actions what they may?
⁠Haemon. I am thine, father, and will follow still
Thy good directions; nor would I prefer
The fairest bride to thy wise government.
⁠Cr. That, O my son! should be thy constant mind,
In all to bend thee to thy fathers will.
Therefore men pray to have around their hearths
Obedient offspring, to requite their foes
With harm, and honour whom their father loves ”

“ Religion, in the sense here indicated, is the mainspring and vital principle of Tragedy. The efforts of Aeschylus and Sophocles were sustained by it, and its inevitable decay through the scepticism which preceded Socrates was the chief hindrance to the tragic genius of Euripides. Yet the inequality of which we have consequently to complain in him is redeemed by pregnant hints of something yet 'more deeply interfused,' which in him, as in his two great predecessors, is sometimes felt as 'modern' because it is not of an age but for all time. ”

“ Now the 'thoughts and aspirations' which are ,nowhere absent from Greek literature, and make a centre of growing warmth and light in its Periclean period—when the conception of human nature for the first time takes definite shape—have no less of Religion in them than underlay the 'creed outworn.' To think otherwise would be an error of the same kind as that 'abuse of the word 'Atheism' against which the author of the work above alluded to protests so forcibly. ”

“ In one of the Epic poems which narrated the fall of Troy, the figure of Aias was more prominent than in the Iliad. He alone and unassisted was there said to have repulsed Hector from the ships, and he had the chief share, although in this he was aided by Odysseus, in rescuing the dead body of Achilles. Yet Achilles' arms were awarded by the votes of the chieftains, as the prize of valour, not to Aias, but to Odysseus. This, no doubt, meant that wisdom is better than strength. ”

“ No purer ideal of virtuous youth has been imagined than the son of Achilles, who in this play, though sorely tempted, sets faithfulness before ambition.
⁠6. In the Electra, which, though much earlier than the Philoctetes, is still a work of his mature genius, our poet appears at first sight to be in unequal competition with Aeschylus. If the Theban trilogy of the elder poet had remained entire, a similar impression might have been produced by the Oedipus Tyrannus. It is best to lay such comparisons aside, and to consider the work of Sophocles simply on its own merits. ”

“ The Atridae would prohibit Aias' funeral; but Odysseus, who has been specially enlightened by Athena, advises generous forbearance, and his counsel prevails. The part representing the disgrace and death of Aias is more affecting to modern readers than the remainder of the drama. But we should bear in mind that the vindication of Aias after death, and his burial with undiminished honours, had an absorbing interest for the Athenian and Salaminian spectator.
Philoctetes also is rejected by man and accepted by Destiny. ”

“ This motive must of course enter into all tragedy—nothing can be finer than the contrast of Cassandra to Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon,—but in Sophocles it is all-pervading, and some of the minor effects of it are so subtle that although inevitably felt by the spectator they are often lost upon the mere reader or student. And every touch, however transient, is made to contribute to the main effect. ”

“ By the same means the situation is humanized to the last degree, and the heart of the spectator, although strained to the uttermost with pity for the heroic maiden whose life when full of brightest hopes was sacrificed to affection and piety, has still some feeling left for the living desolation of the man, whose patriotic zeal, degenerating into tyranny, brought his city to the brink of ruin, and cost him the lives of his two sons and of his wife, whose dying curse, as well as that of Haemon, is donounced upon him. ”

“ Uprolls the storm-heap'd tangle on the shore,
While cliff to beaten cliff resounds with sullen roar.
The stock of Cadmus from old time, I know,⁠I 2
⁠Hath woe on woe,
Age following age, the living on the dead,
Fresh sorrow falling on each new-ris'n head,
None freed by God from ruthless overthrow. ”

“ But when we ask, 'Righteousness in what relation?'—'Faithfulness to whom?'—the Gorgias is silent; and when the vacant outline is filled up in the Republic, we are presented with an ideal of man's social relations, which, although it may be regarded as the ultimate development of existing tendencies, yet has no immediate bearing on any actual condition of the world. ”

“ I see you have some strange thing to declare.
⁠Watch. A man will shrink who carries words of fear.
⁠Cr. Let us have done with you. Tell your tale, and
⁠go.
⁠Watch. Well, here it is. The corse hath burial
From some one who is stolen away and gone,
But first hath strown dry dust upon the skin,
And added what religious rites require.
⁠Cr. Ha!
What man hath been so daring in revolt? ”

“ The Philoctetes, like the Oedipus at Colonos, was a work of Sophocles' old age; and while it can hardly be said that the fire of tragic feeling is abated in either of these plays, dramatic effect is modified in both of them by the influence of the poet's contemplative mood. The interest of the action in the Philoctetes is more inward and psychological than in any other ancient drama. ”

“ And whatever elements of philosophic theory or mystic exaltation the drama may have reflected, it was still more emphatically the repository of some of the most precious traditions of civilized humanity—traditions which philosophy has sometimes tended to extenuate, if not to destroy. ”

“ The army was defeated, and the two brothers slew each other in single combat. On this Creon, the brother-in-law of Oedipus, succeeding to the chief power, forbade the burial of Polynices. But Antigone, sister of the dead, placing the dues of affection and piety before her obligation to the magistrate, disobeyed the edict at the sacrifice of her life. Creon carried out his will, but lost his son Haemon and his wife Eurydice, and received their curses on his head. His other son, Megareus, had previously been devoted as a victim to the good of the state.
ANTIGONE
Antigone⁠Ismene
⁠Antigone. ”

“ An educated student of Italian painting knows how to discriminate—say in an Assumption by Botticelli—between the traditional conventions, the contemporary ideas, and the refinements of the artist`s own fancy. The same indulgence must be extended to dramatic art. ”

“ Touching. the sons of Oedipus. The man—
Etcocles I mean—who died for Thebes
Fighting with eminent prowess on her side,
Shall be entombed with every sacred rite
That follows to the grave the lordliest dead. ”

“ Faring amidst high-swelling seas that rudely surge
⁠around.
And Earth, supreme of mighty Cods, eldest, imperishable.
Eternal, he with patient furrow wears and wears away
⁠As year by year the plough-shares turn and
⁠turn,—
Subduing her unwearied strength with children of the
⁠steed.
And wound in woven coils of nets he seizeth for his
⁠prey⁠I. 2
The aëry tribe of birds and wilding armies of the
⁠chase.
And sea-born millions of the deep—man is so crafty-
⁠wise. ”