Asphodel

“ The fine flowers of this plant of the infernal regions produced grains which were believed by the ancients to afford nourishment to the dead. Accordingly we find that the Greeks planted Asphodel and Mallows round graves. The edible roots of the Asphodel were also wont to be laid as offerings in the tombs of the departed, and, according to Hesiod, they served as food for the poor. The Asphodel was held sacred to Bacchus, probably because he visited the infernal regions, and rescued his mother Semele from the kingdom of the departed. ”

“ Homer (Odyssey 24.) places the shades of the blessed in meadows of asphodel, because they were supposed to be restored to the state of primitive innocence, when men were contented with the simple and spontaneous aliment of the ground. Perhaps the Greeks had this allusion in their custom of planting the asphodel in the cemeteries, and also burying it with the bodies of the dead. It appears from Pliny, b. xxii. c. 22. that Hesiod had treated of the asphodel in some other work: as he is said to have spoken of it as a native of the woods.
[32] The food of man in deep concealment lies.] ”

“ And now they reach’d the earth’s remotest ends, And now the gates where evening Sol descends, And Leucas’ rock, and Ocean’s utmost streams, And now pervade the dusky land of dreams, And rest at last, where souls unbodied dwell In ever-flowing meads of asphodel. ”

“ When a soul knocks once, twice, at death's door, the sensation aroused within the palace must be considerable; and the grim Feature, by modern science so often dispossessed of his prey, must have learned by this time to pity Tantalus.
A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the Elysian shades, when the near arrival of G.D. was announced by no equivocal indications. From their seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver ghosts-poet, or historian—of Grecian or of Roman lore—to crown with unfading chaplets the half-finished love-labours of their unwearied scholiast. ”

“ Asphodel, as′fo-del, n. a kind of lily—in Greek mythology, the peculiar plant of the dead. In Greece they cover the bleakest hillsides with enduring blossom.—adj. Elysian. [Gr. asphodelos, a plant of the lily kind; cf. Homer's asphodelos leimōn, the meadow of the dead. See Daffodil.]
Asphyxia, as-fik′si-a, n. (lit.) suspended animation, suffocation, when the blood is in such a state as to render impossible a sufficiently free exchange of carbonic acid for oxygen—also Asphyx′y.—n. Asphyx′iant, a chemical substance which produces asphyxia.—adj. ”

“ ⁠With her ankles sunken in asphodel,
⁠She wept for the roses of earth, which fell
From her lap, when the wild car drave to hell. ”

“ I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel. ”

“ The passage through defect of history has long been dark, and commentators have adapted different senses to it, all conjectural. The Ceteans are said to have been a people of Mysia, of which Eurypylus was King. ↑ Κατ’ ασφοδελον λειμωνα—Asphodel was planted on the graves and around the tombs of the deceased, and hence the supposition, that the Stygian plain was clothed with asphodel.⁠F. ↑ Βασαζοντα must have this sense interpreted by what follows. To attempt to make the English numbers expressive as the Greek, is a labour like that of Sisyphus. ”

“ In Asphodelia the poets travel on all-fours, kick their heels toward Mercury, and utter startling cries. In Asphodelia a banker lives in the menagerie, and they feed mathematical instructors through a hole in the wall. This new participant had too much of the stern blood of the Puritan in his rustproof veins to kick more than one heel at a time, but when he observed a gamboling Asphodelian of seventy years he felt a little wishful, and permitted himself a trifling ululation. The local cheer-leader heard him and knew him at once for a Harvard Acutist, and there was joy in Asphodelia. ”

“ The sheep-shearings at Up-Hill Farm were a kind of rural Olympics. Shepherds came there from far and near to try their skill against each other,—young men in their prime mostly, with brown, ruddy faces, and eyes of that bright blue lustre which is only gained by a free, open-air life. The hillside was just turning purple with heather bloom, and along the winding, stony road the yellow asphodels were dancing in the wind. Everywhere there was the scent of bog-myrtle and wild-rose and sweetbrier, and the tinkling sound of becks babbling over glossy rocks ”

