THE WORKS OF SOPHOCLES
Of more than a hundred plays written by Sophocles, only seven
survive entire. These shall now be discussed in what is probably the
chronological order.
The AJAX[302] (Αἴας, sometimes called Αἴας μαστιγοφόρος, from his
scourging of the cattle) cannot be dated. It is generally agreed that
this work and the _Antigone_ are the two earliest extant plays; which
of the two was produced first it is difficult to say.[303] Perhaps an
important feature of technique settles this—both tragedies need three
actors, but the _Ajax_ in this respect is more tentative than the
_Antigone_.
The scene is laid before the tent of Ajax on the plain of Troy. Enraged
by the action of the Greeks in awarding to Odysseus instead of to himself
the arms of the dead Achilles, Ajax sought to slay Agamemnon, Menelaus,
and others in their sleep. The goddess Athena sent madness upon him so
that he slaughtered cattle in their stead. Coming to himself he realizes
his shame, and eluding his friends—the chorus of Salaminian sailors and
the Trojan captive, Tecmessa (who has borne him a son),—he retires to
a lonely spot by the sea and falls upon his sword. His brother Teucer
returns too late to save him, but in time to confront and defy Agamemnon
and Menelaus, who have decreed that Ajax’ body shall be left unburied.
At length Agamemnon is induced by Odysseus to forgo his purpose.
No Greek play gains so much by re-reading as the _Ajax_. The character
of the hero steadily grows on us; it is not that we admire him more, but
that we feel a deeper sympathy. As he gains in clearness, he lifts the
other characters into the light. Ajax is a man dowered with nobility,
sensitiveness, and self-reliance, but ruined by the excess of those
qualities. His nobility has become ambition, his sensitiveness morbidity,
his self-reliance pride. He offends Heaven by his haughtiness, and is
humbled; then, rather than accept his lesson, he shuns disgrace by
suicide. This resolution is strong enough to overbear the appeals of
Tecmessa and the silent sway of his little son; he faces death calmly and
even thoughtfully. Grouped round the central figure are first Tecmessa
and Teucer, and on a lower plane Odysseus, Menelaus, Agamemnon, and the
chorus. Athena stands apart.
Tecmessa is one of the loveliest creations of Sophocles; there clings
about her a silvery charm which is strangely refreshing amid the turbid
grandeur of the play. Tenderness, patience, courage—these are commonplace
enough upon the stage; yet Sophocles has made of them something frail but
indestructible, and touched her with his own greatest charm—an unearthly
eloquence of which we shall speak later:—
ἀλλ’ ἴσχε κἀμοῦ μνῆστιν. ἀνδρί τοι χρεὼν
μνήμην προσεῖναι, τερπνὸν εἴ τί που πάθοι.[304]
When Ajax is dead, it is she, not Teucer (as Ajax had hoped) who finds
the body, and this marvel of quiet tenderness gleams forth again. She
hardly laments at all; the chorus who accompany her are more moved.
So accustomed is she to sorrow and self-repression that grief is her
natural element; she utters a few quiet words of noble pity, and when
the sailors press forward to view the dead she gently says “ye must not
look on him,” and covers the body with a robe. Her self-command is so
absolute that it can bend; she will even say “Alas! What shall I do?”
when confronted with a mere perplexity about the removal of the corpse.
Teucer is Ajax himself without the madness and the illumination; he
stands in the same relation to his half-brother as Mark Antony in
Shakespeare to Julius Cæsar; he is an ideal presenter of Ajax’ claims if
they are to be presented at all to people like Menelaus and Agamemnon.
Menelaus is more active in debate, more brilliantly vulgar, than his
brother, who wisely takes his stand upon general principles, and hardly
mentions at all the decision not to bury Ajax. Agamemnon is conscious
of his weak position; finally, he succeeds in retiring without complete
loss of dignity. Odysseus is apparently intended as the antithesis to
Ajax—discreet, forgiving, and impressed by the power of Heaven. Though
but a sketch, he is a striking figure; after all the anguish and outcry,
it is the normal man who emerges as the pivot of events and saves the
situation.
The Salaminian sailors offering no special features, there remains
only Athena, who dominates the “prologue”. In contrast with the
fully-developed beings whom we have studied in the _Oresteia_ she
is amazingly crude. The fact is that we ought not to consider her
“character” at all. She is simply divine punishment roughly (but not
casually) personified and given the name Athena. She gloats over the
madman whom even the mortal standing beside her pities, and the only
lesson she draws for him is that men must shun pride. It is natural,
but useless, to call her a fiend; she serves merely as the visible and
audible symbol that Heaven punishes haughty independence of spirit. That
instead of mere evolutions of puppets we have a striking drama is due
simply to the fact that Sophocles is interested far more in Ajax than in
the goddess.
Two real or apparent defects must be noted. Firstly, we are shocked, or
we should be shocked, by the actions (if not the character) of Ajax—a
point often disregarded, probably through an idea that his bloodshed
was caused by madness. But the goddess, by so deluding him, turned his
rage from man to beast. He makes a deliberate attempt to murder the
Atridæ in their sleep, together with an indefinitely large number of
their followers, and this in the course of a campaign. It can hardly
be doubted that the doom pronounced by the general, that such a man
(to ignore his personality for the moment) shall not be buried, would
have met with faint reprobation, either at the time supposed or among
the contemporaries of the poet. Again, the indifference with which Ajax
treats Tecmessa amounts to sheer brutality. Many readers have supposed
that the prince cherishes affection for her, but conceals it under a show
of roughness to avoid “breaking down”. This is a mere fancy. Nothing in
Ajax’ conduct, and practically[305] nothing in his words, betrays any
interest whatsoever in Tecmessa. The man is absorbed almost entirely by
his sense of wounded dignity. He bids an affectionate farewell to his
child, he speaks lovingly of his own parents and of Teucer; but nothing
can prevent him from escaping disgrace by self-destruction. When about to
fall upon his sword he mingles with his farewells a fierce behest to the
Furies to destroy the whole Greek host which has slighted him. So far as
the first part of this tragedy is concerned, Ajax is a magnificent brute;
he is better dead.
The second difficulty is that Ajax dies at v. 865, but the play continues
for five or six hundred lines more. This great space is occupied by a
long dispute about his burial, which modern readers find tedious. But the
difficulty arises from a mischievous idea that the culmination of every
tragedy is the hero’s death. Often it is only a step towards the real
crisis. In _Ajax_ the theme is not his death, but his rehabilitation: the
disgrace, the suicide, the veto on his burial, Teucer’s defiance, the
persuasions of Odysseus, are all absolutely necessary. The culminating
point is the dispute about his burial, especially since Ajax was one of
the Attic “heroes,” and the centre of a hero’s cult was his tomb.[306]
This explanation enables us to regard the whole play as an organic unity.
It helps, moreover, to meet the first difficulty—the character of Ajax.
It must be remembered that a man became a “hero” not necessarily through
any nobility or holiness of his life. It was rather the fact that he had
passed through strange, unnatural experiences, had even committed morbid
crimes, so long as those offences were purged by strange sufferings and
death, violent, superhuman, or pitiable. Such was Œdipus, and such is
Ajax. Greek feeling would have made a “hero” of Lear, of Hamlet, perhaps
of Othello. Ajax is a man of essentially noble mould—this the speeches of
Teucer express admirably—who sins deeply and suffers strangely. That he
happens to evoke less admiration from us than the other tragic figures
just mentioned matters little. Lack of tenderness towards women was the
rule at Athens; and hatred of enemies, which Ajax carried to such insane
length, was commoner still. But what of the lowered tone which marks the
end of the tragedy? Teucer’s speech on the warlike achievements of his
brother is, indeed, beyond praise; but much of his other remarks, and of
the language held by the Atridæ, is mere brawling. But these quarrels
bring into relief the proud nobility of the man who lies between the
disputants, dead because he would not stay to rehabilitate himself by
such bickering.
The ANTIGONE[307] (Ἀντιγόνη) was produced about 441 B.C. The scene is
laid before the palace at Thebes, on the morning after the repulse of
the Argives who had come to restore Polynices. Creon, King of Thebes,
publishes an edict that no one shall give burial to the corpse of
Polynices on pain of death. Antigone, sister of the dead man, despite
the advice of her sister Ismene, performs the rite and is haled before
Creon. She insists that his edict cannot annul the unwritten primeval
laws of Heaven. The king, disregarding the admonitions of his son Hæmon,
betrothed to Antigone, sends her to the cave of death. The prophet
Tiresias warns him that the gods are angered by the pollution which comes
from the unburied corpse. Urged by the chorus, Creon relents, and hastens
first to bury Polynices, then to release Antigone, who has, however,
already hanged herself. Hæmon stabs himself by her body. On hearing of
his death his mother Eurydice, wife of Creon, commits suicide. The play
ends with Creon’s helpless grief.
This play is perhaps the most admired of Sophocles’ works. But the
admiration often rests on a misunderstanding. It is customary to regard
Antigone as a noble martyr and Creon as a stupidly cruel tyrant, because
of an assumption that she must be what a similar figure would be, and
often has been, in a modern play. Memories of Cordelia confronting Lear,
of Dorothea in _The Virgin Martyr_ of Massinger and Dekker, beguile us
so that we read that character into the play. The principle upheld by
Antigone, and that upheld by Creon, are _prima facie_ of equal validity.
The poet may, possibly, agree with Antigone rather than with the king,
but the current belief, that the princess is splendidly right and her
oppressor ignobly wrong, stultifies the play; it would become not tragedy
but crude melodrama. In judging Attic literature there is nothing which
it is more vital to remember than the immense importance attached by
Athenians to the State and its claims. We are alive to the sanctity
of human life, but think far less of the sanctity of national life.
An English reader, therefore, regards Creon with all the reprobation
which his treatment of Antigone can possibly deserve; but whatever
justification is inherent in the case he almost ignores.
The truth is that Creon commits a terrible act owing to a terrible
provocation. His act is the insult to Polynices’ body, which he maintains
at the cost of Antigone’s life; his justification is the fact that the
dead man, though a Theban, was attacking Thebes and would have destroyed
the State. Antigone stands for respect to private affection, Creon for
respect to the community. It is impossible to say at the outset which
is the more important, and the problem may well be insoluble. But it is
precisely because of this that the _Antigone_ is a tragedy. To accept
the customary view, and yet insist that Sophocles is a great dramatist,
is mere superstition; the work becomes the record of an insane murder.
On _a priori_ grounds, then, we may believe that Sophocles by no means
condemns Creon off-hand. It is not satisfactory to argue that Thebes
should have been satisfied with the death of the invader. Since he was a
Theban his attack was looked on as the foulest treachery, which merited
extreme penalty, both by way of revenge and as a warning to others.
