II. While under this brilliant and energetic administration Athens

was daily more and more concentrating on herself the reluctant

admiration and the growing fears of Greece, her policy towards her

dependant allies involved her in a war which ultimately gave, if not a

legal, at least an acknowledged, title to the pretensions she assumed.

Hostilities between the new population of Miletus and the oligarchic

government of Samos had been for some time carried on; the object of

contention was the city of Priene--united, apparently, with rival

claims upon Anaea, a town on the coast opposite Samos. The Milesians,

unsuccessful in the war, applied to Athens for assistance. As the

Samians were among the dependant allies, Pericles, in the name of the

Athenian people, ordered them to refer to Athens the decision of the

dispute; on their refusal an expedition of forty galleys was conducted

against them by Pericles in person. A still more plausible colour

than that of the right of dictation was given to this interference;

for the prayer of the Milesians was backed and sanctioned by many of

the Samians themselves, oppressed by the oligarchic government which

presided over them. A ridiculous assertion was made by the libellers

of the comic drama and the enemies of Pericles, that the war was

undertaken at the instigation of Aspasia, with whom that minister had

formed the closest connexion; but the expedition was the necessary and

unavoidable result of the twofold policy by which the Athenian

government invariably directed its actions; 1st, to enforce the right

of ascendency over its allies; 2dly, to replace oligarchic by

democratic institutions. Nor, on this occasion, could Athens have

remained neutral or supine without materially weakening her hold upon

all the states she aspired at once to democratize and to govern.

III. The fleet arrived at Samos--the oligarchic government was

deposed--one hundred hostages (fifty men--fifty boys) from its

partisans were taken and placed at Lemnos, and a garrison was left to

secure the new constitution of the island. Some of the defeated

faction took refuge on the Asiatic continent--entered into an intrigue

with the Persian Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardis; and having, by

continued correspondence with their friends at Samos, secured

connivance at their attempt, they landed by night at Samos with a

hired force of seven hundred soldiers, and succeeded in mastering the

Athenian garrison, and securing the greater part of the chiefs of the

new administration; while, by a secret and well-contrived plot, they

regained their hostages left at Lemnos. They then openly proclaimed

their independence--restored the oligarchy--and, as a formal proof of

defiance, surrendered to Pissuthnes the Athenians they had captured.

Byzantium hastened to join the revolt. Their alliance with Pissuthnes

procured the Samians the promised aid of a Phoenician fleet, and they

now deemed themselves sufficiently strong to renew their hostilities

with Miletus. Their plans were well laid, and their boldness made a

considerable impression on the states hostile to Athens. Among the

Peloponnesian allies it was debated whether or not, despite the

treaty, the Samians should be assisted: opinions were divided, but

Corinth [310], perhaps, turned the scale, by insisting on the right of

every state to deal with its dependants. Corinth had herself colonies

over which she desired to preserve a dictatorial sway; and she was

disposed to regard the Samian revolution less as the gallantry of

freemen than the enterprise of rebels. It was fortunate, too,

perhaps, for Athens, that the Samian insurgents had sought their ally

in the Persian satrap; nor could the Peloponnesian states at that time

have decorously assisted the Persian against the Athenian arms. But

short time for deliberation was left by a government which procured

for the Athenians the character to be not more quick to contrive than

to execute--to be the only people who could simultaneously project and

acquire--and who even considered a festival but as a day on which some

necessary business could be accomplished [311]. With a fleet of sixty

sail, Pericles made for Samos; some of the vessels were stationed on

the Carian coast to watch the movements of the anticipated Phoenician

re-enforcement; others were despatched to collect aid from Chios and

Lesbos. Meanwhile, though thus reduced to forty-four sail, Pericles,

near a small island called Tragia, engaged the Samian fleet returning

from Miletus, consisting of seventy vessels, and gained a victory.

Then, re-enforced by forty galleys from Athens, and twenty-five from

Lesbos and Chios, he landed on the island, defeated the Samians in a

pitched battle, drove them into their city, invested it with a triple

line of ramparts, and simultaneously blockaded the city by sea. The

besieged were not, however, too discouraged to sally out; and, under

Melissus, who was at once a philosopher and a hero, they even obtained

advantage in a seafight. But these efforts were sufficiently

unimportant to permit Pericles to draw off sixty of his vessels, and

steer along the Carian coast to meet the expected fleet of the

Phoenicians. The besieged did not suffer the opportunity thus

afforded them to escape--they surprised the naval blockading force,

destroyed the guard-ships, and joining battle with the rest of the

fleet, obtained a decisive victory (B. C. 440), which for fourteen

days left them the mastery of the open sea, and enabled them to

introduce supplies.

IV. While lying in wait for the Phoenician squadron, which did not,

however, make its appearance, tidings of the Samian success were

brought to Pericles. He hastened back and renewed the blockade--fresh

forces were sent to his aid--from Athens, forty-eight ships, under

three generals, Thucydides [312], Agnon, and Phormio; followed by

twenty more under Tlepolemus and Anticles, while Chios and Lesbos

supplied an additional squadron of thirty. Still the besieged were

not disheartened; they ventured another engagement, which was but an

ineffectual struggle, and then, shut up within their city, stood a

siege of nine months.

With all the small Greek states it had ever been the policy of

necessity to shun even victories attended with great loss. This

policy was refined by Pericles into a scientific system. In the

present instance, he avoided all assaults which might weaken his

forces, and preferred the loss of time to the loss of life. The

tedious length of the blockade occasioned some murmurs among the

lively and impatient forces he commanded; but he is said to have

diverted the time by the holyday devices, which in the middle ages

often so graced and softened the rugged aspect of war. The army was

divided into eight parts, and by lot it was decided which one of the

eight divisions should, for the time, encounter the fatigues of actual

service; the remaining seven passed the day in sports and feasting

[313]. A concourse of women appear to have found their way to the

encampment [314], and a Samian writer ascribes to their piety or their

gratitude the subsequent erection of a temple to Venus. The siege,

too, gave occasion to Pericles to make experiment of military engines,

which, if invented before, probably now received mechanical

improvement. Although, in the earlier contest, mutual animosities had

been so keen that the prisoners on either side had been contumeliously

branded [315], it was, perhaps, the festive and easy manner in which

the siege was afterward carried on, that, mitigating the bitterness of

prolonged hostilities, served to procure, at last, for the Samians

articles of capitulation more than usually mild. They embraced the

conditions of demolishing their fortifications, delivering up their

ships, and paying by instalments a portion towards the cost of the

siege [316]. Byzantium, which, commanding the entrance of the Euxine,

was a most important possession to the Athenians [317], whether for

ambition or for commerce, at the same time accepted, without

resistance, the terms held out to it, and became once more subject to

the Athenian empire.