“ But for one person who receives the entire impress of a play of Sophocles at the first glance there are very many, by no means incapable of understanding him, who pass him by with a disappointed feeling that what is so smooth and finished cannot be otherwise than cold, and who contrast this superficial glimpse of a great poet with the instantaneous thrill which overpowered them at the first reading of the Cassandra scene in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, or the passionate speeches of Medea in Euripides. ”

“ For my wooer was a river-god, Acheloüs, who in three shapes10 was ever asking me from my sire,—coming now as a bull in bodily form, now as a serpent with sheeny coils, now with trunk of man and front of ox, while from a shaggy beard the streams of fountain-water flowed abroad. With the fear of such a suitor before mine eyes, I was always praying in my wretchedness that I might die, or ever I should come near to such a bed.
But at last, to my joy, came the glorious son of Zeus and Alcmena; who closed with him in combat, and delivered me. ”

“ He knows that those ancient chiefs did not trouble about their consciences: they killed in the fine old ruthless way. He does not try to make them real to himself at the cost of making them false to the spirit of the epos. The same objectiveness of treatment appears in another characteristic of Sophocles—the stress he lays on mere physical horror in the Œdipus, on physical pain in the Trachiniæ and the Philoctêtes. It is the spirit of the oldest, most savage epos. ”

“ And dost thou think to say these things unscathed?
Teir. I doubt it not, if truth retain her might.
Œdip. That might is not for thee; thou can'st not claim it, ⁠370
Blind in thine ears, thy reason, and thine eyes.
Teir. How wretched thou, thus hurling this reproach!
Such, all too soon, will all men hurl at thee.
⁠Œdip. In one long night thou liv'st, and can'st not hurt,
Or me, or any man who sees the light.
Teir. 'Tis not thy doom to owe thy fall to me;
Apollo is enough, be His the task.
Œdip. Are these devices Creon's, or thine own?
Teir. It is not Creon harms thee, but thyself. ”

“ This instinct for a definite plan first is the essence of the classical spirit; exuberance is rigorously repressed, symmetry and balance are the first, last and only aim. To some judges Sophocles is like a Greek temple, splendid but a little chilly; they miss the soaring ambition of Aeschylus or the more direct emotional appeal of Euripides. Yet it is a cardinal error to imagine that Sophocles is passionless ”

“ A poet who is uncompromisingly earnest in his realism, or unreserved in his imagination, is apt to jar upon his audience or to make them laugh. Sophocles avoids these dangers. He accepts throughout the traditional conception of heroes and saga-people. The various bits of criticism ascribed to him—"I draw men as they ought to be drawn; Euripides draws them as they are"; "Æschylus did the right thing, but without knowing it"—all imply the 'academic' standpoint. Sophocles is the one Greek writer who is 'classical' in the vulgar sense—almost in the same sense as Vergil and Milton. ”

“ She said nothing, but, tearing strips from her stole, proceeded deftly to bind them around the leg.
"Agathocles himself could not do better—nay, I doubt Aesculapius—" but she rose again quickly and placed her finger upon his lips.
"It is the gods who have saved us to each other. Do not make them angry, lest they withdraw their favour. I am ready to follow you, my lord Lucius." ”

“ Creon. I know it too, 'tis that that troubles me.
To yield is hard, but, holding out, to smite
One's soul with sorrow, this is harder still.
Chor. We need wise counsel, Ο Menœkeus' son.
Creon. What shall I do? Speak thou, and I 'll obey.
Chor. Go then, and free the maiden from her tomb,⁠1100
And give a grave to him who lies exposed.
Creon. Is this thy counsel? Dost thou bid me yield?
Chor. Without delay, Ο king, for lo! they come,
The Gods' swift-footed ministers of ill,
And in an instant lay the self-willed low.
Creon. Ah me! 'tis hard ”

“ Ism. E'en so, Ο king; no mind that ever lived
Stands firm in evil days, but goes astray.
Creon. Thine did, when, with the vile, vile deeds thou chosest.
Ism. How could I live without her presence here?
Creon. Speak not of presence. She is here no more.
Ism. And wilt thou slay thy son's betrothèd bride?
Creon. Full many a field there is which he may plough.⁠570
Ism. None like that plighted troth 'twixt him and her.
Creon. Wives that are vile I love not for my sons.
Ism. Ah, dearest Hæmon, how thy father shames thee!
Creon. Thou with that marriage dost but vex my soul. ”