(Just the same view is held by the authorities in the _Ajax_.) The play
presents a problem both for the king and for his kinswoman: “I am right
to punish this traitor’s corpse; am I justified in killing others who
thwart the punishment?” “I am right to show love and pity for my dead
brother; am I justified in flouting the State?” Antigone is only Creon
over again with a different equipment of sympathies. That one loves his
country with a cold concentration which finds enemies and treachery
everywhere, while the other passionately loves her dead brother, should
not blind us to the truth that Antigone has all Creon’s hardness and
narrowness, and especially all his obstinacy. That tenderness and womanly
affection which we attribute to the princess are amiable inventions of
our own, except the love which she bears Polynices. This love is not
to be in any sense belittled, but it is simply an instinct, like that
of Creon in matters of State, an instinct to which she will, like him,
sacrifice all else. If Creon sacrifices Antigone for his ideal, she
sacrifices Hæmon for hers. He shows brutality to his son, she to her
sister. That a compromise between the demands of the State and private
conscience is, however unwelcome, necessary, never occurs to either
party, and those who, like Hæmon and Ismene, urge such a thought upon
them are insulted. This blindness to the psychology of Antigone has led
to actual meddling with Sophocles’ text. In her last long speech occurs
a celebrated “difficulty,” namely, her statement[308] that if the dead
man had been a child or husband of hers, she would not thus have given
her life; but the case of Polynices is different, since (her father and
mother being dead) she can never have another brother. These lines are
generally bracketed as spurious because unworthy of Antigone’s character
and inconsistent with the reason for her act which she has already[309]
given, namely, the “unwritten and unshaken laws of Heaven”. Any idea that
the passage was inserted in “later times” is rendered impossible by the
fact that Aristotle[310] quotes it (about 340 B.C.) and the presumption
is that the words are the poet’s own. Indeed, the “difficulty” exists
only in the minds of those who attribute inconsistency in a character to
incompetence in the playwright. But while illogical people exist it is
hard to see why a dramatist should not depict them. Antigone’s “reason”
is stupid, no doubt, but what could be more dramatic? It is no novelty
that a person capable of courageous action cannot argue well about it;
there is a logic of the heart that has little to do with the logic of the
brain. Antigone _has_ no reasons; she has only an instinct. Here, and
here only, Sophocles has pressed this point home, and the popular view
has no resource but to reject the passage.
Whom does Sophocles himself approve, the king or his opponent? Neither.
Attention to the plot will make this clear. The _peripeteia_ or “recoil”
is the revelation that the gods are angered by the pollution arising from
the body, and that owing to their anger grave peril threatens Creon’s
family. It is this news which causes his change of purpose. Polynices
is therefore buried by the king himself despite his edict. These facts
show that ultimately both Antigone and Creon are wrong. Heaven is
against Creon, as he is forced at last to see—Antigone’s appeal to the
everlasting unwritten laws is in this sense justified. But Antigone is
wrong also. She should have left the gods to vindicate their own law.
Such a statement may seem ignobly oblivious of religion, human nature,
and the courage which she shows. But it is not denied that Antigone is
noble and valiant: she may be both, yet mistaken and wrong-headed. One is
bound to consider the facts of the plot. Why is she at first undetected
yet compelled by circumstances to perform the “burial”-rites twice?
Simply to remind us that, if Creon is resolved, she _cannot_ “bury”
Polynices. The king has posted guards, who remove the pious dust which
she has scattered; and this gruesome contest could continue indefinitely.
She throws away her life, _and with no possible confidence that her
brother will in the end be buried_. It is precisely this blindness of
hers which makes the tragedy—her union of noble courage and unswerving
affection with inability to see the crude facts of a hateful situation.
Her obstinacy brings about the punishment of Creon’s obstinacy, for
Eurydice’s death is caused by Hæmon’s, and Hæmon’s by Antigone’s. Had she
not intervened all these lives would have been saved. The whole action
might have dwindled to a mere revolting incident: the king’s barbarity,
the anger of the gods, and the king’s submission. The tragedy would have
disappeared: it is Antigone’s splendid though perverse valour which
creates the drama.
A difficulty of structure has been found[311] in the fact that Creon,
despite his haste to free Antigone, tarries for the obsequies of
Polynices. Why does he not save the living first? This “problem” arises
merely from our insistence on the overwhelming importance of Antigone
and our disregard of the real perspective. The explanation is simply
that Creon has just been warned of the grave danger to the whole State
and his family from the anger with which the gods view his treatment of
Polynices—an offence which Tiresias emphasizes far more than that against
Antigone; and the community, nay, even the several persons of Creon’s
family, are more important than one woman.
The lyrics of this play are among the finest in existence. The first
ode expressing the relief of Thebes at the destruction of the ravening
monster of war, the third which describes the persistence of sorrow from
generation to generation of the Theban princes, the brief song which
celebrates the all-compelling influence of love, with its exquisite
reminiscence of Phrynichus,[312] the last lyric, a graceful invocation
to the God Dionysus, and above all, the famous ode upon man and his
quenchless enterprise, all these are truly Attic in their serene,
somewhat frigid, loveliness.
The ELECTRA[313] (Ἠλέκτρα) has by most[314] critics been regarded as
next in time to the _Antigone_. The scene shows the palace of Agamemnon
now inhabited by his murderers, Clytæmnestra and her lover Ægisthus.
Orestes, son of Agamemnon, returns to avenge him by slaying his own
mother Clytæmnestra; he is accompanied by Pylades, his friend, and
by an old slave. Chrysothemis, daughter of Agamemnon and sister of
Electra, is sent by Clytæmnestra to appease the ghost of Agamemnon, but
is persuaded by Electra to pray his help for Orestes. The slave of
Orestes brings false news to the palace that Orestes has been killed in
a chariot-race at Delphi, so that the queen is relieved from fear of
vengeance. Chrysothemis returns, joyfully announcing Orestes’ arrival—she
has seen a lock of his hair on the tomb; but her sister replies that he
is dead. While Electra mourns for her brother he himself brings in an
urn, pretending to be a messenger who has conveyed home the ashes of
Orestes. Electra’s lamentation over it reveals who she is, and Orestes
makes himself known. Then the men go inside to slay Clytæmnestra, while
Electra remains watching for Ægisthus. After the slaughter he arrives and
triumphantly orders the body to be carried forth, but when he uncovers it
he finds the corpse of Clytæmnestra. He is then driven within to death.
The _Choephorœ_, the _Electra_ of Sophocles, and the _Electra_ of
Euripides supply the only surviving instance in which the three
tragedians handled the same story; at present it is enough to note the
differences between the method of Sophocles and that of the _Choephorœ_.
For Æschylus the slaying of Clytæmnestra is a question of religion and
ethics, for Sophocles it is a matter of psychology, the emotional history
of Electra. He is content to take the religious facts for granted, and
then to proceed with no misgivings to a purely human drama. The play
begins amid the bright, cheerful surroundings of dawn and ends with
happiness. When Orestes comes forth, his sword wet with his mother’s
blood, he is entirely satisfied and untouched by any misgivings, simply
because the question of matricide has been settled for him by Heaven.
He is a personified theory of Olympian religion. His words to Electra
after the queen is dead: “In the house all is well, if Apollo’s oracle
spoke well,”[315] are the summary of Sophocles’ religious point of view.
Carefully and confidently referring the question of this matricide to a
higher judge than Man, he proceeds to his actual business. Equally marked
is the difference between the closing sentence of the _Choephorœ_,
“Where then will end the fatal fury, when pass into closing calm?”[316]
and that of the later work: “O house of Atreus, through how many
sufferings hast thou come forth at last in freedom, crowned with good by
this day’s enterprise!”[317] For Sophocles the deed is done and behind
us; for Æschylus it lives to beget new sorrows.
Electra dominates the action, scarcely leaving the scene after her first
entry. Though not a great character-study, she impresses us by the
pathos of her situation and by the splendid expression of her emotions;
her lament over the funeral urn is perfect in the rhetoric of sorrow.
Almost motionless throughout the long and varied action; the mark for
successive onslaughts of insult, misery, surprise, grief, hatred, and
joy, she is thrown into relief by all who approach her, especially
Chrysothemis, whose princely robes add emphasis to the heroic meaning of
the sordid dress worn by her royal sister. She is a simple character and
needs little ornament; her devotion, patience, and courage are plain to
behold. But we should note the masterly, yet unobtrusive way in which her
feelings towards Clytæmnestra are portrayed. Hating her steadily as the
slayer of Agamemnon, she cannot quite forget (as does Euripides’ heroine)
that Clytæmnestra is her mother. After her outburst of reproach against
the queen she has enough flexibility of mind to own[318] that she is in
a way ashamed of it—a simple touch which shows Sophocles a master, not a
slave, of his own conceptions. A more subtle indication of her spirit is
shown in Electra’s speech to Chrysothemis urging her to aid in the deed
of vengeance. All she proposes is that they should slay Ægisthus. But
there is an undercurrent of emphasis which shows[319] that she intends
the death of Clytæmnestra also.
The other personages are mostly well-drawn. Orestes is commonplace,
but the other four are distinctly imagined. The tiny part of Ægisthus
admirably reveals the malicious upstart; Chrysothemis is another Ismene,
with more energy and lightness. The Pædagogus reminds one of the guard in
the _Antigone_ by his quaint witticisms—“if I had not been watching at
the door from the first, your plans would have entered the house before
your bodies”.[320] Clytæmnestra, too, is admirable. More closely akin
to an Euripidean than to an Æschylean character, she defends herself
elaborately and gives way to fits of ill-temper and petty rancour; but
she has some maternal feeling left—witness the confusion of emotions with
which she greets the news of Orestes’ death.
The sorrows and character of Electra form one of the two great features
of this tragedy. The other is the stage-craft. First there is a distinct
element of intrigue, that is, of plot as contrived not by the poet but
by the characters. Not only do the avengers gain access to the house
by a false story; this much is to be found already in the _Choephorœ_.
There are two distinct visitors to the house: the Pædagogus with his tale
of the fatal race, and Orestes bringing the funeral urn. It is to this
duplication—for otherwise Clytæmnestra would have been present when the
urn was brought—that we owe the splendid scene of the Recognition, with
its introductory lament by Electra. Again, as in Æschylus the nurse sent
by Clytæmnestra is induced to change her message to Ægisthus in a way
vital to the conspirators, so here Chrysothemis is caused by her sister
to invoke the aid of Agamemnon against the queen instead of seeking to
assuage his wrath. Further, whereas Ægisthus might have entered the
house and been slain without more ado, Electra, by telling him that the
messengers have brought the very body of Orestes home, induces the
king to summon them forth with the corpse; thus the end of the play is
rendered vigorous (indeed melodramatic) by his triumphant unveiling of
the body which proves to be that of the queen.
Besides these admirable strokes of a rather sophisticated “sense of
the theatre” there are powerful effects which arise naturally from the
circumstances. Clytæmnestra offers a prayer to the very god who has sent
the avenger. Electra’s wonderful address to the ashes of her brother
gains greatly by the fact that he stands living beside her. A splendidly
dramatic effect is obtained by the return of Chrysothemis—the most
“modern” point of the whole work. She has been sent away for a certain
purpose, but in the stress of later happenings we forget her. Suddenly
she re-appears with news—the result of her mission—news startling in
itself, but ten times more so because of the events which (without her
knowledge) have just occurred. Again, it is quite natural that Electra
should come forth while Clytæmnestra is being slain, since some one must
be on the alert for Ægisthus. This gives opportunity for the terrible
little passage where the queen’s agonized appeals inside the house are
answered by the tense answers or comments of this tragic figure rigid
before the gate.