V. On his return, Pericles was received with an enthusiasm which

attested the sense entertained of the value of his conquest. He

pronounced upon those who had fallen in the war a funeral oration.

[318] When he descended from the rostrum, the women crowded round and

showered fillets and chaplets on the eloquent victor. Elpinice, the

sister of Cimon, alone shared not the general enthusiasm. “Are these

actions,” she said to Pericles, “worthy of chaplets and garlands?

actions purchased by the loss of many gallant citizens--not won

against the Phoenician and the Mede, like those of Cimon, but by the

ruin of a city united with ourselves in amity and origin.” The ready

minister replied to the invective of Elpinice by a line from

Archilochus, which, in alluding to the age and coquetry of the lady,

probably answered the oratorical purpose of securing the laugh on his

own side. [319]

While these events confirmed the authority of Athens and the Athenian

government, a power had grown up within the city that assumed a right,

the grave assertion of which without the walls would have been deeply

felt and bitterly resented--a power that sat in severe and derisive

judgment upon Athens herself, her laws, her liberties, her mighty

generals, her learned statesmen, her poets, her sages, and her

arrogant democracy--a power that has come down to foreign nations and

distant ages as armed with irresistible weapons--which now is

permitted to give testimony, not only against individuals, but nations

themselves, but which, in that time, was not more effective in

practical results than at this day a caricature in St. James’s-street,

or a squib in a weekly newspaper--a power which exposed to relentless

ridicule, before the most susceptible and numerous tribunal, the

loftiest names in rank, in wisdom, and in genius--and which could not

have deprived a beggar of his obol or a scavenger of his office: THE

POWER OF THE COMIC MUSE.

VI. We have seen that in the early village festivals, out of which

grew the tragedy of Phrynichus and Aeschylus, there were, besides the

Dithyramb and the Satyrs, the Phallic processions, which diversified

the ceremony by the lowest jests mingled with the wildest satire. As

her tragedy had its origin in the Dithyramb--as her satyric

after-piece had its origin in the satyric buffooneries--so out of the

Phallic processions rose the Comedy of Greece (B. C. 562) [320].

Susarion is asserted by some to have been a Megarian by origin; and

while the democracy of Megara was yet in force, he appears to have

roughly shaped the disorderly merriment of the procession into a rude

farce, interspersed with the old choral songs. The close connexion

between Megara and Athens soon served to communicate to the latter the

improvements of Susarion; and these improvements obtained for the

Megarian the title of inventer of comedy, with about the same justice

as a similar degree of art conferred upon the later Thespis the

distinction of the origin of tragedy. The study of Homer’s epics had

suggested its true province to tragedy; the study of the Margites,

attributed also to Homer, seems to have defined and enlarged the

domain of comedy. Eleven years after Phrynichus appeared, and just

previous to the first effort of Aeschylus (B. C. 500), Epicharmus, who

appears to have been a native of Cos [321], produced at Syracuse the

earliest symmetrical and systematic form of comic dialogue and fable.

All accounts prove him to have been a man of extraordinary genius, and

of very thoughtful and accomplished mind. Perhaps the loss of his

works is not the least to be lamented of those priceless treasures

which time has destroyed. So uncertain, after all, is the great

tribunal of posterity, which is often as little to be relied upon as

the caprice of the passing day! We have the worthless Electra of

Euripides--we have lost all, save the titles and a few sententious

fragments, of thirty-five comedies of Epicharmus! Yet if Horace

inform us rightly, that the poet of Syracuse was the model of Plautus,

perhaps in the Amphitryon we can trace the vein and genius of the

father of true comedy; and the thoughts and the plot of the lost

Epicharmus may still exist, mutilated and disguised, in the humours of

the greatest comic poet [322] of modern Europe.

VII. It was chiefly from the rich stores of mythology that Epicharmus

drew his fables; but what was sublimity with the tragic poet, was

burlesque with the comic. He parodied the august personages and

venerable adventures of the gods of the Greek Pantheon. By a singular

coincidence, like his contemporary Aeschylus [323], he was a

Pythagorean, and it is wonderful to observe how rapidly and how

powerfully the influence of the mysterious Samian operated on the most

original intellects of the age. The familiar nature of the Hellenic

religion sanctioned, even in the unphilosophical age of Homer, a

treatment of celestial persons that to our modern notions would, at

first glance, evince a disrespect for the religion itself. But

wherever homage to “dead men” be admitted, we may, even in our own

times, find that the most jocular legends are attached to names held

in the most reverential awe. And he who has listened to an Irish or

an Italian Catholic’s familiar stories of some favourite saint, may

form an adequate notion of the manner in which a pious Greek could

jest upon Bacchus to-day and sacrifice to Bacchus to-morrow. With his

mythological travesties the Pythagorean mingled, apparently, many

earnest maxims of morality [324], and though not free, in the judgment

of Aristotle, from a vice of style usually common only to ages the

most refined [325]; he was yet proverbial, even in the most polished

period of Grecian letters, for the graces of his diction and the happy

choice of his expressions.

Phormis, a contemporary of Epicharmus, flourished also at Syracuse,

and though sometimes classed with Epicharmus, and selecting his

materials from the same source, his claims to reputation are

immeasurably more equivocal. Dinolochus continued the Sicilian

school, and was a contemporary of the first Athenian comic writer.

VIII. Hence it will be seen that the origin of comedy does not rest

with the Athenians; that Megara, if the birthplace of Susarion, may

fairly claim whatever merit belongs to the first rude improvement, and

that Syracuse is entitled to the higher distinction of raising humour

into art. So far is comedy the offspring of the Dorians--not the

Dorians of a sullen oligarchy, with whom to vary an air of music was a

crime--not the Dorians of Lacedaemon--but of Megara and Syracuse--of

an energetic, though irregular democracy--of a splendid, though

illegitimate monarchy. [326]

But the comedy of Epicharmus was not altogether the old comedy of

Athens. The last, as bequeathed to us by Aristophanes, has features

which bear little family resemblance to the philosophical parodies of

the Pythagorean poet. It does not confine itself to mythological

subjects--it avoids the sententious style--it does not preach, but

ridicule philosophy--it plunges amid the great practical business of

men--it breathes of the Agora and the Piraeus--it is not a laughing

sage, but a bold, boisterous, gigantic demagogue, ever in the thickest

mob of human interests, and wielding all the various humours of a

democracy with a brilliant audacity, and that reckless ease which is

the proof of its astonishing power.

