Life and Political Character of Sophocles--Character of his different
Tragedies.
The birth of Sophocles was nearly at an equal distance between that of his
predecessor and that of Euripides, so that he was about half a life-time
from each: but on this point all the authorities do not coincide. He was,
however, during the greatest part of his life the contemporary of both. He
frequently contended for the ivy-wreath of tragedy with Aeschylus, and he
outlived Euripides, who, however, also attained to a good old age. To
speak in the spirit of the ancient religion, it seems that a beneficent
Providence wished in this individual to evince to the human race the
dignity and blessedness of its lot, by endowing him with every divine
gift, with all that can adorn and elevate the mind and the heart, and
crowning him with every imaginable blessing of this life. Descended from
rich and honourable parents, and born a free citizen of the most
enlightened state of Greece;--there were birth, necessary condition, and
foundation. Beauty of person and of mind, and the uninterruped enjoyment
of both in the utmost perfection, to the extreme term of human existence;
a most choice and finished education in gymnastics and the musical arts,
the former so important in the development of the bodily powers, and the
latter in the communication of harmony; the sweet bloom of youth, and the
ripe fruit of age; the possession of and unbroken enjoyment of poetry and
art, and the exercise of serene wisdom; love and respect among his fellow
citizens, renown abroad, and the countenance and favour of the gods: these
are the general features of the life of this pious and virtuous poet. It
would seem as if the gods, to whom, and to Bacchus in particular, as the
giver of all joy, and the civilizer of the human race, he devoted himself
at an early age by the composition of tragical dramas for his festivals,
had wished to confer immortality on him, so long did they delay the hour
of his death; but as this could not be, they loosened him from life as
gently as was possible, that he might imperceptibly change one immortality
for another, the long duration of his earthly existence for the
imperishable vitality of his name. When a youth of sixteen, he was
selected, on account of his beauty, to dance (playing the while, after the
Greek manner, on the lyre) at the head of the chorus of youths who, after
the battle of Salamis (in which Aeschylus fought, and which he has so
nobly described), executed the Paean round the trophy erected on that
occasion. Thus then the beautiful season of his youthful bloom coincided
with the most glorious epoch of the Athenian people. He held the rank of
general as colleague with Pericles and Thucydides, and, when arrived at a
more advanced age, was elected to the priesthood of a native hero. In his
twenty-fifth year he began to exhibit tragedies; twenty times was he
victorious; he often gained the second place, but never was he ranked so
low as in the third. In this career he proceeded with increasing success
till he had passed his ninetieth year; and some of his greatest works were
even the fruit of a still later period. There is a story of an accusation
being brought against him by one or more of his elder sons, of having
become childish from age, and of being incapable of managing his own
affairs. An alleged partiality for a grandson by a second wife is said to
have been the motive of the charge. In his defence he contented himself
with reading to his judges his _Oedipus at Colonos_, which he had
then just composed (or, according to others, only the magnificent chorus
in it, wherein he sings the praises of Colonos, his birth-place,) and the
astonished judges, without farther consultation, conducted him in triumph
to his house. If it be true that the second _Oedipus_ was written at
so late an age, as from its mature serenity and total freedom from the
impetuosity and violence of youth we have good reason to conclude that it
actually was, it affords us a pleasing picture of an old age at once
amiable and venerable. Although the varying accounts of his death have a
fabulous look, they all coincide in this, and alike convey this same
purport, that he departed life without a struggle, while employed in his
art, or something connected with it, and that, like an old swan of Apollo,
he breathed out his life in song. The story also of the Lacedaemonian
general, who having entrenched the burying-ground of the poet's ancestors,
and being twice warned by Bacchus in a vision to allow Sophocles to be
there interred, dispatched a herald to the Athenians on the subject, I
consider as true, as well as a number of other circumstances, which serve
to set in a strong light the illustrious reverence in which his name was
held. In calling him virtuous and pious, I used the words in his own
sense; for although his works breathe the real character of ancient
grandeur, gracefulness, and simplicity, he, of all the Grecian poets, is
also the one whose feelings bear the strongest affinity to the spirit of
our religion.