The ŒDIPUS TYRANNUS[321] (Οἰδίπους Τύραννος), often called _Œdipus Rex_
or _Œdipus the king_, is a play of uncertain date, but it seems later
than _Electra_ and earlier than _Philoctetes_.
The plot is rather intricate and must be given at greater length. The
scene shows the palace of Œdipus at Thebes. The people are smitten by a
pestilence; and all look to the king, who has already sent his wife’s
brother, Creon, to ask advice from the Delphic oracle. Creon enters,
bringing tidings that Thebes will be freed if the city is purged of
those who killed Laius, the former king. Œdipus asks for particulars,
and learns that Laius was killed by some robbers. Only one man escaped.
The king calls upon the slayer to declare himself, promising no worse
treatment than exile; he asks also any man who knows the guilty one
to speak. If no one confesses, he denounces civil and religious
excommunication against the unknown. The chorus-leader suggests that the
prophet Tiresias should be consulted; Œdipus replies that he has been
already summoned. The coryphæus remarks casually that some say Laius
was slain by certain wayfarers. Tiresias enters, but shows a repugnance
even to discuss the problem, till Œdipus in a rage accuses Tiresias of
complicity in the murder. An altercation follows in which the prophet
accuses Œdipus of having killed Laius. The other, filled with wrath,
proclaims that Tiresias and Creon are plotting to make Creon king in his
stead. Tiresias threatens the king with mysterious horrors and downfall.
Œdipus bids him begone, and rates him for a fool. “Foolish, perhaps,
in your eyes,” says the old man, “but thought wise by the parents that
begat thee.” Œdipus is startled. “Parents? Stay! What man begat me?”
The answer is: “This day shall show thy birth and thy destruction”. The
king again bids him go. As he turns away, Tiresias utters his farewell
speech. The murderer of Laius is here, supposed an alien, but in reality
Theban-born. Bereft of his sight and his riches he shall go forth into a
strange land, and shall be found brother and father of his children, son
and husband of his wife, murderer and supplanter of his father. Creon
enters, dismayed by the charges of Œdipus, when the king appears, heaps
reproaches upon the supposed traitor, and insists that Creon shall die.
The noise of their dispute brings from the palace Jocasta, sister of
Creon and wife of Œdipus; she brings about a half-reconciliation between
the two princes, and asks the cause of the quarrel. Œdipus tells of the
accusation pointed at himself by Tiresias. Jocasta seeks to console him
by a proof that soothsaying is not trustworthy. “An oracle once came to
Laius that he should be slain by a son of his and mine. None the less,
he was slain by foreign robbers at a place where three roads meet; and
the child, not three days old, was cast out upon a mountain, his ankles
yoked together.” This speech, so far from comforting the king, fills
him with alarm. The phrase “a place where three roads meet” has struck
him. He anxiously asks for a description of Laius and the number of his
followers. The replies disturb him still more, and he asks that the
single survivor, now a herdsman far from the city, should be sent for.
Jocasta asks the reason. He tells the story of his early manhood: he is
the son of Polybus, King of Corinth, but one day a man insulted him by
saying he was no son of Polybus. The youth asked the Delphic oracle of
his birth, but the god, instead of answering directly, announced that
he was fated to marry his mother and kill his father. Œdipus cheated
the oracle by never seeing his parents again. On his way from Delphi he
met a body of men such as Jocasta has described, and after a quarrel
slew them all. It seems that he is himself the slayer of Laius and is
subject to the curses which he has himself uttered. His only hope lies
in the survivor who, it is understood, always spoke of robbers, not of
a single assailant. If this is accurate, Œdipus is not meant by the
recent oracle. A messenger from Corinth enters, bringing news that the
people of that city intend to make Œdipus their king; Polybus is dead.
Jocasta exclaims that Polybus was the man whom Œdipus feared he must
slay. She mocks at the oracle and summons Œdipus, who shares her relief,
but reminds her that his mother still lives. The messenger asks what
woman they are discussing. “I can free you from that fear,” he exclaims;
“Œdipus is not the son of Polybus and Merope.” Further questioning from
Œdipus brings forth the explanation. The present messenger gave Œdipus,
when a babe, to Polybus. He was found in the glens of Cithæron, where the
man was tending flocks, his ankles fastened by an iron thrust through
them. Who did this the Corinthian cannot say, but the man who gave him
to the Corinthian should know—another herdsman brought him, one of the
household of Laius. Œdipus asks if this man can be found. The chorus
answer that probably he is the person already summoned, and that perhaps
the queen can tell. Œdipus turns to Jocasta, who flings him a few words
of agony and sorrow and rushes into the house. Œdipus turns away in
contempt, for he believes that Jocasta’s distress springs from a fear
that he will be found of ignoble birth. The aged servant of Laius now
approaches, and is recognized by the Corinthian as the man who gave him
the child. A conversation of intensest thrill follows between the two
herdsmen, in which the Corinthian is eager, while the Theban is utterly
reluctant, only answering under the direst threats from the king. At
length it becomes plain that the babe Œdipus is the son of Laius and
Jocasta. The king with a cry of horror rushes into the palace. A slave
enters and tells how Jocasta has hanged herself, and how Œdipus has
destroyed his own sight. After an interval Œdipus staggers forth, a sight
of ghastliness and woe. Creon now appears as ruler of the city and bids
Œdipus be hidden in the house. The wretched man asks that he be cast
forth to dwell upon Cithæron; Creon replies that the oracle must first be
consulted. Œdipus bids a heart-broken farewell to his little daughters,
and Creon takes them all into the palace.
The _Œdipus Tyrannus_ has been universally admired as a masterpiece,
ever since the time of Aristotle, who in his _Poetic_ takes this play
as a model of tragedy. The lyrics are simple, beautiful, and even
passionately vigorous; the dialogue in language and rhythm is beyond
praise; and the tragic irony, for which this poet is famous, is here at
its height. But the chief splendour of the work is its construction,
its strictly dramatic strength and sincerity. The events grow out of
one another with the ease of actual life yet with the accuracy and the
power of art. We should note the two great stages: first, the king fears
that he has slain Laius; second, that he has slain _his father Laius_.
This distinction, so vital to the growing horror, is kept admirably
clear and is especially pointed by the part of the aged Theban. When he
is summoned, it is to settle whether Laius was slain by one man or by
a company; by the time he arrives, this is forgotten, and all wait to
know from whom he received the outcast infant. Equally wonderful is the
skill with which almost every stage in the discovery is made to rise from
the temperament of Œdipus. He is the best-drawn character in Sophocles.
Not specially virtuous, not specially wise—though full of love and pity
for his people and vigorous in his measures for their safety, he is too
imperious, suspicious, and choleric. His exaggerated self-confidence,
dangerous in a citizen, is almost a crime in a prince. The only notable
virtue in his character is the splendid moral courage with which he
faces facts, nay, more, with which he insists on unearthing facts which
he might have left untouched. And the core of the tragedy is that this
virtue of Œdipus, his insistence on knowing the truth, is the source of
his downfall. Had he not sent for Tiresias, Tiresias would not have come
forward. Had he not urged the prophet to reply, Tiresias would not have
uttered his accusations. By these apparently mad charges, Œdipus is stung
into accusing Tiresias of plotting with Creon. This in turn brings Creon
to the palace. The anger with which he reviles Creon causes a dispute
which draws Jocasta from the house. Then, to calm Œdipus, she gives him
the dreadful “consolation”—that oracles have no weight—which first makes
the king fear he may have done the deed which is plaguing Thebes. And so
to the end. One exception to this sequence should be noticed. The arrival
of the Corinthian messenger at this moment is purely accidental. Without
it, the witness of the old retainer would have fastened upon Œdipus the
slaying of Laius (not known to be the king’s father); and he would have
gone forth from the city, but not as a parricide; moreover, the relation
between him and the queen would have remained unknown. Judged by the
standard of the whole play, this fact constitutes a flaw in construction.
Why did not the poet contrive that the news of Polybus’ death should
arrive, and arrive now, as the direct result of something said or done
by Œdipus, just as the arrival of the old Theban, with his crushing
testimony, is due to the king’s own summons? No doubt this occurrence is
meant to mirror the facts of life, which include accidents as well as
events plainly traceable to character.
At this point should be mentioned other possible faults, whether inherent
in the drama or antecedent to it. Some of the preliminary facts are
to a high degree unlikely. These points are three. First, Œdipus and
Jocasta, though each separately has received oracular warning about a
marriage, make no kind of inquiry at the time of their own wedding.
Secondly, Œdipus all these years has never heard or inquired into the
circumstances in which Laius was killed. Third, Jocasta has never yet
been told of the incident at Corinth which sent Œdipus to Delphi;
indeed she has apparently not even heard that he is the son of the
king and queen of Corinth.[322] Within the play itself is the strange
feature that when Tiresias accuses Œdipus of slaying Laius and hints
darkly at greater horrors—hints which in spite of their obscurity might
surely (one would think) have united themselves in the mind of Œdipus
with the oracle of long ago—Œdipus is merely moved to fury, not to
misgiving.[323] Now of the first three difficulties it must be owned that
despite the palliatives suggested, they are irritating. These things
are “impossible,” or, if not, they are oddly irrational, which is the
same thing so far as the enjoyment of dramatic art is concerned. They
are, however, to be explained thus. The unquestioning marriage of Œdipus
and Jocasta is a _datum_ of the legend with which the poet could not
tamper. All that the dramatist could do he did—he placed the unlikely
fact “outside the plot”[324] and dwelt on it as little as possible.
Indeed, he hints at some sort of excuse—the confusion in Thebes owing to
the oppression of the Sphinx.[325] Next, the postponement of explanations
about the death of Laius and the exile of Œdipus from Corinth is a direct
result of dramatic treatment. Just as Æschylus,[326] in order to handle
dramatically a religious question, the bearings of which fill the whole
of time, insists on contracting the issue to a single great instance, so
Sophocles forces into the compass of one day’s happenings the life of
years. In actuality, this tragedy would have been spread over a great
lapse of time. The climax and the horror would have been much the same
essentially, but the poet presents the whole in a closely-knit nexus of
occurrence, so as to make the spectator feel the full impact undissipated
by graduations.
The difficulty concerning Tiresias is of another sort. Œdipus’ apparent
madness is not so great as it seems. Not only is he by his rank and
superb self-confidence shielded from misgivings, not only is he already
suspicious that the murderer must be some treacherous Theban,[327] but
he has now lost his temper, and has just been furious enough to accuse
Tiresias himself of complicity in the deed. It is therefore easy for him
to assume that the prophet in his turn is only uttering his accusations
as a wild insult.
It might also be asked, why is not the scene with Jocasta, in which she
fortifies the king against soothsayers and oracles, not placed at the end
of the Tiresias-episode? This question leads one to suppose that there is
great importance in the quarrel with Creon which intervenes between the
departure of Tiresias and the queen’s appearance. Its importance clearly
is, partly to depict Œdipus more plainly, by contrast with his equable
kinsman, but most of all to give force and impressiveness to the end of
the play, in which Creon appears as king. After the appalling climax
of the play, and the frightful return of the blind Œdipus, there is
danger that Creon’s entry will fall flat.[328] But with faultless skill
Sophocles has prepared the ground so well that when the agony is at its
worst our interest is not indeed increased, but refreshed and relieved by
the appearance of this man whom we have forgotten, but whom we recognize
in a flash as being now the pivot of events. This admirable stroke
reminds one of the return of Chrysothemis in the _Electra_, but it is far
more powerful.