IX. Chionides was the first Athenian comic writer. We find him

before the public three years after the battle of Marathon (B. C.

487), when the final defeat of Hippias confirmed the stability of the

republic; and when the improvements of Aeschylus in tragedy served to

communicate new attractions to the comic stage. Magnes, a writer of

great wit, and long popular, closely followed, and the titles of some

of the plays of these writers confirm the belief that Attic comedy,

from its commencement, took other ground than that occupied by the

mythological burlesques of Epicharmus. So great was the impetus given

to the new art, that a crowd of writers followed simultaneously, whose

very names it is wearisome to mention. Of these the most eminent were

Cratinus and Crates. The earliest _recorded_ play of Cratinus, though

he must have exhibited many before [327], appeared the year prior to

the death of Cimon (the Archilochi, B. C. 448). Plutarch quotes some

lines from this author, which allude to the liberality of Cimon with

something of that patron-loving spirit which was rather the

characteristic of a Roman than an Athenian poet. Though he himself,

despite his age, was proverbially of no very abstemious or decorous

habits, Cratinus was unsparing in his attacks upon others, and

wherever he found or suspected vice, he saw a subject worthy of his

genius. He was admired to late posterity, and by Roman critics, for

the grace and even for the grandeur of his hardy verses; and

Quintilian couples him with Eupolis and Aristophanes as models for the

formation of orators. Crates appeared (B. C. 451) two years before

the first _recorded_ play of Cratinus. He had previously been an

actor, and performed the principal characters in the plays of

Cratinus. Aristophanes bestows on him the rare honour of his praise,

while he sarcastically reminds the Athenian audience of the ill

reception that so ingenious a poet often received at their hands.

Yet, despite the excellence of the earlier comic writers, they had

hitherto at Athens very sparingly adopted the artistical graces of

Epicharmus. Crates, who did not write before the five years’ truce

with Sparta, is said by Aristotle not only to have been the first who

abandoned the Iambic form of comedy, but the first Athenian who

invented systematic fable or plot--a strong argument to show how

little the Athenian borrowed from the Sicilian comedy, since, if the

last had been its source of inspiration, the invented stories of

Epicharmus (by half a century the predecessor of Crates) would

naturally have been the most striking improvement to be imitated. The

Athenian comedy did not receive the same distinctions conferred upon

tragedy. So obscure was its rise to its later eminence, that even

Aristotle could not determine when or by whom the various progressive

improvements were made: and, regarded with jealous or indifferent eyes

by the magistrature as an exhibition given by private competitors, nor

calling for the protection of the state, which it often defied, it was

long before its chorus was defrayed at the public cost.

Under Cratinus and Crates [328], however, in the year of the Samian

war, the comic drama assumed a character either so personally

scurrilous, or so politically dangerous, that a decree was passed

interdicting its exhibitions (B. C. 440). The law was repealed

three years afterward (B. C. 437) [329]. Viewing its temporary

enforcement, and the date in which it was passed, it appears highly

probable that the critical events of the Samian expedition may have

been the cause of the decree. At such a time the opposition of the

comic writers might have been considered dangerous. With the

increased stability of the state, the law was, perhaps, deemed no

longer necessary. And from the recommencement of the comic drama, we

may probably date both the improvements of Crates and the special

protection of the state; for when, for the first time, Comedy was

formally authorized by the law, it was natural that the law should

recognise the privileges it claimed in common with its sister Tragedy.

There is no authority for supposing that Pericles, whose calm temper

and long novitiate in the stormy career of public life seem to have

rendered him callous to public abuse, was the author of this decree.

It is highly probable, indeed, that he was absent at the siege of

Samos [330] when it was passed; but he was the object of such virulent

attacks by the comic poets that we might consider them actuated by

some personal feeling of revenge and spleen, were it not evident that

Cratinus at least (and probably Crates, his disciple) was attached to

the memory of Cimon, and could not fail to be hostile to the

principles and government of Cimon’s successor. So far at this period

had comedy advanced; but, in the background, obscure and undreamed of,

was one, yet in childhood, destined to raise the comic to the rank of

the tragic muse; one who, perhaps, from his earliest youth, was

incited by the noisy fame of his predecessors, and the desire of that

glorious, but often perverted power, so palpable and so exultant,

which rides the stormy waves of popular applause [331]. About

thirteen years after the brief prohibition of comedy appeared that

wonderful genius, the elements and attributes of whose works it will

be a pleasing, if arduous task, in due season, to analyze and define;

matchless alike in delicacy and strength, in powers the most gigantic,

in purpose the most daring--with the invention of Shakspeare--the

playfulness of Rabelais--the malignity of Swift--need I add the name

of Aristophanes?

X. But while comedy had thus progressed to its first invidious

dignity, that of proscription, far different was the reward that

awaited the present representative and master of the tragic school.

In the year that the muse of Cratinus was silenced, Sophocles was

appointed one of the colleagues with Pericles in the Samian war.

CHAPTER IV.

The Tragedies of Sophocles.

I. It was in the very nature of the Athenian drama, that, when once

established, it should concentrate and absorb almost every variety of

the poetical genius. The old lyrical poetry, never much cultivated in

Athens, ceased in a great measure when tragedy arose, or rather

tragedy was the complete development, the new and perfected

consummation of the Dithyrambic ode. Lyrical poetry transmigrated

into the choral song, as the epic merged into the dialogue and plot,

of the drama. Thus, when we speak of Athenian poetry, we speak of

dramatic poetry--they were one and the same. As Helvetius has so

luminously shown [332], genius ever turns towards that quarter in

which fame shines brightest, and hence, in every age, there will be a

sympathetic connexion between the taste of the public and the

direction of the talent.

Now in Athens, where audiences were numerous and readers few, every

man who felt within himself the inspiration of the poet would

necessarily desire to see his poetry put into action--assisted with

all the pomp of spectacle and music, hallowed by the solemnity of a

religious festival, and breathed by artists elaborately trained to

heighten the eloquence of words into the reverent ear of assembled

Greece.