One gift alone was denied to him by nature: a voice attuned to song. He
could only call forth and direct the harmonious effusions of other voices;
he was therefore compelled to depart from the hitherto established
practice for the poet to act a part in his own pieces. Once only did he
make his appearance on the stage in the character of the blind singer
Thamyris (a very characteristic trait) playing on the cithara.
As Aeschylus, who raised tragic poetry from its rude beginnings to the
dignity of the Cothurnus, was his predecessor; the historical relation in
which he stood to him enabled Sophocles to profit by the essays of that
original master, so that Aeschylus appears as the rough designer, and
Sophocles as the finisher and successor. The more artificial construction
of Sophocles' dramas is easily perceived: the greater limitation of the
chorus in proportion to the dialogue, the smoother polish of the rhythm,
and the purer Attic diction, the introduction of a greater number of
characters, the richer complication of the fable, the multiplication of
incidents, a higher degree of development, the more tranquil dwelling upon
all the momenta of the action, and the more striking theatrical effect
allowed to decisive ones, the more perfect rounding off of the whole, even
considered from a merely external point of view. But he excelled Aeschylus
in something still more essential, and proved himself deserving of the
good fortune of having such a preceptor, and of being allowed to enter
into competition in the same field with him: I mean the harmonious
perfection of his mind, which enabled him spontaneously to satisfy every
requisition of the laws of beauty, a mind whose free impulse was
accompanied by the most clear consciousness. To surpass Aeschylus in
boldness of conception was perhaps impossible: I am inclined, however, to
believe that is only because of his wisdom and moderation that Sophocles
appears less bold, since he always goes to work with the greatest energy,
and perhaps with even a more sustained earnestness, like a man who knows
the extent of his powers, and is determined, when he does not exceed them,
to stand up with the greater confidence for his rights [Footnote: This
idea has been so happily expressed by the greatest genius perhaps of the
last century, that the translator hopes he will be forgiven for here
transcribing the passage: "I can truly say that, poor and unknown as I
then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works,
as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour. It
ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders both in a rational and
religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing
to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself, had been all along my
constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others; I
watched every means of information to see how much ground I occupied as a
man and as a poet; I studied assiduously nature's design in my formation--
where the lights and shades in my character were intended."--_Letter
from Burns to Dr. Moore, in Currie's Life._--TRANS.]. As Aeschylus
delights in transporting us to the convulsions of the primary world of the
Titans, Sophocles, on the other hand, never avails himself of divine
interposition except where it is absolutely necessary; he formed men,
according to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not
more moral and exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than they
really are; and while he took every thing in the most human sense, he was
at the same time open to its higher significance. According to all
appearance he was also more temperate than Aeschylus in his use of scenic
ornaments; displaying perhaps more of taste and chastened beauty, but not
attempting the same colossal magnificence.
To characterize the native sweetness and gracefulness so eminent in this
poet, the ancients gave him the appellation of the Attic bee. Whoever is
thoroughly imbued with the feeling of this peculiarity may flatter himself
that a sense for ancient art has arisen within him; for the affected
sentimentality of the present day, far from coinciding with the ancients
in this opinion, would in the tragedies of Sophocles, both in respect of
the representation of bodily sufferings, and in the sentiments and
structure, find much that is insupportably austere.