“ Œneus, king of Pleuron in Ætolia, had a fair daughter, Deianeira, and many sought her in marriage, chiefly the river god Acheloös, whom, she dreaded even to look upon. And Heracles came, and conquered the river god, and took Deianeira as his bride. And as they journeyed to Tiryns, they passed the stream Euenos, where Nessos the Kentaur was wont to carry travellers across. And as he bore Deianeira, he laid rude hands on her, and Heracles, seeing this, shot him with an arrow, that had been dipped in the venom of the Lernæan hydra ”

“ Hæmon and Antigone, as we have seen, are lovers, and, even in introducing them at all, Sophocles had gone a step beyond Æschylus, with whom Love is simply the divine and eternal principle of fecundity—a law, and not a passion. [7] But there is little romance or sentiment about these Greek lovers; and modern criticism at once decides that Sophocles has lost his opportunity, for he does not even once bring them on the stage together. ”

“ One aspect of the poetry of Sophocles has now been noticed; the character of the treatment applied by him to those legends which supplied the chief material of Greek tragedy. It has been pointed out that the heroes of Æschylus are essentially superhuman; that the heroes of Euripides are essentially human, and often of a low human type; that the heroes of Sophocles are at once human and superhuman: human generically, by the expression of certain general human qualities ”

“ The fragments of Sophocles are, perhaps, in even a stricter sense than those of Æschylus, a bare anthology, and the best way of dealing with them is to select those which illustrate the beauty of his style or the ripeness of his wisdom. Few, indeed, are full enough to afford materials for reconstructing the plot of a lost play. What, for instance, can be more tantalizing to the student of Greek manners and sentiments than to know that Sophocles wrote a drama with the title Lovers of Achilles, and yet to have no means of judging of its fable better than is given in this pretty simile? ”

“ As Aeschylus delights in transporting us to the convulsions of the primary world of the Titans, Sophocles, on the other hand, never avails himself of divine interposition except where it is absolutely necessary; he formed men, according to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not more moral and exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than they really are; and while he took every thing in the most human sense, he was at the same time open to its higher significance. ”

“ I have sent the son of Menoeceus, Creon, mine own wife's brother, to the Pythian house of Phoebus, 70to learn by what deed or word I might deliver this town. And already, when the lapse of days is reckoned, it troubles me what he doth; for he tarries strangely, beyond the fitting space. But when he comes, then shall I be no true man if I do not all that the god shows.
Pr. Nay, in season hast thou spoken; at this moment these sign to me that Creon draws near.
Oe. O king Apollo, may he come to us in the 80brightness of saving fortune, even as his face is bright! ”

“ 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.
To recur once more to the much-abused analogy of statuary:—the work of Aeschylus may be compared to a colossal frieze, while that of Sophocles resembles the pediment of a smaller temple. ”

“ Sophocles, he observes, is the more elegant painter of outward forms and manners; but Æschylus catches most of the enthusiasm of the passion he describes, and communicates to the reader the lofty impulses of his own mind. In giving a poetical colouring to objects from the suggestions of his own genius—in describing not so much things themselves, as the impression which they make on the imagination in a state of strong excitement, he more nearly resembles some of the modern poets, than any of his countrymen. ”

“ Too trained a judgment has she so to err.⁠1250
Chor. I know not. To my mind, or silence hard,
Or vain wild cries, are signs of bitter woe.
Mess. Soon we shall know, within the house advancing,
If, in the passion of her heart, she hides
A secret purpose. Truly dost thou speak;
There is a terror in that silence hard.
Chor. [Seeing Creon approaching with the corpse of
⁠Hæmon in his arms.]
And lo! the king himself is drawing nigh,
And in his hands he bears a record clear,
No woe (if I may speak) by others caused,
Himself the great offender.⁠1260
Enter Creon, bearing Hæmon's body. ”