Hence the multitude of dramatic poets, hence the mighty fertility of

each; hence the life and activity of this--the comparative torpor and

barrenness of every other--species of poetry. To add to the

pre-eminence of the art, the applauses of the many were sanctioned by

the critical canons of the few. The drama was not only the most

alluring form which the Divine Spirit could assume--but it was also

deemed the loftiest and the purest; and when Aristotle ranked [333] the

tragic higher than even the epic muse, he probably did but explain the

reasons for a preference which the generality of critics were disposed

to accord to her. [334]

II. The career of the most majestic of the Greek poets was eminently

felicitous. His birth was noble, his fortune affluent; his natural

gifts were the rarest which nature bestows on man, genius and beauty.

All the care which the age permitted was lavished on his education.

For his feet even the ordinary obstacles in the path of distinction

were smoothed away. He entered life under auspices the most

propitious and poetical. At the age of sixteen he headed the youths

who performed the triumphant paean round the trophy of Salamis. At

twenty-five, when the bones of Theseus were borne back to Athens in

the galley of the victorious Cimon, he exhibited his first play, and

won the prize from Aeschylus. That haughty genius, whether indignant

at the success of a younger rival, or at a trial for impiety before

the Areopagus, to which (though acquitted) he was subjected, or at the

rapid ascendency of a popular party, that he seems to have scorned

with the disdain at once of an eupatrid and a Pythagorean, soon after

retired from Athens to the Syracusan court; and though he thence sent

some of his dramas to the Athenian stage [335], the absent veteran

could not but excite less enthusiasm than the young aspirant, whose

artful and polished genius was more in harmony with the reigning taste

than the vast but rugged grandeur of Aeschylus, who, perhaps from the

impossibility tangibly and visibly to body forth his shadowy Titans

and obscure sublimity of design, does not appear to have obtained a

popularity on the stage equal to his celebrity as a poet [336]. For

three-and-sixty years did Sophocles continue to exhibit; twenty times

he obtained the first prize, and he is said never to have been

degraded to the third. The ordinary persecutions of envy itself seem

to have spared this fortunate poet. Although his moral character was

far from pure [337], and even in extreme old age he sought after the

pleasures of his youth [339], yet his excesses apparently met with a

remarkable indulgence from his contemporaries. To him were known

neither the mortifications of Aeschylus nor the relentless mockery

heaped upon Euripides. On his fair name the terrible Aristophanes

himself affixes no brand [339]. The sweetness of his genius extended

indeed to his temper, and personal popularity assisted his public

triumphs. Nor does he appear to have keenly shared the party

animosities of his day; his serenity, like that of Goethe, has in it

something of enviable rather than honourable indifference. He owed

his first distinction to Cimon, and he served afterward under

Pericles; on his entrance into life, he led the youths that circled

the trophy of Grecian freedom--and on the verge of death, we shall

hereafter see him calmly assent to the surrender of Athenian

liberties. In short, Aristophanes perhaps mingled more truth than

usual with his wit, when even in the shades below he says of

Sophocles, “He was contented here--he’s contented there.” A

disposition thus facile, united with an admirable genius, will, not

unoften, effect a miracle, and reconcile prosperity with fame. [340]

At the age of fifty-seven, Sophocles was appointed, as I before said

[341], to a command, as one of the ten generals in the Samian war; but

history is silent as to his military genius [342]. In later life we

shall again have occasion to refer to him, condemned as he was to

illustrate (after a career of unprecedented brilliancy--nor ever

subjected to the caprice of the common public) the melancholy moral

inculcated by himself [343], and so often obtruded upon us by the

dramatists of his country, “never to deem a man happy till death

itself denies the hazard of reverses.” Out of the vast, though not

accurately known, number of the dramas of Sophocles, seven remain.

III. A great error has been committed by those who class Aeschylus

and Sophocles together as belonging to the same era, and refer both to

the age of Pericles, because each was living while Pericles was in

power. We may as well class Dr. Johnson and Lord Byron in the same

age, because both lived in the reign of George III. The Athenian

rivals were formed under the influences of very different generations;

and if Aeschylus lived through a considerable portion of the career of

the younger Sophocles, the accident of longevity by no means warrants

us to consider then the children of the same age--the creatures of the

same influences. Aeschylus belonged to the race and the period from

which emerged Themistocles and Aristides--Sophocles to those which

produced Phidias and Pericles. Sophocles indeed, in the calmness of

his disposition, and the symmetry and stateliness of his genius, might

almost be entitled the Pericles of poetry. And as the statesman was

called the Olympian, not from the headlong vehemence, but the serene

majesty of his strength; so of Sophocles also it may be said, that his

power is visible in his repose, and his thunders roll from the depth

of a clear sky.

IV. The age of Pericles is the age of art [344]. It was not

Sophocles alone that was an artist in that time; he was but one of the

many who, in every department, sought, in study and in science, the

secrets of the wise or the beautiful. Pericles and Phidias were in

their several paths of fame what Sophocles was in his. But it was not

the art of an emasculate or effeminate period--it grew out of the

example of a previous generation of men astonishingly great. It was

art still fresh from the wells of nature. Art with a vast field yet

unexplored, and in all its youthful vigour and maiden enthusiasm.

There was, it is true, at a period a little later than that in which

the genius of Sophocles was formed, one class of students among whom a

false taste and a spurious refinement were already visible--the class

of rhetoricians and philosophical speculators. For, in fact, the art

which belongs to the imagination is often purest in an early age; but

that which appertains to the reason and intellect is slow before it

attains mature strength and manly judgment, Among these students was

early trained and tutored the thoughtful mind of Euripides; and hence

that art which in Sophocles was learned in more miscellaneous and

active circles, and moulded by a more powerful imagination, in

Euripides often sickens us with the tricks of a pleader, the quibbles

of a schoolman, or the dullness of a moralizing declaimer. But as, in

the peculiar attributes and character of his writings, Euripides

somewhat forestalled his age--as his example had a very important

influence upon his successors--as he did not exhibit till the fame of

Sophocles was already confirmed--and as his name is intimately

associated with the later age of Aristophanes and Socrates--it may be

more convenient to confine our critical examination at present to the

tragedies of Sophocles.