When we consider the great fertility of Sophocles, for according to some
he wrote a hundred and thirty pieces (of which, however, seventeen were
pronounced spurious by Aristophanes the grammarian), and eighty according
to the most moderate account, little, it must be owned, has come down to
us, for we have only seven of them. Chance, however, has so far favoured
us, that in these seven pieces we find several which were held by the
ancients as his greatest works, the _Antigone_, for example, the
_Electra_, and the two on the subject of _Oedipus_; and these have also
come down to us tolerably free from mutilation and corruption in their
text. The _Oedipus Tyrannus_, and the _Philoctetes_, have been generally,
but without good reason, preferred by modern critics to all the others:
the first on account of the artifice of the plot, in which the dreadful
catastrophe, which so powerfully excites the curiosity (a rare case in the
Greek tragedies), is inevitably brought about by a succession of connected
causes; the latter on account of the masterly display of character, the
beautiful contrast observable in those of the three leading personages,
and the simple structure of the piece, in which, with so few persons,
everything proceeds from the truest and most adequate motives. But the
whole of the tragedies of Sophocles are separately resplendent with
peculiar excellencies. In _Antigone_ we have the purest display of
feminine heroism; in _Ajax_ the sense of manly honour in its full force;
in the _Trachiniae_ (or, as we should rather name it, the _Dying
Hercules_), the female levity of Dejanira is beautifully atoned for by her
death, and the sufferings of Hercules are portrayed with suitable dignity;
_Electra_ is distinguished by energy and pathos; in _Oedipus Coloneus_
there prevails a mild and gentle emotion, and over the whole piece is
diffused the sweetest gracefulness. I will not undertake to weigh the
respective merits of these pieces against each other: but I own I
entertain a singular predilection for the last of them, because it appears
to me the most expressive of the personal feelings of the poet himself. As
this piece was written for the very purpose of throwing a lustre on
Athens, and his own birth-place more particularly, he appears to have
laboured on it with a special love and affection.
_Ajax_ and _Antigone_ are usually the least understood. We cannot conceive
how these pieces should run on so long after what we usually call the
catastrophe. On this subject I shall hereafter offer a remark or two.
Of all the fables of ancient mythology in which fate is made to play a
conspicuous part, the story of Oedipus is perhaps the most ingenious; but
still many others, as, for instance, that of Niobe, which, without any
complication of incidents, simply exhibit on a scale of colossal
dimensions both of human arrogance, and its impending punishment from the
gods, appear to me to be conceived in a grander style. The very intrigue
which is involved in that of Oedipus detracts from its loftiness of
character. Intrigue in the dramatic sense is a complication arising from
the crossing of purposes and events, and this is found in a high degree in
the fate of Oedipus, as all that is done by his parents or himself in
order to evade the predicted horrors, serves only to bring them on the
more surely. But that which gives so grand and terrible a character to
this drama, is the circumstance which, however, is for the most part
overlooked; that to the very Oedipus who solved the riddle of the Sphinx
relating to human life, his own life should remain so long an inextricable
riddle, to be so awfully cleared up, when all was irretrievably lost. A
striking picture of the arrogant pretension of human wisdom, which is ever
right enough in its general principles, but does not enable the possessor
to make the proper application to himself.
Notwithstanding the severe conclusion of the first _Oedipus_ we are
so far reconciled to it by the violence, suspicion, and haughtiness in the
character of Oedipus, that our feelings do not absolutely revolt at so
horrible a fate. For this end, it was necessary thus far to sacrifice the
character of Oedipus, who, however, raises himself in our estimation by
his fatherly care and heroic zeal for the welfare of his people, that
occasion him, by his honest search for the author of the crime, to
accelerate his own destruction. It was also necessary, for the sake of
contrast with his future misery, to exhibit him in his treatment of
Tiresias and Creon, in all the haughtiness of regal dignity. And, indeed,
all his earlier proceedings evince, in some measure, the same
suspiciousness and violence of character; the former, in his refusing to
be quieted by the assurances of Polybos, when taunted with being a
suppositious child, and the latter, in his bloody quarrel with Laius. The
latter character he seems to have inherited from both his parents. The
arrogant levity of Jocasta, which induces her to deride the oracle as not
confirmed by the event, the penalty of which she is so soon afterwards to
inflict upon herself, was not indeed inherited by her son; he is, on the
contrary, conspicuous throughout for the purity of his intentions; and his
care and anxiety to escape from the predicted crime, added naturally to
the poignancy of his despair, when he found that he had nevertheless been
overtaken by it. Awful indeed is his blindness in not perceiving the truth
when it was, as it were, brought directly home to him; as, for instance,
when he puts the question to Jocasta, How did Laius look? and she answers
he had become gray-haired, otherwise in appearance he was not unlike
Oedipus. This is also another feature of her levity, that she should not
have been struck with the resemblance to her husband, a circumstance that
might have led her to recognize him as her son. Thus a close analysis of
the piece will evince the utmost propriety and significance of every
portion of it. As, however, it is customary to extol the correctness of
Sophocles, and to boast more especially of the strict observance of
probability which, prevails throughout this _Oedipus_, I must here
remark that this very piece is a proof how, on this subject, the ancient
artists followed very different principles from those of modern critics.