Another feat of dramatic power must be noted, marvellous even where all
is masterly: the re-appearance of Œdipus after the climax. Nothing in
Greek tragedy is more common than for a person after learning frightful
news to rush within the doors in despair. But he does not return; a
messenger tells the news of his fate. In this play news is indeed brought
of the bloody deeds that have befallen. Then comes a sight almost too
appalling for art: the doors open and the man of doom staggers into the
light of day once more. Spiritually he is dead, but he may not destroy
himself since he cannot go down to Hades where his father and mother
dwell. He must live, surviving himself, as it were a corpse walking
the upper earth. The waters of doom have closed over his head, but he
re-appears.
Jocasta is more slightly drawn than Œdipus, yet what we have suffices.
Two features are stressed by the poet—her tenderness for Œdipus and
her flippant contempt in regard to the oracles. This last is clearly
a dramatic lever of great power; through it the king is first brought
to suspect that he is the guilty man. It has a strong and pathetic
excuse. Because of the oracle, she was robbed of her child and yet all
in vain—the infant not yet three days old was cast away, but none the
less Laius was killed. It is precisely her rage against the oracle for
cheating her which brings to Œdipus the knowledge that it has been
fulfilled. Further than this Sophocles has not characterized the queen;
he places an ordinary woman in a situation of extraordinary horror and
pathos, leaving us to feel her emotions, without any elaboration of his
own. To read the conversation between Œdipus and the Corinthian, with
the short colloquy of Œdipus and Jocasta which follows, is to experience
as perhaps nowhere else can be experienced that “purgation of pity and
terror” which is the function of tragedy. It all centres for the moment
in Jocasta, yet she says very little. We are required to imagine it
for ourselves—the intertwined amazement, joy, loathing, despair, which
fill the woman’s heart during the few minutes for which she listens in
silence to the king and the messenger. To have lost her child at birth,
then after mourning his death for many years at length to find that he
lives, that he stands before her, mature, strong, and kingly, but her
own husband; then to realize that not now but long ago did she recover
him, yet did not know him but loved him otherwise—this even Sophocles has
not put into speech. Only one hint of it comes to us in the queen’s last
words:—
ἰοὺ, ἰού, δύστηνε· τοῦτο γάρ σ’ ἔχω
μόνον προσειπεῖν, ἄλλο δ’ οὔποθ’ ὕστερον.
First she screams at his ignorance and would tell all in one word “Son!”
But she cannot say it, nor dare she use again the name “husband”. All
dear titles have been forfeited by being all merited together; and with
the cry “Unhappy one!” she goes to death.
The two herdsmen are perfect in their degree. Instead of mere machines
for giving evidence we have a pair of real men, subtly differentiated
and delightful. The Corinthian, as befits a man coming from a great
centre of civilization to the quieter town of dull Bœotians, is polite,
rhetorical,[329] ready of tongue, and conscious of his address; eager and
inquisitive, he increases his importance by telling the tale piecemeal,
and will even tell it wrongly[330] for that purpose. The Theban herdsman
is an excellent foil to his brisk acquaintance; quiet and slow, with
the breeding and dignity often found in the lowly members of a backward
community, he does his best to recall the memories on which a king and
a nation are hanging in suspense, until he begins to see whither the
questions tend; then, only the fiercest threats can drag the truth
from his stubborn loyalty. Sophocles loved this character; long before
he appears we have a charming little description of him from hints of
Jocasta[331] and the chorus;[332] the poet has even given him one[333] of
those magical lines to which we shall come again later:—
λέγεις ἀληθῆ, καίπερ ἐκ μακροῦ χρόνου.
THE WOMEN OF TRACHIS[334] (_Trachiniæ_, Τραχινίαι) is, perhaps, the
next play in chronological order. The scene is before a house in the
state of Trachis not far from Eubœa. Deianira, the wife of Heracles, is
troubled by his absence because of an oracle which says that in this last
enterprise he shall either die or win untroubled happiness. Hyllus, her
son, goes off to help him in his attack on the city of Eurytus in Eubœa.
The messenger Lichas brings news of Heracles’ triumph; with him are
certain captive girls, one of whom, Iole, daughter of Eurytus, is beloved
by Heracles. Deianira learns this fact after a pathetic appeal to Lichas;
then she sends him back with a gift to Heracles—a robe which she has
anointed with the blood of the Centaur Nessus as a charm to win back her
husband’s love. After Lichas has gone she finds by an accident that the
robe is poisoned. Then Hyllus returns with news that his father is dying
in torments, and reproaches his mother. She goes into the house and stabs
herself. Hyllus learns the truth, and when the dying hero is carried in,
cursing his false wife, he explains her error. Heracles gives orders that
his body is to be burnt on Mount Œta and that Hyllus must marry Iole.
It is customary to regard the _Trachiniæ_ as the weakest extant play
of Sophocles. The picture of Heracles’ physical agony near the close
seems wearisomely elaborate; and in the second place we are utterly
dissatisfied with him. He does not seem worthy of the trepidation, awe,
and grief which he has excited throughout the play. All that follows
the suicide of Deianira appears empty or offensive. This objection may
be put[335] thus, that there are two tragedies, that of Deianira and
that of the hero. Now though it is quite true that one can point to a
thought which unifies the play—the passion of Heracles for Iole, or
more fundamentally, the destructive power of love, this does not meet
the difficulty, which will then simply be restated thus, that the poet
has not maintained a due perspective; the story of Deianira’s emotions
and of her plan bulks too largely and impedes what should have been the
climax. But it is a fundamental law in the criticism of Greek Tragedy,
and especially in the study of Sophocles, that we must ponder it until
we find some central thought which accounts for the whole action and for
the perspective in which the details are placed. Such a central thought
is, after all, not lacking in the _Trachiniæ_. It is the character of
Deianira, her instincts, and her actions. This play is in structure very
similar to the _Ajax_. In the earlier work Ajax’ death occurs far from
the end, but the latter portion is no anti-climax. So here: the topic is
not especially the death of Deianira or the end of Heracles; it is the
heroine’s love for her husband and the attempt she makes to win him back.
The poet’s interest in her does not vanish at the moment of her silent
withdrawal. Her act, her love, survive her. What is the result of her
pathetic secret wooing of Heracles? She has longed for two things, his
return and a renewal of his affection. To both these purposes is granted
a dim painful phantom of success. Instead of tarrying in Eubœa Heracles
hastens home, though every movement of his litter is torment; Deianira’s
passion has brought him back, though not as she meant. As for her plan to
regain his love, it is true that when he learns her innocence not a word
of pity or affection falls from him; he never mentions her again. It may
be that he is merely stupid and callous; it may be that he is ashamed to
recant his bitter words; it may be that he is at once engrossed in the
sudden light which is thrown upon his own fortunes. However this may be,
the promise of Nessus on which she relied is fulfilled: “This shall be
to thee a charm for the soul of Heracles, so that he shall never look
upon any woman to love her more than thee!”[336]—the hero’s passion for
Iole is quenched. This conception gives a wonderful beauty to what is
otherwise a mere brutality of the dying man. In forcing his son to marry
Iole he outrages our feelings as well as the heart of Hyllus—unless we
have understood. But this is his reparation to Deianira. The charm of
Nessus has been potent indeed; the maiden is nothing to him: he “loves no
woman more” than Deianira. But this act is more than cold reparation; it
is a beautiful stroke of silent eloquence. Heracles not only relinquishes
Iole, he gives her to his son, to one many years his junior. This is an
unconscious reply to the touching complaint[337] made by the wronged
wife:—
The flower of her age is in its spring,
But mine in autumn. And the eyes of men
Still pluck the blossom, shunning withered charms.
For him his wife was the true mate; let Iole wed a man of her
own years.[338] Thus the hope of Deianira is in a terrible way
half-fulfilled. Just as Heracles was mistaken in his reading of the
oracle which promised him “rest” at the end of his toils, so was
she mistaken in the meaning she put upon the Centaur’s promise. The
oracles of heaven, by their own power and still more by the terrible
misinterpretation of man, help to mould the play, as they mould the
_Œdipus Tyrannus_. Thus the _Trachiniæ_ becomes a real unity. Deianira’s
fate is now no over-developed episode, for in a spiritual sense it fills
the tragedy. The doom of Heracles is no anti-climax or tedious addendum;
it is the exposition before our eye of the havoc which can be wrought
by sincere love misled. A great structural danger lies herein, that the
picture of Heracles’ torment may eclipse the tragedy of his wife. But
the poet has surmounted this by making the agony-scene not too long, and
above all by reminding us of Deianira through the repeated allusion to
her made by Heracles and through the explanation of Hyllus.
Certain peculiarities of detail in the plot strongly support the view
that Deianira is the subject of the whole drama. First is the conduct of
Lichas. This part is carefully constructed so as to lead up to the great
appeal in which the heroine describes the might of Love. If Lichas had
really kept his secret instead of tattling to the townsfolk, Deianira
would not have known it and so appealed to Lichas. If, on the other hand,
Lichas had not tried to deceive his mistress, she would not have needed
to offer any appeal. His conduct has been devised solely to portray her
character by means of this marvellous speech. A second point is the
way in which Hyllus learns his mother’s innocence. After his speech of
denunciation she goes without a word into the house. The Trachinian
maidens know the truth and have heard from Deianira[339] herself that she
will not survive her husband, but they say nothing to Hyllus. Yet the
playwright who is here so strangely reticent allows the prince to learn
the facts in a few minutes “from the people in the house” as he casually
phrases it. The reason is that if Hyllus were informed at once he would
prevent his mother’s suicide. This would have destroyed the dramatic
treatment without altering events. For Deianira is not concerned in
being proved innocent; she wishes to die now that Heracles is destroyed.
Hyllus’ intervention would only mean procrastination of death.[340] In
the interests of drama, it must happen now. Further he must learn the
truth as soon as she is dead, for some one must confront Heracles with
a defence of the dead woman, if her fate and her love are, as we said,
dominant throughout the play. Here, too, there is a resemblance between
the _Trachiniæ_ and the _Ajax_; Hyllus, in this last scene, resembles
Teucer championing the fame of Ajax.
The character-drawing is here as admirable as elsewhere. Lichas,
well-meaning but foolish and shifty, is contrasted with the messenger
who is perfectly honest though spiteful. Hyllus is a character of a
type which we have often discussed already—he has no personality, and
we are interested in him not because of what he is but because of what
happens to him. The women of the chorus are simply a band of sympathetic
friends. Heracles, on the customary reading of the tragedy, is the most
callously brutal figure in literature. One need not labour the proof;
his treatment of Deianira, of Iole, of Hyllus, of Lichas, of every one
whom he meets,[341] is enough. The poet has taken the only possible
course to make us witness the hero’s pangs at the close with a certain
satisfaction. But the other possible theory does away with this sham
“tragedy”. Heracles as a coarse stupid “man of action” who is yet capable
of reflection and a touch of “the melting mood” shown by his giving Iole
to Hyllus when the secret of his wife’s heart is at last irresistibly
pressed upon him, is dramatic indeed.