Although the three plays of the “Oedipus Tyrannus,” the “Oedipus at

Coloneus,” and the “Antigone,” were composed and exhibited at very

wide intervals of time, yet, from their connexion with each other,

they may almost be said to form one poem. The “Antigone,” which

concludes the story, was the one earliest written; and there are

passages in either “Oedipus” which seem composed to lead up, as it

were, to the catastrophe of the “Antigone,” and form a harmonious link

between the several dramas. These three plays constitute, on the

whole, the greatest performance of Sophocles, though in detached parts

they are equalled by passages in the “Ajax” and the “Philoctetes.”

V. The “Oedipus Tyrannus” opens thus. An awful pestilence devastates

Thebes. Oedipus, the king, is introduced to us, powerful and beloved;

to him whose wisdom had placed him on the throne, look up the priest

and the suppliants for a remedy even amid the terrors of the plague.

Oedipus informs them that he has despatched Creon (the brother of his

wife Jocasta) to the Pythian god to know by what expiatory deed the

city might be delivered from its curse. Scarce has he concluded, when

Creon himself enters, and announces “glad tidings” in the explicit

answer of the oracle. The god has declared--that a pollution had been

bred in the land, and must be expelled the city--that Laius, the

former king, had been murdered--and that his blood must be avenged.

Laius had left the city never to return; of his train but one man

escaped to announce his death by assassins. Oedipus instantly

resolves to prosecute the inquiry into the murder, and orders the

people to be summoned. The suppliants arise from the altar, and a

solemn chorus of the senators of Thebes (in one of the most splendid

lyrics of Sophocles) chant the terrors of the plague--“that unarmed

Mars”--and implore the protection of the divine averters of

destruction. Oedipus then, addressing the chorus, demands their aid

to discover the murderer, whom he solemnly excommunicates, and dooms,

deprived of aid and intercourse, to waste slowly out a miserable

existence; nay, if the assassin should have sought refuge in the royal

halls, there too shall the vengeance be wreaked and the curse fall.

“For I,” continued Oedipus,

“I, who the sceptre which he wielded wield;

I, who have mounted to his marriage bed;

I, in whose children (had he issue known)

His would have claimed a common brotherhood;

Now that the evil fate bath fallen o’er him--

I am the heir of that dead king’s revenge,

Not less than if these lips had hailed him ‘father!’”

A few more sentences introduce to us the old soothsayer Tiresias--for

whom, at the instigation of Creon, Oedipus had sent. The seer answers

the adjuration of the king with a thrilling and ominous burst--

“Wo--wo!--how fearful is the gift of wisdom,

When to the wise it bears no blessing!--wo!”

The haughty spirit of Oedipus breaks forth at the gloomy and obscure

warnings of the prophet. His remonstrances grow into threats. In his

blindness he even accuses Tiresias himself of the murder of Laius--and

out speaks the terrible diviner:

“Ay--is it so? Abide then by thy curse

And solemn edict--never from this day

Hold human commune with these men or me;

Lo, where thou standest--lo, the land’s polluter!”

A dialogue of great dramatic power ensues. Oedipus accuses Tiresias

of abetting his kinsman, Creon, by whom he had been persuaded to send

for the soothsayer, in a plot against his throne--and the seer, who

explains nothing and threatens all things, departs with a dim and

fearful prophecy.

After a song from the chorus, in which are imbodied the doubt, the

trouble, the terror which the audience may begin to feel--and here it

may be observed, that with Sophocles the chorus always carries on, not

the physical, but the moral, progress of the drama [345]--Creon

enters, informed of the suspicion against himself which Oedipus had

expressed. Oedipus, whose whole spirit is disturbed by the weird and

dark threats of Tiresias, repeats the accusation, but wildly and

feebly. His vain worldly wisdom suggests to him that Creon would

scarcely have asked him to consult Tiresias, nor Tiresias have

ventured on denunciations so tremendous, had not the two conspired

against him: yet a mysterious awe invades him--he presses questions on

Creon relative to the murder of Laius, and seems more anxious to

acquit himself than accuse another.

While the princes contend, the queen, Jocasta, enters. She chides

their quarrel, learns from Oedipus that Tiresias had accused him of

the murder of the deceased king, and, to convince him of the falseness

of prophetic lore, reveals to him, that long since it was predicted

that Laius should be murdered by his son joint offspring of Jocasta

and himself. Yet, in order to frustrate the prophecy, the only son of

Laius had been exposed to perish upon solitary and untrodden

mountains, while, in after years, Laius himself had fallen, in a spot

where three roads met, by the hand of a stranger; so that the prophecy

had not come to pass.

At this declaration terror seizes upon Oedipus. He questions Jocasta

eagerly and rapidly--the place where the murder happened, the time in

which it occurred, the age and personal appearance of Laius--and when

he learns all, his previous arrogant conviction of innocence deserts

him; and as he utters a horrid exclamation, Jocasta fixes her eyes

upon him, and “shudders as she gazes.” [346] He inquires what train

accompanied Laius--learns that there were five persons; that but one

escaped; that on his return to Thebes, seeing Oedipus on the throne,

the surviver had besought the favour to retire from the city. Oedipus

orders this witness of the murder to be sent for, and then proceeds to

relate his own history. He has been taught to believe that Polybus of

Corinth and Merope of Doris were his parents. But once at a banquet

he was charged with being a supposititious child; the insult galled

him, and he went to Delphi to consult the oracle. It was predicted to

him that he should commit incest with his mother, and that his father

should fall by his hand. Appalled and horror-stricken, he resolves to

fly the possible fulfilment of the prophecy, and return no more to

Corinth. In his flight by the triple road described by Jocasta he

meets an old man in a chariot, with a guide or herald, and other

servitors. They attempt to thrust him from the road--a contest

ensues--he slays the old man and his train. Could this be Laius? Can

it be to the marriage couch of the man he slew that he has ascended?

No, his fears are too credulous! he clings to a straw; the herdsman

who had escaped the slaughter of Laius and his attendants may prove

that it was _not_ the king whom he encountered. Jocasta sustains this

hope--she cannot believe a prophecy--for it had been foretold that

Laius should fall by the hand of his son, and that son had long since

perished on the mountains. The queen and Oedipus retire within their

palace; the chorus resume their strains; after which, Jocasta

reappears on her way to the temple of Apollo, to offer sacrifice and

prayer. At this time a messenger arrives to announce to Oedipus the

death of Polybus, and the wish of the Corinthians to elect Oedipus to

the throne! At these tidings Jocasta is overjoyed.

“Predictions of the gods, where are ye now?