For, according to our way of thinking, nothing could be more improbable
than that Oedipus should, so long, have forborne to inquire into the
circumstances of the death of Laius, and that the scars on his feet, and
even the name which he bore, should never have excited the curiosity of
Jocasta, &c. But the ancients did not produce their works of art for
calculating and prosaic understandings; and an improbability which, to be
found out, required dissection, and did not exist within the matters of
the representation itself, was to them none at all.
The diversity of character of Aeschylus and Sophocles is nowhere more
conspicuous than in the _Eumenides_ and the _Oedipus Coloneus_, as both
these pieces were composed with the same aim. This aim was to glorify
Athens as the sacred abode of law and humanity, on whose soil the
crimes of the hero families of other countries might, by a higher
mediation, be at last propitiated; while an ever-during prosperity was
predicted to the Athenian people. The patriotic and liberty-breathing
Aeschylus has recourse to a judicial, and the pious Sophocles to a
religious, procedure; even the consecration of Oedipus in death. Bent down
by the consciousness of inevitable crimes, and lengthened misery, his
honour is, as it were, cleared up by the gods themselves, as if desirous
of showing that, in the terrible example which they made of him, they had
no intention of visiting him in particular, but merely wished to give a
solemn lesson to the whole human race. Sophocles, to whom the whole of
life was one continued worship of the gods, delighted to throw all
possible honour on its last moments as if a more solemn festival; and
associated it with emotions very different from what the thought of
mortality is in general calculated to excite. That the tortured and
exhausted Oedipus should at last find peace and repose in the grove of the
Furies, in the very spot from which all other mortals fled with aversion
and horror, he whose misfortune consisted in having done a deed at which
all men shudder, unconsciously and without warning of any inward feeling;
in this there is a profound and mysterious meaning.
Aeschylus has given us in the person of Pallas a more majestic
representation of the Attic cultivation, prudence, moderation, mildness,
and magnanimity; but Sophocles, who delighted to draw all that is godlike
within the sphere of humanity, has, in his Theseus, given a more delicate
development of all these same things. Whoever is desirous of gaining an
accurate idea of Grecian heroism, as contrasted with the Barbarian, would
do well to consider this character with attention.
In Aeschylus, before the victim of persecution can be delivered, and the
land can participate in blessings, the infernal horror of the Furies
congeals the spectators' blood, and makes his hair stand on end, and the
whole rancour of these goddesses of rage is exhausted: after this the
transition to their peaceful retreat is the more wonderful; the whole
human race seems, as it were, delivered from their power. In Sophocles,
however, they do not ever appear, but are kept altogether in the
background; and they are never mentioned by their own name, but always
alluded to by some softening euphemism. But this very obscurity, so
exactly befitting these daughters of night, and the very distance at which
they are kept, are calculated to excite a silent horror in which the
bodily senses have no part. The clothing the grove of the Furies with all
the charms of a southern spring completes the sweetness of the poem; and
were I to select from his own tragedies an emblem of the poetry of
Sophocles, I should describe it as a sacred grove of the dark goddesses of
fate, in which the laurel, the olive, and the vine, are always green, and
the song of the nightingale is for ever heard.