But the glory of this work is Deianira. A comparison of the _Trachiniæ_
with the _Ajax_ illustrates the development of ideas in the poet’s mind.
Tecmessa’s character and position have been analysed, and we find,
instead of one woman, two—Iole and Deianira. Iole is mute; it is not her
conduct, but her involuntary influence, which contributes to the tragedy.
In Deianira, however, we meet the Trojan princess once more, older and
with more initiative—tenderer she could not be. It is this union of
gentleness with force of mind, of love and sad knowledge of the world,
which makes her character so appealing and gracious. A smaller poet would
have made her haughty or abject, revengeful or contemptible; Sophocles
has portrayed a noble lady, who will bend, but not kneel. Her interview
with Iole and the later conversations in which first she excuses her
husband and then on reflection finds that she cannot share his home with
the newcomer—these scenes, painted with quiet mastery, are the greatest
work of Sophocles in the portraiture of women.
There can be no doubt that the _Trachiniæ_ is the work of Sophocles;
considerations of style, hard to describe but overwhelming, settle
the case beyond dispute. None the less we cannot ignore the influence
of another school of drama—the Euripidean. The features more or less
certainly due to this influence are: (i) The subject itself. Sophocles
has studied a woman’s love and its possibilities of unintended mischief
in a way which recalls many plots[342] of Euripides. (ii) The “prologue,”
especially the explanatory speech of Deianira, is not in the usual manner
of the playwright, but quite in that of Euripides. (iii) The last lines,
with their reproach against the hardness of the gods who neglect their
children, and the total silence about the deification of Heracles, which
was the most familiar fact of this story, a silence emphatic throughout,
are in spirit Euripidean. (iv) The chorus is almost negligible as a
dramatic factor, and one of its songs—the first stasimon—is literally
“commonplace”; it would fit any kind of joyous occasion. (v) The turns of
expression occasionally recall those of the younger poet. The colloquial
ποίαν δόκησιν[343] cannot be paralleled in tragedy except in his work.
One line[344] seems borrowed almost without change. Deianira’s homely,
almost coarse, words, “and now we two await his embrace beneath one
rug,” are not what one expects from the stately Sophocles. The prosaic
φαρμακεύς[345] and the allusion[346] to Heracles’ unheroic side (ἡνίκ’
ἦν ᾠνωμένος, “when he was deep in wine”) are on the same level. But
most Euripidean of all is the description[347] Deianira gives of her
dreadful suitor. There is nothing unlike Sophocles in this acceptance
of the legend that Deianira was wooed by a river-god. But the studied
nonchalance of the first line “my suitor was a river, Acheloüs that is,”
and the absurdity of the second, in which the divine wooer is represented
as applying (with a punctilio strange to river-gods of legend) to the
lady’s father for her hand, and “calling” (φοιτῶν) on different occasions
as a different animal—all this mixture of horror and comedy is absolute
Euripides. The fact appears to be that Sophocles deliberately took up the
attitude of Euripides, for two reasons—firstly, for the sheer delight of
a strange and difficult feat of artistry; secondly, in order to show how
Euripides, even from his own standpoint, ought to have written.[348]
PHILOCTETES[349] (Φιλοκτήτης) was produced in the spring of 409 B.C.,
when the poet was eighty-seven years old, and won the first prize. The
hero Philoctetes was one of the chieftains who sailed for Troy. When
the fleet touched at Chryse, he was stung in the foot by a snake. The
wound was incurable and its noxious odour, together with the cries of
the sufferer, were so troublesome to the Greeks that they deserted him
when asleep upon the island of Lemnos, leaving with him a little food and
clothing, and his bow and arrows, the last a legacy from Heracles. In the
tenth year of the war the Greeks learned that Troy could only be taken
by help of Philoctetes and the weapons of Heracles. Two men were sent to
Lemnos with the purpose of bringing the maimed warrior to Troy—Odysseus
because of his craft, Neoptolemus because he was unknown to Philoctetes.
The scene is a desolate spot on the island, in front of the cliff-face
in which is the cave inhabited by Philoctetes. Neoptolemus wins the
confidence of the sufferer while Odysseus keeps in the background, though
by a subtle device of a false message he aids the plot greatly. But when
the fated weapons are secured and Philoctetes (who supposes he is to be
conveyed back to Greece) is ready to accompany Neoptolemus, the latter
tells him the truth. Philoctetes’ misery, rage, and reproaches induce the
youth to restore the weapons despite Odysseus’ opposition, and to promise
Philoctetes a passage home. But at the last moment Heracles appears in
glory above their heads and commands Philoctetes to proceed Troywards. He
willingly consents, and bids farewell to the scene of his long sorrow.
In structure this play is perhaps the most interesting extant work
of Sophocles. As elsewhere, we find a great simple character of vast
will-power exposed to a strong temptation—Philoctetes confronted by
the chance of healing, happiness, and glory, if only he will meet in
friendship men whom he is determined to hate. But for once there is a
secondary interest which is not purely secondary. Many will even find
the development of Neoptolemus more impressive than the situation of
Philoctetes. While the latter shows the heroic character as it appears
after the experience of life, strong, reflective, sad, a little fierce
if not soured, the other is the hero before such experience, eager and
noble but too responsive to suggestion. Neoptolemus has just begun life,
and his first task is to betray—for the public good, no doubt, but still
to betray—a noble stranger who merits not only respect but instant pity
and tendance. “Oh! that never had I left Scyros!” he exclaims. Life after
all is not a blaze of glorious war as his father Achilles found it, but a
sordid affair of necessary compromises. One of the most charming things
in the drama is the clearness with which Philoctetes, in the midst of his
rage, sees the tragedy of his youthful captor.[350] Confronted by the
kindness of the youth, he reveals himself not as a mere savage, living
only on thoughts of revenge; he becomes more flexible, open-hearted,
almost sociable. So revealed, he is the direct cause of the change in
Neoptolemus’ purpose.
Beside these stands Odysseus, only less striking and equally
indispensable. For a chief note of this drama is the skill with which the
poet avails himself of the three actors, whose possibilities are here
for perhaps the first time fully employed. It is easy, but mistaken, to
label Odysseus as “the villain”. In reality he is the State personified.
There is no modern reader who does not hate and contemn him, but it
remains true that whereas Philoctetes whom we pity and Neoptolemus whom
we love both take a strictly personal view, Odysseus at the risk of his
life insists on pressing the claim of the community. It is necessary to
Greece that Troy should fall. She can only fall through the arrows of
Heracles. The man who owns them will assuredly not consent. It follows
that he must be compelled to help, by force or guile. A conquering
nation must have its Philip as well as its Alexander; Odysseus stands
for facts which twenty years of the Peloponnesian war had driven home
into Athenian minds. Neoptolemus is the type of many a young warrior who
has learned with aching disgust that the knightly exploits which tales
of Marathon had fired him to perform must be thwarted unceasingly by the
politic meanderings of Nicias, by considerations of corn-supply, or the
“representations” of some remote satrap.
And in the end Odysseus gets his way. As the two friends start for
home, leaving the Greeks at Troy to defeat and the oracles of Heaven to
non-fulfilment, a god appears to command from the sky that self-sacrifice
shall be revoked and hate forgotten. What are we to think of this
intervention of Heracles? Is he not an extreme instance of the _deus
ex machina_? Is not mere compulsion employed to change a settled
resolve? This is the most striking and the most difficult feature of
the construction: rather it seems the negation of structure. Why is it
employed? Some[351] have been content to suggest Euripidean influence—of
course no answer at all. Some[352] have thought that Heracles is
personified conscience, rising to remind Philoctetes of his duty to
Greece; a suggestion ruled out by the fact that his duty has been urged
clearly by Neoptolemus. A more attractive idea[353] is that the genuine
_peripeteia_ of the play consists in Neoptolemus’ change of front; in
this way an inner dramatic unity is secured, while the external change
induced by Heracles is a mere concession to the data of legend. This in
its turn is vitiated by the fact that for the dramatist Philoctetes, and
not Neoptolemus, is the central figure: this is proved by the work as a
whole and by the title which the poet himself gave it. If the _deus ex
machina_ is not to be condemned utterly, it follows from the basic law
of Attic art that the play up to the moment of Heracles’ appearance,
however complete it seemed to us a moment ago, is not complete—that
some coping-stone is still needed. And if we consider the action up to
that point we cannot really be content. To disregard the oracles which
tradition said were fulfilled, the action, as Sophocles depicts it, is
unsatisfactory. Philoctetes is to get the revenge which seems rightly
his, and we approve his young companion who aids him at such cost. But
by this time we feel a little dubious about the sufferer. There has
been perhaps too much detail in his outcries and his account of his
sufferings. Hatred which will refuse both health and fame, without any
loss but that of aged intentions, has begun to seem a moral falsetto.
But who can say, without misgiving, that (on pagan principles) he is
wrong? One person only in Heaven and earth—Heracles. Every ordinary
consideration of public and personal interest has been put before
Philoctetes in vain. But there is another thought which neither the
victim himself nor Odysseus nor Neoptolemus has strength enough to
suggest, or even to remember. One character alone in Greek story rises
above the conception of personal injury or personal benefit as a motive
to action; Heracles is the great reminder, not so much that wrongs to
oneself should be forgiven, as that life is too short and precious to
be wasted on revenge. Heracles would return a blow with vigour, but a
vendetta, in the light of his career, seems a childish folly. One does
not forget that some pictures of his character (that, for instance, in
the _Trachiniæ_) belie this conception; but Sophocles here sees fit
to choose a different, and the more usual, view. Suddenly the husk of
selfish spite falls away from the sufferer’s soul. He who has just
promised[354] to use the weapons of Heracles in a private quarrel and
has already attempted[355] so to use them, at last remembers that they
are the rightful instrument of well-doing, and that it was for such a
reason[356] that he received them from the hero at his passing into
glory. Heracles then is introduced as the only person who can press upon
Philoctetes an argument which the cunning of Odysseus and the candour of
Neoptolemus have alike ignored. That he appears as a _deus ex machina_
is in part accident—he is not selected by the poet for that reason.
But it is a happy accident, for the glory which envelops him is the
visible warrant of his inspiring behests—anything rather than the sign
of overwhelming might summoned to break a reasonable human resolve. Thus
the close of this play is a real ending, not a breakdown; it is the pagan
analogue of the _Quo Vadis_ legend.
The whole play is an example of intrigue. The episode of the
pseudo-merchant[357] is the most brilliant feat of Sophocles in this
department. It reveals to Philoctetes that he is being pursued by the
Greeks, without arousing his suspicion of Neoptolemus, and so gives
occasion for the transfer of the bow when the sufferer’s fit seizes him;
it conveys a strong reminder of urgency to Neoptolemus; and it enables
Odysseus to learn how his plot progresses. Odysseus merely by telling
of his promise to capture Philoctetes is in a fair way to fulfil it,
as it throws his prey into the arms of Neoptolemus. One apparent fault
of construction is of a type which we have already noted. It is vital
that Philoctetes, before his first consent to leave the island, should
know his friend’s real purpose of taking him to Troy. But why is he told
of it? The merest beginner in duplicity would surely postpone such a
revelation until the victim was at sea. But Sophocles chooses to tighten
his plot up in order to give the situation in one picture.