Lest by the son’s doomed hand the sire should fall,

The son became a wanderer on the earth,

Lo, not the son, but Nature, gives the blow!”

Oedipus, summoned to the messenger, learns the news of his supposed

father’s death! It is a dread and tragic thought, but the pious

Oedipus is glad that his father is no more, since he himself is thus

saved from parricide; yet the other part of the prediction haunts him.

His mother!--she yet lives. He reveals to the messenger the prophecy

and his terror. To cheer him, the messenger now informs him that he

is not the son of Merope and Polybus. A babe had been found in the

entangled forest-dells of Cithaeron by a herdsman and slave of Laius

--he had given the infant to another--that other, the messenger who

now tells the tale. Transferred to the care of Polybus and Merope,

the babe became to them as a son, for they were childless. Jocasta

hears--stunned and speechless--till Oedipus, yet unconscious of the

horrors still to come, turns to demand of her if she knew the herdsman

who had found the child. Then she gasps wildly out--

“Whom speaks he of? Be silent--heed it not--

Blot it out from thy memory!--it is evil!

Oedipus. It cannot be--the clew is here; and I

Will trace it through that labyrinth--my birth.

Jocasta. By all the gods I warn thee; for the sake

Of thine own life beware; it is enough

For me to hear and madden!”

Oedipus (suspecting only that the pride of his queen revolts from the

thought of her husband’s birth being proved base and servile) replies,

“Nay, nay, cheer thee!

Were I through three descents threefold a slave,

My shame would not touch thee.

Jocasta. I do implore thee,

This once obey me--this once.

Oedipus I will not!

To truth I grope my way.

Jocasta. And yet what love

Speaks in my voice! Thine ignorance is thy bliss.

Oedipus. A bliss that tortures!

Jocasta. Miserable man!

Oh couldst thou never learn the thing thou art!

Oedipus. Will no one quicken this slow herdsman’s steps

The unquestioned birthright of a royal name

Let this proud queen possess!

Jocasta. Wo! wo! thou wretch!

Wo! my last word!--words are no more for me!”

With this Jocasta rushes from the scene. Still Oedipus misconstrues

her warning; he ascribes her fears to the royalty of her spirit. For

himself, Fortune was his mother, and had blessed him; nor could the

accident of birth destroy his inheritance from nature. The chorus

give way to their hopes! their wise, their glorious Oedipus might have

been born a Theban! The herdsman enters: like Tiresias, he is loath

to speak. The fiery king extorts his secret. Oedipus is the son of

Laius and Jocasta--at his birth the terrible prophecies of the Pythian

induced his own mother to expose him on the mountains--the compassion

of the herdsman saved him--saved him to become the bridegroom of his

mother, the assassin of his sire. The astonishing art with which,

from step to step, the audience and the victim are led to the climax

of the discovery, is productive of an interest of pathos and of terror

which is not equalled by the greatest masterpieces of the modern stage

[347], and possesses that species of anxious excitement which is

wholly unparalleled in the ancient. The discovery is a true

catastrophe--the physical denouement is but an adjunct to the moral

one. Jocasta, on quitting the scene, had passed straight to the

bridal-chamber, and there, by the couch from which had sprung a double

and accursed progeny, perished by her own hands. Meanwhile, the

predestined parricide, bursting into the chamber, beheld, as the last

object on earth, the corpse of his wife and mother! Once more Oedipus

reappears, barred for ever from the light of day. In the fury of his

remorse, he “had smote the balls of his own eyes,” and the wise

baffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the

illustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all the

horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks

forth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accused

of murder, has now become his judge and his master. The great spirit,

crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the

“wisest of mankind” implores but two favours--to be thrust from the

land an exile, and once more to embrace his children. Even in

translation the exquisite tenderness of this passage cannot altogether

fail of its effect.

“For my fate, let it pass! My children, Creon!

My sons--nay, they the bitter wants of life

May master--they are MEN?--my girls--my darlings--

Why, never sat I at my household board

Without their blessed looks--our very bread

We brake together; thou’lt be kind to them

For my sake, Creon--and (oh, latest prayer!)

Let me but touch them--feel them with these hands,

And pour such sorrow as may speak farewell

O’er ills that must be theirs! By thy pure line--

For thin is pure--do this, sweet prince. Methinks

I should not miss these eyes, could I but touch them.

What shall I say to move thee?

Sobs! And do I,

Oh do I hear my sweet ones? Hast thou sent,

In mercy sent, my children to my arms?

Speak--speak--I do not dream!

Creon. They are thy children;

I would not shut thee from the dear delight

In the old time they gave thee.

Oedipus. Blessings on thee

For this one mercy mayst thou find above

A kinder God than I have. Ye--where are ye?

My children--come!--nearer and nearer yet,” etc.

The pathos of this scene is continued to the end; and the very last

words Oedipus utters as his children cling to him, implore that they

at least may not be torn away.

It is in this concluding scene that the art of the play is

consummated; the horrors of the catastrophe, which, if a last

impression, would have left behind a too painful and gloomy feeling,

are softened down by this beautiful resort to the tenderest and

holiest sources of emotion. And the pathos is rendered doubly

effective, not only from the immediate contrast of the terror that

preceded it, but from the masterly skill with which all display of the

softer features in the character of Oedipus is reserved to the close.

In the breaking up of the strong mind and the daring spirit, when

empire, honour, name, are all annihilated, the heart is seen, as it

were, surviving the wrecks around it, and clinging for support to the

affections.

VII. In the “Oedipus at Coloneus,” the blind king is presented to us,

after the lapse of years, a wanderer over the earth, unconsciously

taking his refuge in the grove of the furies [348]--“the awful

goddesses, daughters of Earth and Darkness.” His young daughter,

Antigone, one of the most lovely creations of poetry, is his companion

and guide; he is afterward joined by his other daughter, Ismene, whose

weak and selfish character is drawn in strong contrast to the heroism

and devotion of Antigone. The ancient prophecies that foretold his

woes had foretold also his release. His last shelter and

resting-place were to be obtained from the dread deities, and a sign of

thunder, or earthquake, or lightning was to announce his parting hour.

Learning the spot to which his steps had been guided, Oedipus solemnly

feels that his doom approaches: thus, at the very opening of the poem,

he stands before us on the verge of a mysterious grave.