Two of the pieces of Sophocles refer, to what in the Greek way of
thinking, are the sacred rights of the dead, and the solemn importance of
burial; in _Antigone_ the whole of the action hinges on this, and in
_Ajax_ it forms the only satisfactory conclusion of the piece.
The ideal of the female character in _Antigone_ is characterized by
great austerity, and it is sufficient of itself to put an end to all the
seductive representations of Grecian softness, which of late have been so
universally current. Her indignation at Ismene's refusal to take part in
her daring resolution; the manner in which she afterwards repulses Ismene,
when repenting of her former weakness, she begs to be allowed to share her
heroic sister's death, borders on harshness; both her silence, and then
her invectives against Creon, by which she provokes him to execute his
tyrannical threats, display the immovable energy of manly courage. The
poet has, however, discovered the secret of painting the loving heart of
woman in a single line, when to the assertion of Creon, that Polynices was
an enemy to his country, she replies:
My love shall go with thine, but not my hate.
[Footnote: This is the version of Franklin, but it does not convey the
meaning of the original, and I am not aware that the English language is
sufficiently flexible to admit of an exact translation. The German, which,
though far inferior to the Greek in harmony, is little behind in
flexibility, has in this respect great advantage over the English; and
Schlegel's "_nicht mitzuhassen, mitzulieben bin ich da_," represents
exactly _Outoi synechthein alla symphilein ephyn_.--TRANS.]
Moreover, she puts a constraint on her feelings only so long as by giving
vent to them, she might make her firmness of purpose appear equivocal.
When, however, she is being led forth to inevitable death, she pours forth
her soul in the tenderest and most touching waitings over her hard and
untimely fate, and does not hesitate, she, the modest virgin, to mourn the
loss of nuptials, and the unenjoyed bliss of marriage. Yet she never in a
single syllable betrays any inclination for Haemon, and does not even
mention the name of that amiable youth [Footnote: Barthélemy asserts the
contrary; but the line to which he refers, according to the more correct
manuscripts, and even according to the context, belongs to Ismene.]. After
such heroic determination, to have shown that any tie still bound her to
existence, would have been a weakness; but to relinquish without one
sorrowful regret those common enjoyments with which the gods have enriched
this life, would have ill accorded with her devout sanctity of mind.
On a first view the chorus in _Antigone_ may appear weak, acceding,
as it does, at once, without opposition to the tyrannical commands of
Creon, and without even attempting to make the slightest representation in
behalf of the young heroine. But to exhibit the determination and the deed
of Antigone in their full glory, it was necessary that they should stand
out quite alone, and that she should have no stay or support. Moreover,
the very submissiveness of the chorus increases our impression of the
irresistible nature of the royal commands. So, too, was it necessary for
it to mingle with its concluding addresses to Antigone the most painful
recollections, that she might drain the full cup of earthly sorrows. The
case is very different in _Electra_, where the chorus appropriately
takes an interest in the fate of the two principal characters, and
encourages them in the execution of their design, as the moral feelings
are divided as to its legitimacy, whereas there is no such conflict in
Antigone's case, who had nothing to deter her from her purpose but mere
external fears.
After the fulfilment of the deed, and the infliction of its penalties, the
arrogance of Creon still remains to be corrected, and the death of
Antigone to be avenged; nothing less than the destruction of his whole
family, and his own despair, could be a sufficient atonement for the
sacrifice of a life so costly. We have therefore the king's wife, who had
not even been named before, brought at last on the stage, that she may
hear the misfortunes of her family, and put an end to her own existence.
To Grecian feelings it would have been impossible to consider the poem as
properly concluding with the death of Antigone, without its penal
retribution.
The case is the same in Ajax. His arrogance, which was punished with a
degrading madness, is atoned for by the deep shame which at length drives
him even to self-murder. The persecution of the unfortunate man must not,
however, be carried farther; when, therefore, it is in contemplation to
dishonour his very corpse by the refusal of interment, even Ulysses
interferes. He owes the honours of burial to that Ulysses whom in life he
had looked upon as his mortal enemy, and to whom, in the dreadful
introductory scene, Pallas shows, in the example of the delirious Ajax,
the nothingness of man. Thus Ulysses appears as the personification of
moderation, which, if it had been possessed by Ajax, would have prevented
his fall.