Dio Chrysostom in one of his most valuable essays[358] sets up a
comparison between the plays on Philoctetes composed by the three
tragedians. The work of Sophocles is the latest, and two peculiarities
help us to see how far his originality went. Firstly, as a companion to
Odysseus he introduces, not Diomedes as Euripides had done, but a figure
new to the Trojan war, an ingenuous lad whose sympathy brings out what
gentleness remains in the sufferer’s heart. Secondly, the chorus consists
of Greek sailors, not of Lemnian natives as in the two other playwrights.
Sophocles will have no Lemnian visitors because for him it is a cardinal
fact that Philoctetes all these years has been alone save for a chance
ship. Thus we gain for a moment a glance into the actual thoughts of
Sophocles: he has made up his mind that his Philoctetes must be quite
solitary. So essential is this that he falsifies known facts. Lemnos, he
says in the second line of his play, is “untrodden, uninhabited by men,”
whereas, both in the times supposed and in the poet’s own day, it was a
populous place. This, then, gives an invaluable indication of the extent
to which Sophocles felt himself free to re-model his subject-matter. On
the play itself it throws light. The question is to be studied not from
the point of view of the Greek army, but from that of their potential
helper, soured as he is by a more extreme suffering than Æschylus and
Euripides had imagined.
The picture thus conceived is painted with splendid power. Romantic
desolation makes itself felt in the opening words of Odysseus, and this
sense of the frowning grandeur of nature to which Philoctetes in his
despair appeals[359] is everywhere associated with the pathos of lonely
suffering. “While the mountain nymph, babbling Echo, appearing afar,
makes answer to his bitter cries.”[360] All that he says, from his first
exclamation of joy at hearing again the Greek language to the noble
speech in which he bids farewell to the bitter home which use has made
something like a friend, is instinct with this mingling of romance and
pathos. Deserted by all men he has yet found companions whom in his
misery he addresses; his hands, his poisoned foot, his eyes, his bow, and
the familiar landscape, vocal with the “bass roar of the sea upon the
headland”.[361] Closer even than these is his eternal unseen companion,
Pain, whom he found at his side on first awakening after the departure
of the Greek host: “When my scrutiny had traversed all the land, no
inhabitant could I find therein save Sorrow; and that, my son, could be
met at every turn”.[362]
It has been suspected that the play contains allusions to contemporary
politics, that the poet is thinking of Alcibiades’ return from exile.
In 410—the year before this play was produced—he had gained credit from
the naval victory of Cyzicus. Some, moreover, have seen in Odysseus the
cynical politician of the day. Other passages read like criticism of the
public “atmosphere” at Athens in the closing years of the great war.
The dramatist is making deliberate comments on contemporary Athenian
politics, but he assuredly did not choose the whole theme of Philoctetes
merely because of Alcibiades’ restoration.[363]
THE ŒDIPUS COLONEUS[364] (Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ) or _Œdipus at Colonus_
was according to the customary view produced in 401 B.C., three years
after the poet’s death, by his namesake and grandson. The background
represents the grove of the Furies at Colonus, a village near Athens.
Œdipus, exiled from Thebes, an aged blind wanderer, enters led by his
daughter Antigone. They obtain the favour of King Theseus and the
citizens, Œdipus promising that after his death his spirit shall defend
Athens. Ismene, his daughter, brings news that an oracle has said that
in the struggle between Thebes and the Seven led by Polynices, son of
Œdipus, that side shall win which has possession of Œdipus. Both parties
are now eager for his support, but he curses both his sons. Creon, King
of Thebes, enters, and failing to gain aught but reproaches, carries off
the two girls, and is about to seize the father also when he is checked
by the arrival of Theseus, who rescues the maidens. Polynices next comes
to beg his father’s aid, but is sent to his doom with curses. Then a peal
of thunder announces to Œdipus that the moment of his passing is at hand.
He bids farewell to his daughters, and, watched only by Theseus, descends
to the underworld; the place of his burial is to be known to none save
Theseus and his successors. Ismene and Antigone in vain beg to be shown
the spot, and finally Antigone resolves to seek Thebes that she may
reconcile her brothers.
This play is simple in structure, superbly rich in execution. Œdipus
dominates all the scenes, which reveal with piercing intensity his
physical helplessness and the spiritual might which, marked at the
opening, is overwhelming at the close. The poet’s task is not merely
to portray the last hours of a much-tried man, but the novitiate of a
superhuman Power. Œdipus at last reaches peace and a welcome from the
infernal gods—he becomes a δαίμων. The terrific feature is that even in
the flesh he anticipates his dæmonic qualities. In the interview between
him and Polynices, the implacable hatred, the strength, the prophetic
sight of the father, and the hopeless prayers, the wretchedness, the
despair and moral collapse of the doomed son, are nothing but the
presentation in human life of the actual dæmon’s power as prophesied
for future generations. Before the close we feel that the aged exile’s
sufferings, sombre wisdom, and simple burning emotions have already
made him a being of unearthly powers, sundered from normal humanity;
his strange passing is but the ratification of a spiritual fact already
accomplished. But this weird climax is preceded by an equally wonderful
study of the human Œdipus. The king who appears in the _Œdipus Tyrannus_
can here still be recognized. Passionate anger still directs much of his
conduct, as friend and foe alike remind[365] him. But even his faults are
mellowed by years and contemplation; his very anger shows some gleam of
a profounder patience. Throughout, the temper of Œdipus is like that of
the heavens above him—gloom cleft by flashes of insight, indignation, and
love. Unlike other aged sufferers, he does not dwell in the past; unlike
the saint and martyr whom a Christian dramatist might have portrayed, he
does not lean upon a future of glory or happiness. Nor again has he sunk
into a senile acquiescence in the present; he is far from being absorbed
by the loving tendance of his daughters. The centre of his life has
shifted, but not to any period of time—rather to another plane of being.
Still in the flesh, his human emotions as essential as ever, his life is
growing assimilated to the non-human existence of the whole earth. And
so it is that Œdipus meets “death” with cheerfulness; he is departing to
his own place. At the last moment the blind man leads those who see to
the place of his departure. What to them is dreadful and secret is to him
the centre of his longing; the terrific figures who inhabit his new home
are welcome friends—at the beginning of the play he addresses the Furies
themselves as “_sweet_ daughters of primeval Night”.[366] The whole drama
at the end is full of this sense. In the farewell song of the chorus
which commends the wanderer to the powers of Earth, there is an eerie
precision and picturesqueness in the description of the lower world; the
“infernal moor”[367] and the guardian hound gleam forth for an instant
into strange familiarity.
The other characters are carved, though in lower relief, yet with
richness and vigour. Theseus is the ideal Athenian gentleman,[368]
suddenly called to show pity to a pair of helpless wanderers, then
unexpectedly involved in battle with a neighbour state, and finally
confronted with the most awful mysteries of divine government, without
ever losing his courage or his discretion. Creon and Polynices, such is
the immense understanding of the aged poet, share too in this nobility
of mind. They can face facts; and whether villains or not, they are
men of breeding. The “stranger” who first accosts Œdipus is a charming
embodiment of that local patriotism to which we shall return in a
moment. The two sisters are beautifully distinguished by the divergent
experiences of years. Antigone’s wandering and hardship have made her
the more intense and passionate; Ismene’s life in Thebes have given her
comprehension of more immediate issues. It is through Antigone, moreover,
who declares that she will seek Thebes and attempt to save her brothers,
that the poet obtains one of his noblest effects. Overwhelming as is the
story of Œdipus, his end does not close all; life goes on to further
mysteries of pain and affection.
On the purely literary side the _Œdipus Coloneus_ is certainly the
greatest and the most typical work of Sophocles. The most celebrated
lyric in Greek is the splendid ode in praise of Colonus—“our white
Colonus; where the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note
in the covert of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy and the
god’s inviolate bowers, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun,
unvexed by wind of any storm; where the reveller Dionysus ever walks the
ground, companion of the nymphs that nursed him,”[369]—and of the whole
land with its peculiar glories, the olive of peace and the steed of war.
To this should be added that address of Œdipus to Theseus concerning the
fickleness of all things earthly which is less the speech of one man
than the voice of Life itself.[370] Noblest of all is the account of
Œdipus’ last moments, a passage which in breathless loveliness, pathos,
and religious profundity is beyond telling flawless and without peer.
It is curious that Sophocles in this work which, more than any other,
reveals his own poetic mastery should have definitely drawn attention to
the power of language. At various crises in the play he speaks of the
“little word”[371] and its potency. Œdipus reflects how his two sons for
lack of a “little word” in his defence have suffered him to be thrust
forth into exile; the nobility of Theseus, the sudden hostility of Thebes
in days to come, the appearance of Polynices, are all matters of the
“little word” which means so much. And in his marvellous farewell to his
daughters, Œdipus speaks of the “one word” which has made all his sorrows
vanish—“love”.
Every master-work of literature has a prophetic quality, and sending
its roots down near to the deepest wells of life is instinct with
unconscious kinships. The _Œdipus Coloneus_ is rich in this final glory
of art. The whole conception of the sufferer, aged and blind but gifted
with spiritual sight, recalls the blind Milton’s sublime address to the
Light which “shines inward”; and the thought adds charm to Sophocles’
description of the nightingale[372] which
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note.
Again, just as the whole scheme suggests _King Lear_, so does the simple
vigour of Theseus’ words,[373] when he enters at the terrific close amid
the bellowing of the unnatural tempest:—
πάντα γὰρ θεοῦ
τοιαῦτα χειμάζοντος εἰκάσαι πάρα,
recall the “pelting of this pitiless storm”.[374] So too the divine
summons[375] which comes “many times, and manifold” to Œdipus brings to
mind the call “Samuel! Samuel!” The mystery of Œdipus’ tomb suggests the
passing of another august soul: “No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto
this day,”[376] and of Joseph, named among the faithful, who “when he
died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave
commandment concerning his bones”.[377]
This play is deeply religious in the very details of its theme as well as
in its tone. Besides the usual orthodox background there is the lovely
presentation of a minor local worship—the cult of the Eumenides at
Colonus, Sophocles’ native village. The aged poet in his last years seems
to have returned with special affection to the simple observances which
he had learnt as a boy, and which evoke one of his most characteristic
phrases:—[378]
τοιαῦτά σοι ταῦτ’ ἐστίν, ὦ ξέν’, οὐ λόγοις
τιμώμεν’, ἀλλὰ τῇ ξυνουσίᾳ πλέον,
the piercing simplicity of which, as well as the theme, suggests
Wordsworth. The lustral bowls, he is careful to tell us, are “the work
of a skilled craftsman”;[379] he is almost on the point of telling us
his name—one can imagine the boy of eighty years ago gazing on these
cups, and his first sense of beauty in workmanship. Those who would
offer sacrifice will find dwelling on the spot a sacristan to instruct
and aid them.[380] Everything on this ground is both familiar and
hallowed; the mysterious “brazen threshold,” the statues of local deities
and heroes, the hollow pear-tree, and the other local sanctities are
carefully particularized, so that the calm beauty of the country-side
and the terrors of religion are strangely and beautifully interwoven.