The sufferings which have bowed the parricide to a premature old age

[349] have not crushed his spirit; the softness and self-humiliation

which were the first results of his awful affliction are passed away.

He is grown once more vehement and passionate, from the sense of

wrong; remorse still visits him, but is alternated with the yet more

human feeling of resentment at the unjust severity of his doom [350].

His sons, who, “by a word,” might have saved him from the expulsion,

penury, and wanderings he has undergone, had deserted his cause--had

looked with indifferent eyes on his awful woes--had joined with Creon

to expel him from the Theban land. They are the Goneril and Regan of

the classic Lear, as Antigone is the Cordelia on whom he leans--a

Cordelia he has never thrust from him. “When,” says Oedipus, in stern

bitterness of soul,

“When my soul boiled within me--when ‘to die’

Was all my prayer--and death was sweetness, yea,

Had they but stoned me like a dog, I’d blessed them;

Then no man rose against me--but when time

Brought its slow comfort--when my wounds were scarred--

All my griefs mellow’d, and remorse itself

Judged my self-penance mightier than my sins,

Thebes thrust me from her breast, and they, my sons,

My blood, mine offspring, from their father shrunk:

A word of theirs had saved me--one small word--

They said it not--and lo! the wandering beggar!”

In the mean while, during the exile of Oedipus, strife had broken out

between the brothers: Eteocles, here represented as the younger, drove

out Polynices, and seized the throne; Polynices takes refuge at Argos,

where he prepares war against the usurper: an oracle declares that

success shall be with that party which Oedipus joins, and a mysterious

blessing is pronounced on the land which contains his bones. Thus,

the possession of this wild tool of fate--raised up in age to a dread

and ghastly consequence--becomes the argument of the play, as his

death must become the catastrophe. It is the deep and fierce revenge

of Oedipus that makes the passion of the whole. According to a

sublime conception, we see before us the physical Oedipus in the

lowest state of destitution and misery--in rags, blindness, beggary,

utter and abject impotence. But in the moral, Oedipus is all the

majesty of a power still royal. The oracle has invested one, so

fallen and so wretched in himself, with the power of a god--the power

to confer victory on the cause he adopts, prosperity on the land that

becomes his tomb. With all the revenge of age, all the grand

malignity of hatred, he clings to this shadow and relic of a sceptre.

Creon, aware of the oracle, comes to recall him to Thebes. The

treacherous kinsman humbles himself before his victim--he is the

suppliant of the beggar, who defies and spurns him. Creon avenges

himself by seizing on Antigone and Ismene. Nothing can be more

dramatically effective than the scene in which these last props of his

age are torn from the desolate old man. They are ultimately restored

to him by Theseus, whose amiable and lofty character is painted with

all the partial glow of colouring which an Athenian poet would

naturally lavish on the Athenian Alfred. We are next introduced to

Polynices. He, like Creon, has sought Oedipus with the selfish motive

of recovering his throne by means of an ally to whom the oracle

promises victory. But there is in Polynices the appearance of a true

penitence, and a mingled gentleness and majesty in his bearing which

interests us in his fate despite his faults, and which were possibly

intended by Sophocles to give a new interest to the plot of the

“Antigone,” composed and exhibited long before. Oedipus is persuaded

by the benevolence of Theseus, and the sweet intercession of Antigone,

to admit his son. After a chant from the chorus on the ills of old

age [351], Polynices enters. He is struck with the wasted and

miserable appearance of the old man, and bitterly reproaches his own

desertion.

“But since,” he says, with almost a Christian sentiment--

“Since o’er each deed, upon the Olympian throne,

Mercy sits joint presider with great Jove,

Let her, oh father, also take her stand

Within thy soul--and judge me! The past sins

Yet have their cure--ah, would they had recall!

Why are you voiceless? Speak to me, my father?

Turn not away--will you not answer me?” etc.

Oedipus retains his silence in spite of the prayers of his beloved

Antigone, and Polynices proceeds to narrate the wrongs he has

undergone from Eteocles, and, warming with a young warrior’s ardour,

paints the array that he has mustered on his behalf--promises to

restore Oedipus to his palace--and, alluding to the oracle, throws

himself on his father’s pardon.

Then, at last, outspeaks Oedipus, and from reproach bursts into

curses.

“And now you weep; you wept not at these woes

Until you wept your own. But I--I weep not.

These things are not for tears, but for Endurance.

My son is like his sire--a parricide!

Toil, exile, beggary--daily bread doled out

From stranger hands--these are your gifts, my son!

My nurses, guardians--they who share the want,

Or earn the bread, are daughters; call them not

Women, for they to me are men. Go to!

Thou art not mine--I do disclaim such issue.

Behold, the eyes of the avenging God

Are o’er thee! but their ominous light delays

To blast thee yet. March on--march on--to Thebes!

Not--not for thee, the city and the throne;

The earth shall first be reddened with thy blood--

Thy blood and his, thy foe--thy brother! Curses!

Not for the first time summoned to my wrongs--

Curses! I call ye back, and make ye now

Allies with this old man!

* * * * * *

Yea, curses shall possess thy seat and throne,

If antique Justice o’er the laws of earth

Reign with the thunder-god. March on to ruin!

Spurned and disowned--the basest of the base--

And with thee bear this burden: o’er thine head

I pour a prophet’s doom; nor throne nor home

Waits on the sharpness of the levelled spear:

Thy very land of refuge hath no welcome;

Thine eyes have looked their last on hollow Argos.

Death by a brother’s hand--dark fratricide,

Murdering thyself a brother--shall be thine.

Yea, while I curse thee, on the murky deep

Of the primeval hell I call! Prepare

These men their home, dread Tartarus! Goddesses,

Whose shrines are round me--ye avenging Furies!

And thou, oh Lord of Battle, who hast stirred

Hate in the souls of brethren, hear me--hear me!--

And now, ‘tis past!--enough!--depart and tell

The Theban people, and thy fond allies,

What blessings, from his refuge with the Furies,

The blind old Oedipus awards his sons!” [352]

As is usual with Sophocles, the terrific strength of these execrations

is immediately followed by a soft and pathetic scene between Antigone

and her brother. Though crushed at first by the paternal curse, the

spirit of Polynices so far recovers its native courage that he will

not listen to the prayer of his sister to desist from the expedition

to Thebes, and to turn his armies back to Argos. “What,” he says,

“Lead back an army that could deem I trembled!”