Self-murder is of frequent occurrence in ancient mythology, at least as
adapted to tragedy; but it generally takes place, if not in a state of
insanity, yet in a state of agitation, after some sudden calamity which
leaves no room for consideration. Such self-murders as those of Jocasta,
Haemon, Eurydice, and lastly of Dejanira, appear merely in the light of a
subordinate appendage in the tragical pictures of Sophocles; but the
suicide of Ajax is a cool determination, a free action, and of sufficient
importance to become the principal subject of the piece. It is not the
last fatal crisis of a slow mental malady, as is so often the case in
these more effeminate modern times; still less is it that more theoretical
disgust of life, founded on a conviction of its worthlessness, which
induced so many of the later Romans, on Epicurean as well as Stoical
principles, to put an end to their existence. It is not through any
unmanly despondency that Ajax is unfaithful to his rude heroism. His
delirium is over, as well as his first comfortless feelings upon awaking
from it; and it is not till after the complete return of consciousness,
and when he has had time to measure the depth of the abyss into which, by
a divine destiny, his overweening haughtiness has plunged him, when he
contemplates his situation, and feels it ruined beyond remedy:--his honour
wounded by the refusal of the arms of Achilles; and the outburst of his
vindictive rage wasted in his infatuation on defenceless flocks; himself,
after a long and reproachless heroic career, a source of amusement to his
enemies, an object of derision and abomination to the Greeks, and to his
honoured father,--should he thus return to him--a disgrace: after
reviewing all this, he decides agreeably to his own motto, "gloriously to
live or gloriously to die," that the latter course alone remains open to
him. Even the dissimulation,--the first, perhaps, that he ever practised,
by which, to prevent the execution of his purpose from being disturbed, he
pacifies his comrades, must be considered as the fruit of greatness of
soul. He appoints Teucer guardian to his infant boy, the future
consolation of his own bereaved parents; and, like Cato, dies not before
he has arranged the concerns of all who belong to him. As Antigone in her
womanly tenderness, so even he in his wild manner, seems in his last
speech to feel the majesty of that light of the sun from which he is
departing for ever. His rude courage disdains compassion, and therefore
excites it the more powerfully. What a picture of awaking from the tumult
of passion, when the tent opens and in the midst of the slaughtered herds
he sits on the ground bewailing himself!
As Ajax, in the feeling of inextinguishable shame, forms the violent
resolution of throwing away life, Philoctetes, on the other hand, bears
its wearisome load during long years of misery with the most enduring
patience. If Ajax is honoured by his despair, Philoctetes is equally
ennobled by his constancy. When the instinct of self-preservation comes
into collision with no moral impulse, it naturally exhibits itself in all
its strength. Nature has armed with this instinct whatever is possessed of
the breath of life, and the vigour with which every hostile attack on
existence is repelled is the strongest proof of its excellence. In the
presence, it is true, of that band of men by which he had been abandoned,
and if he must depend on their superior power, Philoctetes would no more
have wished for life than did Ajax. But he is alone with nature; he quails
not before the frightful aspect which she exhibits to him, and still
clings even to the maternal bosom of the all-nourishing earth. Exiled on a
desert island, tortured by an incurable wound, solitary and helpless as he
is, his bow procures him food from the birds of the forest, the rock
yields him soothing herbs, the fountain supplies a fresh beverage, his
cave affords him a cool shelter in summer, in winter he is warmed by the
mid-day sun, or a fire of kindled boughs; even the raging attacks of his
pain at length exhaust themselves, and leave him in a refreshing sleep.
Alas! it is the artificial refinements, the oppressive burden of a
relaxing and deadening superfluity which render man indifferent to the
value of life: when it is stripped of all foreign appendages, though borne
down with sufferings so that the naked existence alone remains, still will
its sweetness flow from the heart at every pulse through all the veins.