As for religion in the broader, profounder sense, we have as elsewhere
a reference of human suffering merely to an inscrutable, divine
purpose.[381] But the dramatist indicates carefully the contribution of
human nature to the fulfilment of the oracles; Polynices[382] becomes
subject to his father’s curse because his own sense of honour forbids him
to relinquish his foredoomed enterprise. Œdipus himself has attained to
a wiser conception of sin[383] than that which rules him at the close of
the _Tyrannus_. He has acted wrongly, therefore his suffering is just;
but he is morally innocent, and his past actions afflict him as sorrows,
not as crimes.[384]
* * * * *
The fragments of the lost plays are on the whole disappointing; a large
proportion are single rare words quoted by ancient lexicographers, and
most of the rest are short sentences or phrases. There remain the few
longer fragments, to which in recent years important additions have been
made.
It seems that the _Triptolemus_ was his first play, produced in 468
B.C. when the poet was twenty-eight. It would then be one of the works
with which he won his victory[385] over Æschylus, and it bore marks of
the older writer’s influence. The theme is the mission of Triptolemus,
who traversed the earth distributing to men corn, the gift of Demeter,
and founded the mysteries at Eleusis. This topic gave room for a long
geographical passage which recalls those of the _Prometheus_. Other
early dramas were the _Thamyras_ in which the dramatist himself took the
name-part and played the cithara, and the _Nausicaa_ or _Women Washing_
wherein Sophocles acted the part of that princess and gained applause by
his skill in a game of ball. The satyric drama _Amphiaraus_ contained a
curious scene wherein an illiterate man conveyed some name or other word
to his hearers by a dance in which his contortions represented successive
letters. Another satyric play _The Mustering of the Greeks_ (Ἀχαιῶν
Σύλλογος) or the _Dinner-Party_ (Σύνδειπνοι) earned the reprobation of
Cicero[386] apparently for its coarseness, which can still be noted in
the fragments. In _The Lovers of Achilles_ (Ἀχιλλέως ἐρασταί) there was
a passage describing the perplexity of passion, which in its mannered
felicity recalls Swinburne or the Sonnets of Shakespeare:—
Love is a sweet perplexity of soul,
Most like the sport of younglings, when the sky
In winter-clearness scatters frost abroad:
They seize a glittering icicle, filled a while
With joy and wonder; but ere long the toy
Melts, and they know not how to grasp it still,
Tho’ loth to cast it from them. So with lovers:
Their yearning passion holds them hour by hour
Poised betwixt boldness and reluctant awe.
The _Laocoon_, which dealt with a famous episode in the capture of
Troy, supplies a fragment describing Æneas’ escape from the city with
his father upon his shoulders; one or two other passages[387] besides
this recall Vergil’s treatment. Another tragedy from the same cycle
of stories, the _Polyxena_, is praised by “Longinus”[388] in the same
terms of eulogy as the culmination of the _Œdipus Coloneus_ itself. The
_Tereus_,[389] to judge from the number of fragments, was very popular;
it dealt with the frightful fable of the Thracian King Tereus, his wife
Procne, and her sister Philomela, all of whom were at last changed into
birds. Aristophanes[390] has an obscure series of jests about this play
and the beak-mask with which Sophocles “outraged” the Thracian monarch. A
solitary relic of the _Orithyia_ tells how the maiden was carried off by
the wind-god Boreas
Unto Earth’s verge, beyond the farthest sea,
Vistas of Heaven, and well-springs of the dark,
To the Sun’s ancient garden.
In 1907 there came to light at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt considerable
fragments[391] of two Sophoclean dramas.
Most of these once formed part of the _Ichneutæ_ (Ἰχνευταί) or
_Detectives_. Formerly we had only two brief and obscure fragments, and
one word quoted by Athenæus; it was known that the play was satyric. The
theme was quite uncertain; and conjecture[392] is now shown to have gone
quite astray. Sophocles, we find, has dramatized the myth so admirably
treated in the Homeric _Hymn to Hermes_. A considerable portion of the
work can now be read. The god Apollo announces that his cattle have been
stolen and that he cannot trace them; he offers a reward to anyone who
catches the thief. Silenus and the chorus of satyrs undertake the quest;
they are the “trackers” from whom the play is named. After a time they
spy the footprints of oxen and exclaim that “some god is leading the
colony”. A noise[393] which they cannot understand is heard behind the
scenes. The numerous tracks now give them trouble; they point backwards
here and there—“an odd confusion must have possessed the herdsman!” Next
the satyrs fall on their faces, to the amazement of Silenus who likens
this “trick of hunting on your stomach” to the position of “a hedgehog in
a bush”. They bid him listen; he importantly replies that they are not
helping “my investigation,” loses his temper, and roundly reviles their
cowardice. They recover themselves and soon arrive at a cave. Silenus
kicks at the door until the nymph Cyllene comes forth. She protests
against their boisterous behaviour, but is appeased by their apologies.
When they ask the meaning of the strange sound, Cyllene reports the birth
of the god Hermes whom she is tending within, and his amazingly rapid
growth. The noise is produced by the babe from “a vessel filled with
pleasure made from a dead beast”. The “detectives” are still perplexed;
what is this creature? The goddess describes the creature in riddling
language. They make laughably divergent guesses: a cat, a panther, a
lizard, a crab, a big-horned beetle; and at last they are told that the
beast is a tortoise. She describes the delight[394] which the child
draws from his playing. The satyrs inform Cyllene that her nursling is
the thief; she indignantly denies that a son of Zeus can have so acted,
and takes the accusation as a joke. They vigorously repeat their charge,
and begin to quarrel with Cyllene. From this point onwards practically
nothing can be made of the papyrus-scraps, except that Apollo re-appears,
and seems to be giving the “detectives” their reward.
The papyrus which contained the other play, the _Eurypylus_,[395] is
in tiny fragments, but some of these, combined with our independent
knowledge of the story, enable us to give an outline of the plot.
Astyoche, mother of Eurypylus, was induced by Priam to allow her son to
help the Trojans against the Greeks. He met Neoptolemus, son of Achilles,
in battle and was slain. A messenger related the encounter to (it seems)
his mother Astyoche. The body was received by Priam with lamentation as
if for a son of his own. This fragment is much the most striking of the
collection.
Sophocles’ position in literary history has already been indicated.[396]
We shall here discuss his mind and his art in general outline. Of his
political opinions little is known. Though his work abounds in saws of
statecraft, these are of quite general application;[397] and it would be
dangerous to declare which side, if any, he took in the political crises
which were so numerous and so grave in fifth-century Athens; there is
perhaps one hint[398] that he did not approve the ascendancy of Pericles.
As for religion, he seems to have accepted both the orthodox cults of
his country and the current beliefs of the ordinary Athenian with little
reserve or none. This brings us at once to a fact which must not be
ignored—the feeling among readers of our own day, that Sophocles for
all his merits is a little too complacent, too urbane, lacking somehow
in profundity and real grip upon the soul. The answer is that we come
to Sophocles pre-occupied by the religious questionings which fill our
own time and which, moreover, interest both Æschylus and Euripides; but
there is no reason why Sophocles should share our disquiet or that of
his fellow-craftsmen. That which for Æschylus is the foreground of his
work, forms for Sophocles only the background. He is not especially
interested in religion itself, but in humanity. For Æschylus religion
is an affair of the intellect; for Euripides it is an affair of morals;
for Sophocles it belongs to the sphere of emotion. And the two great
instruments with which he constructs his plays are human emotions and
human will. For all the plays which we possess the same genesis exists:
the chief character experiences some mighty appeal to the emotions—the
feeling of self-respect in Ajax and Œdipus at Athens, of family love
in Antigone and Electra, of revengefulness in Philoctetes, of wifely
dignity and affection in Deianira, of pity in Œdipus at Thebes; and then
creates drama by the magnificent pathetic staunchness wherewith the will,
taking its direction from the emotion so aroused, presses on ruthlessly
in its attempt to satisfy this impulse. Nothing seems so dear to him
as a purpose which flaunts cold reason, the purpose of any others, and
indeed every other emotion save that which has started the action upon
its course. He sets before us a person determined on some striking act,
and subjects him to all conceivable assaults of reason and preachments
on expediency, showing him unbroken throughout. The onslaughts upon
Ajax, Antigone, Philoctetes, Œdipus, are not mere stage-rhetoric; they
are “sound common-sense,” “appeals to one’s better self”; and no logical
denial can be opposed to them. Only one power in man is able to withstand
them—the will, taking its stand once for all upon some instinct for
clear, simple action. If we never listen to reason we are lost; but if
we always listen we are lost equally. That these heroes of the will so
often come to misery or death matters little; they have saved their
souls alive instead of sinking themselves in a sordid acceptance of a
second-hand morality. Over against these figures, to emphasize their
defiant grandeur, the poet loves to set persons admirable indeed, but
more commonplace, who emerge in the dread hour when the haughty will has
brought ruin, and approve themselves as the pivot of the situation. The
hero is great and strikes the imagination, but it is on the shoulders of
men like Creon in the _Œdipus Tyrannus_, Odysseus, Hyllus, Theseus in
the _Œdipus Coloneus_, that the real burden of the world’s work may be
safely cast. None the less he loves Antigone better than he loves Ismene,
Œdipus rather than Theseus. In one place at least, in his dislike for the
“reasonable” spirit of compromise, he suffers himself a malicious little
_reductio ad absurdum_. When Chrysothemis finds Electra uttering her
resentment at the palace gate she says:—[399]
Sister! Again? Why standest at the door
Holding this language? Will no span of years
Teach thee at length to grudge thy foolish spleen
Such empty comfort? Yet mine own heart too
Knows how it sorrows for our present state....
I avow
That in thy spirit dwelleth righteousness
Not in my words. _Yet, if I would be free_
_I must in all things bend to those in power._
As for the plots themselves, their main feature is that deliberate
complexity which we have called intrigue and which was made possible by
the poet’s use of a third actor. After the great achievements of Æschylus
it became necessary to add some fresh kind of interest; this Euripides
found in a readjustment of sympathies, Sophocles in an increase of
dramatic thrill. It is an exciting moment in the _Trachiniæ_ when, just
as Deianira is about to re-enter the palace, the messenger mysteriously
draws her apart and reveals the truth about the captive Iole. The
magnificent death-scene of Ajax is the outcome of the cunning wherewith
he has thrown his friends off the scent. The _Electra_ is full of this
method; the mission of Chrysothemis is turned into a weapon against the
murderess who sent her, and the episode of Orestes’ funeral-urn is a
magnificent piece of dramatic artistry. In the _Œdipus Tyrannus_ the king
brings about his own fatal illumination by sending for the herdsman.
The _Philoctetes_, above all, is filled with the deliberate plotting of
Odysseus. The marked increase in complexity which Sophocles’ work thus
shows as compared with that of Æschylus is undoubtedly the chief (perhaps
the only) reason for his desertion of the trilogy form.[400] Side by
side with this attention to mechanism is that curious indifference to
the fringes of the plot which we have had occasion to notice in several
places.
Another characteristic of Sophocles is that famous “tragic irony” by
which again he imparts new power to old themes. It turns to magnificent
profit a circumstance which might seem to vitiate dramatic interest—the
fact that the spectator knows the myth and therefore cannot be taken
by surprise. Between an audience which foresees the event, and the
stage-personages who cannot, the playwright sets up a thrilling interest
of suspense. He causes his characters to discuss the future they expect
in language which is fearfully and exquisitely suitable to the future
which actually awaits them. Ajax, while his madness still afflicts
him, stands amid the slaughtered cattle and proclaims his triumph over
the Greek chieftains, just before he awakes to the truth that by his
“triumph” he has ruined himself. More elaborate is the scene in which
Deianira explains her stratagem of the robe which is to bring back the
love of Heracles. But the _Œdipus Tyrannus_ provides by far the finest
instance. As the king in scene after scene accumulates horror upon his
own unconscious head, the spectator receives, always at the right moment
and in full measure, the impact of increasing disaster. Yet since his
perception is a discovery which he himself has made, horror is tempered
by an intellectual glow, a spiritual exaltation.
In the art of iambic verse Sophocles stands beyond all other Greeks
unrivalled. Beside him Æschylus sounds almost clumsy, Euripides glib,
Aristophanes vulgar. Only Shakespeare has that complete mastery over
every shade of emphasis, every possibility of grandeur and simple
ease alike. The iambic line in Sophocles’ hands can at will display a
haunting romantic loveliness, the profoundest dignity, the sharpest edges
of emotion, or the quiet prose of every day. Consider the following
lines,[401] which begin near the end of Electra’s long speech of
complaint to the chorus:—
ΗΛ. ἐγὼ δ’ Ὀρέστην τῶνδε προσμένουσ’ ἀεὶ
παυστῆρ’ ἐφήξειν ἡ τάλαιν’ ἀπόλλυμαι.
μέλλων γὰρ ἀεὶ δρᾶν τι τὰς οὔσας τέ μου
καὶ τὰς ἀπούσας ἐλπίδας διέφθορεν.
ἐν οὖν τοιούτοις οὔτε σωφρονεῖν, φίλαι,
οὔτ’ εὐσεβεῖν πάρεστιν· ἀλλ’ ἔν τοι κακοῖς
πολλή ’στ’ ἀνάγκη κἀπιτηδεύειν κακά.
ΧΟ. φέρ’ εἰπέ, πότερον ὄντος Αἰγίσθου πέλας
λέγεις τάδ’ ἡμῖν, ἢ βεβῶτος ἐκ δόμων;
ΗΛ. ἦ κάρτα μὴ δόκει μ’ ἄν, εἴπερ ἦν πέλας,
θυραῖον οἰχνεῖν· νῦν δ’ ἀγροῖσι τυγχάνει.
ΧΟ. ἦ κἂν ἐγὼ θαρσοῦσα μᾶλλον ἐς λόγους
τοὺς σοὺς ἱκοίμην, εἴπερ ὧδε ταῦτ’ ἔχει;
ΗΛ. ὡς νῦν ἀπόντος ἱστόρει τί σοι φίλον.
Electra’s speech is solemn poetry. The large number of spondees[402]
(there are three in the last line), the slow elaboration of the ideas—an
elaboration admirably pointed by τοι, which brings the rhythm almost to
a standstill—make a strong contrast with the following conversation.
There the relaxation of the rhythm is unmistakable; φέρ’ εἰπέ is almost
casual in its lightness, and it is at once followed by a tribrach. The
rather odd use of the bare dative ἀγροῖσι is a delightfully neat tinge
of colloquialism, supported by τυγχάνει. The _Philoctetes_ will repay
special study from this point of view. There is a remarkable tendency
to divide[403] lines between speakers in order to express excitement;
this device is elsewhere very uncommon. From this play we may select one
example[404] of amazing skill in rhythm. Philoctetes is explaining how he
contrives to crawl to and fro in quest of food and the like:—
γαστρὶ μὲν τὰ σύμφορα
τόξον τόδ’ ἐξηύρισκε, τὰς ὑποπτέρους
βάλλον πελείας· πρὸς δὲ τοῦθ’, ὅ μοι βάλοι
νευροσπαδὴς ἄτρακτος, αὐτὸς ἂν τάλας
εἰλυόμην δύστηνος ἐξέλκων πόδα
πρὸς τοῦτ’ ἄν.
The dull repetition of πρὸς τοῦτο and of ἄν; the extremely slow movement
of the penultimate line with its three spondees and the word-ending at
the close of the second foot; above all, the manner in which the whole
dragging sentence leads up to the monosyllable ἄν, so rare at the end
of a sentence, and there stops dead, is a marvellous suggestion of the
lame man’s painful progress and of the way in which at the end of his
endurance he falls prone and spent upon the object of his endeavour.
Specially striking phrases are not common. Sophocles obtains his effect
not by brilliant strokes of diction, but by the cumulative effect of a
sustained manner. There are such dexterities of course, like Antigone’s
πόθος τοι καὶ κακῶν ἄρ’ ἦν τις,[405] and the cry of Electra to her
brother’s ashes:—[406]
τοίγαρ σὺ δέξαι μ’ ἐς τὸ σὸν τόδε στέγος
τὴν μηδὲν εἰς τὸ μηδέν.
A poet who can, by that infinitesimal change from τὸν μηδέν to τὸ μηδέν,
indicate the very soul of grief, may claim to be one of the immortal
masters of language.
Modern readers find one great fault in this poet—colourlessness,
coldness, an absence of hearty verve; he seems a little too polished
and restrained. The truth is that in Sophocles the Attic spirit finds
its literary culmination. Æschylus lives in the pre-Periclean world;
Euripides is too restless and cosmopolitan to reflect the spirit of one
nation only; Plato and Demosthenes belong to the age of disillusionment
which came after Ægospotami; and Thucydides, though he shows many Attic
qualities, is without limpidity. Anyone, then, who would understand the
Athenian genius as embodied in letters must read Sophocles. He will find
the most useful commentary in the Parthenon and its friezes, and in
the remains of Greek statuary. One of the most marvellous and precious
experiences in life is to gaze upon works like the so-called Fates in
the British Museum, the Venus of Melos, or the Ludovisi Hera. Many a
casual visitor has glanced for the first time at these works and known
strong disappointment. A mere piece of marble accurately worked into a
female face or figure; majestic to be sure—but is this all? If he will
look again he at last perceives that the stone has put on, not merely
humanity, but immortality. An invisible glow radiates from it like the
odour from a flower. We have never found any name for it but Beauty.
It is indeed the quintessence of loveliness, delicate as gossamer yet
indestructible as granite. So with the tragedies of Sophocles: it is
possible to read the _Œdipus Tyrannus_ in certain moods and find it mere
frigid elegance. But, as with the beauties of Nature, so with the glories
of art, it is the second glance, the lingering of the eye beyond the
careless moment, that surprises something of the ultimate secret.
For reticence is one of the notes of Athenian art. No writer ever
effected so much with so scanty materials as Sophocles; he carries the
art of masterly omission to its extreme. Shakespeare attempts to express
everything; the mere exuberance of his phraseology is as wonderful as
anything else in his work. But even _King Lear_ or _Hamlet_, being
written by a man, share the weakness of humanity and leave the foundation
of life undisclosed. Such a disability may daunt the scientist; it is the
salvation of the artist; for the effect of all art rests on co-operation
between the maker and the spectator of the work. In literature, then, the
author knows that he must omit, and the reader or hearer must supply for
himself the contributions of his own heart and experience. How much then
is he to omit? On the varying answers to that question rest the different
forms of literature and the divergent schools of each form. Sophocles
has left more to his hearer than any other writer in the world. Another
note of Athenian art is simplicity. It is not crudeness, nor _naïveté_,
nor baldness of style. In a thousand passages of Sophocles, Thucydides,
and Plato, the line between savourless banality and the words they have
written is fine indeed, but that little means a whole world of art. Many
a fine author—Marlowe is a conspicuous example—writes nobly because
he writes violently, or with a conscious effort to soar. But let him
once trip, and he sprawls in bombast or nerveless garrulity. Simplicity
without baldness is the most difficult of all literary excellences,
and is yet achieved everywhere by Sophocles except when he rises to a
different level, of which we shall speak later.
Such then is the cause of Sophoclean frigidity and lack of colour.
He is led to write so by his Attic frugality and economy of effect,
by his knowledge that his audience can follow him into his rarefied
atmosphere, and by another cause. In our own time men have looked to art
for a “message” from more exciting or more lovely spheres. We talk of
“the literature of escape”; for us art must be an expanding influence.
The Athenian sought in it a concentrating influence. Each citizen who
witnessed the _Antigone_ was a member of a sovereign assembly; he
understood foreign policy at first hand; war or peace depended upon his
voice. Many came to watch the _Ajax_ who had but a while ago fought at
Œnophyta or in Egypt. Such men did not need “local colour” and exciting
technicalities. Their own lives were full of great events. What they
asked of art was serenity, profundity, to blend their own scattered
experiences into one noble picture of life itself, life made beautiful
because so wonderfully comprehended. This was the function of Sophocles
and his brother-craftsmen.
Beyond the normal lucid beauty of lyrics and dialogue, and beyond the
frequent outpourings of splendid eloquence in long speeches, there is a
still higher level of poetry which should be noted. Now and again his
pages are filled with an unearthly splendour. Reference has been made
before to certain isolated lines which combine utter simplicity with
bewildering charm.[407] But here and there the poet has given us whole
speeches in this divine manner. They are always a comment on the matter
in hand, but they are conceived in the spirit of one who “contemplates
all time and all existence,” who stands apart from man and sees him
in his place amid the workings of the universe. One of these ethereal
utterances is the speech[408] of Œdipus to Theseus who has expressed
his doubt whether Thebes will ever desert the friendship of Athens; it
begins:—
Fair Aigeus’ son, only to gods in heaven
Comes no old age nor death of anything;
All else is turmoiled by our master Time.
The earth’s strength fades and manhood’s glory fades,
Faith dies, and unfaith blossoms like a flower.
And who shall find in the open streets of men
Or secret places of his own heart’s love
One wind blow true for ever?
More personal, but instinct with the same glow of imaginative beauty is
the soliloquy[409] of Ajax when at the point of death. It is in passages
like these that one realizes the value of the restraint which obtains
elsewhere; when the author gives his voice full scope the effect is
heartshaking. Ajax’ appeal to the sun-god to “check his gold-embossed
rein” fills with splendour at a word the heavens which were lowering with
horror. It recalls Marlowe’s lines of the same type and effect though
in different application, which suffuse the agony of Faust with bitter
glory:—
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven
That time may cease, and midnight never come!
The greatest achievement of Sophocles was, however, reserved till the
close of his life. The messenger’s speech,[410] narrating the last
moments of Œdipus, is the culmination in Greek of whatever miracles
human language can compass in exciting awe and delight. The poet has
bent all his mastery of tense idiom, of varied and haunting rhythm, all
his instinct for the pathos of life and the mystery of fate, to produce
one mighty uplifting of the hearer into the region where emotion and
intellect are no longer opposed but mingle into something for which we
have no name but “Life”.