Miserable man! ten long years has he struggled; and yet he still lives,
and clings to life and hope. What force of truth is there in all this!
What, however, most moves us in behalf of Philoctetes is, that he, who by
an abuse of power had been cast out from society, when it again approaches
him is exposed by it to a second and still more dangerous evil, that of
falsehood. The anxiety excited in the mind of the spectator lest
Philoctetes should be deprived of his last means of subsistence, his bow,
would be too painful, did he not from the beginning entertain a suspicion
that the open-hearted and straight-forward Neoptolemus will not be able to
maintain to the end the character which, so much against his will, he has
assumed. Not without reason after this deception does Philoctetes turn
away from mankind to those inanimate companions to which the instinctive
craving for society had attached him. He calls on the island and its
volcanoes to witness this fresh wrong; he believes that his beloved bow
feels pain in being taken from him; and at length he takes a melancholy
leave of his hospitable cavern, the fountains and the wave-washed cliffs,
from which he so often looked in vain upon the ocean: so inclined to love
is the uncorrupted mind of man.
Respecting the bodily sufferings of Philoctetes and the manner of
representing them, Lessing has in his _Laocoön_ declared himself against
Winkelmann, and Herder again has in the _Silvae Criticae_ (Kritische
Wälder) contradicted Lessing. Both the two last writers have made many
excellent observations on the piece, although we must allow with Herder,
that Winkelmann was correct in affirming that the Philoctetes of
Sophocles, like Laocoön in the celebrated group, suffers with the
suppressed agony of an heroic soul never altogether overcome by his pain.
The _Trachiniae_ appears to me so very inferior to the other pieces
of Sophocles which have reached us, that I could wish there were some
warrant for supposing that this tragedy was composed in the age, indeed,
and in the school of Sophocles, perhaps by his son Iophon, and that it was
by mistake attributed to the father. There is much both in the structure
and plan, and in the style of the piece, calculated to excite suspicion;
and many critics have remarked that the introductory soliloquy of
Dejanira, which is wholly uncalled-for, is very unlike the general
character of Sophocles' prologues: and although this poet's usual rules of
art are observed on the whole, yet it is very superficially; no where can
we discern in it the profound mind of Sophocles. But as no writer of
antiquity appears to have doubted its authenticity, while Cicero even
quotes from it the complaint of Hercules, as from an indisputable work of
Sophocles, we are compelled to content ourselves with the remark, that in
this one instance the tragedian has failed to reach his usual elevation.
This brings us to the consideration of a general question, which, in the
examination of the works of Euripides, will still more particularly engage
the attention of the critic: how far, namely, the invention and execution
of a drama must belong to one man to entitle him to pass for its author.
Dramatic literature affords numerous examples of plays composed by several
persons conjointly. It is well known that Euripides, in the details and
execution of his pieces, availed himself of the assistance of a learned
servant, Cephisophon; and he perhaps also consulted with him respecting
his plots. It appears, moreover, certain that in Athens schools of
dramatic art had at this date been formed; such, indeed, as usually arise
when poetical talents are, by public competition, called abundantly and
actively into exercise: schools of art which contain scholars of such
excellence and of such kindred genius, that the master may confide to them
a part of the execution, and even the plan, and yet allow the whole to
pass under his name without any disparagement to his fame. Such were the
schools of painting of the sixteenth century, and every one knows what a
remarkable degree of critical acumen is necessary to discover in many of
Raphael's pictures how much really belongs to his own pencil. Sophocles
had educated his son Iophon to the tragic art, and might therefore easily
receive assistance from him in the actual labour of composition,
especially as it was necessary that the tragedies that were to compete for
the prize should be ready and got by heart by a certain day. On the other
hand, he might also execute occasional passages for works originally
designed by the son; and the pieces of this description, in which the hand
of the master was perceptible, would be naturally attributed to the more
celebrated name.