Yet he feels the mournful persuasion that his death is doomed; and a

glimpse of the plot of the “Antigone” is opened upon us by his prayer

to his sister, that if he perish, they should lay him with due honours

in the tomb. The exquisite loveliness of Antigone’s character touches

even Polynices, and he departs, saying,

“With the gods rests the balance of our fate;

But thee, at least--oh never upon thee

May evil fall! Thou art too good for sorrow!”

The chorus resume their strains, when suddenly thunder is heard, and

Oedipus hails the sign that heralds him to the shades. Nothing can be

conceived more appalling than this omen. It seems as if Oedipus had

been spared but to curse his children and to die. He summons Theseus,

tells him that his fate is at hand, and that without a guide he

himself will point out the spot where he shall rest. Never may that

spot be told--that secret and solemn grave shall be the charm of the

land and a defence against its foes. Oedipus then turns round, and

the instinct within guides him as he gropes along. His daughters and

Theseus follow the blind man, amazed and awed. “Hither,” he says,

“Hither--by this way come--for this way leads

The unseen conductor of the dead [353]--and she

Whom shadows call their queen! [354] Oh light, sweet light,

Rayless to me--mine once, and even now

I feel thee palpable, round this worn form,

Clinging in last embrace--I go to shroud

The waning life in the eternal Hades!”

Thus the stage is left to the chorus, and the mysterious fate of

Oedipus is recited by the Nuntius, in verses which Longinus has not

extolled too highly. Oedipus had led the way to a cavern, well known

in legendary lore as the spot where Perithous and Theseus had pledged

their faith, by the brazen steps which make one of the entrances to

the infernal realms;

“Between which place and the Thorician stone--

The hollow thorn, and the sepulchral pile

He sat him down.”

And when he had performed libations from the stream, and laved, and

decked himself in the funeral robes, Jove thundered beneath the earth,

and the old man’s daughters, aghast with horror, fell at his knees

with sobs and groans.

“Then o’er them as they wept, his hands he clasped,

And ‘Oh my children,’ said he, ‘from this day

Ye have no more a father--all of me

Withers away--the burden and the toil

Of mine old age fall on ye nevermore.

Sad travail have ye home for me, and yet

Let one thought breathe a balm when I am gone--

The thought that none upon the desolate world

Loved you as I did; and in death I leave

A happier life to you!’

Thus movingly,

With clinging arms and passionate sobs, the three

Wept out aloud, until the sorrow grew

Into a deadly hush--nor cry nor wail

Starts the drear silence of the solitude.

Then suddenly a bodiless voice is heard

And fear came cold on all. They shook with awe,

And horror, like a wind, stirred up their hair.

Again, the voice--again--‘Ho! Oedipus, Why linger we so long?

Come--hither--come.’”

Oedipus then solemnly consigns his children to Theseus, dismisses

them, and Theseus alone is left with the old man.

“So groaning we depart--and when once more

We turned our eyes to gaze, behold, the place

Knew not the man! The king alone was there,

Holding his spread hands o’er averted brows

As if to shut from out the quailing gaze

The horrid aspect of some ghastly thing

That nature durst not look on. So we paused

Until the king awakened from the terror,

And to the mother Earth, and high Olympus,

Seat of the gods, he breathed awe--stricken prayer

But, how the old man perished, save the king,

Mortal can ne’er divine; for bolt, nor levin,

Nor blasting tempest from the ocean borne,

Was heard or seen; but either was he rapt

Aloft by wings divine, or else the shades,

Whose darkness never looked upon the sun,

Yawned in grim mercy, and the rent abyss

Ingulf’d the wanderer from the living world.”

Such, sublime in its wondrous power, its appalling mystery, its dim,

religious terror, is the catastrophe of the “Oedipus at Coloneus.”

The lines that follow are devoted to the lamentations of the

daughters, and appear wholly superfluous, unless we can consider that

Sophocles desired to indicate the connexion of the “Oedipus” with the

“Antigone,” by informing us that the daughters of Oedipus are to be

sent to Thebes at the request of Antigone herself, who hopes, in the

tender courage of her nature, that she may perhaps prevent the

predicted slaughter of her brothers.

VII. Coming now to the tragedy of “Antigone,” we find the prophecy of

Oedipus has been fulfilled--the brothers have fallen by the hand of

each other--the Argive army has been defeated--Creon has obtained the

tyranny, and interdicts, on the penalty of death, the burial of

Polynices, whose corpse remains guarded and unhonoured. Antigone,

mindful of her brother’s request to her in their last interview,

resolves to brave the edict, and perform those rites so indispensably

sacred in the eyes of a Greek. She communicates her resolution to her

sister Ismene, whose character, still feeble and commonplace, is a

perpetual foil to the heroism of Antigone. She acts upon her

resolutions, baffles the vigilant guards, buries the corpse. Creon,

on learning that his edict has been secretly disobeyed, orders the

remains to be disinterred, and in a second attempt Antigone is

discovered, brought before him, and condemned to death. Haemon, the

son of Creon, had been affianced to Antigone. On the news of her

sentence he seeks Creon, and after a violent scene between the two,

which has neither the power nor the dignity common to Sophocles,

departs with vague menaces. A short but most exquisite invocation to

love from the chorus succeeds, and in this, it may be observed, the

chorus express much left not represented in the action--they serve to

impress on the spectator all the irresistible effects of the passion

which the modern artist would seek to represent in some moving scene

between Antigone and Haemon. The heroine herself now passes across

the stage on her way to her dreadful doom, which is that of living

burial in “the cavern of a rock.” She thus addresses the chorus--

“Ye, of the land wherein my fathers dwelt,

Behold me journeying to my latest bourne!

Time hath no morrow for these eyes. Black Orcus,

Whose court hath room for all, leads my lone steps,

E’en while I live, to shadows. Not for me

The nuptial blessing or the marriage hymn:

Acheron, receive thy bride!

(Chorus.) Honoured and mourned

Nor struck by slow disease or violent hand,

Thy steps glide to the grave! Self-judged, like Freedom, [355]

Thou, above mortals gifted, shalt descend

All living to the shades.

Antigone. Methinks I have heard--

So legends go--how Phrygian Niobe

(Poor stranger) on the heights of Sipylus

Mournfully died. The hard rock, like the tendrils

O’ the ivy, clung and crept unto her heart--

Her, nevermore, dissolving into showers,

Pale snows desert; and from her sorrowful eyes,

As from unfailing founts adown the cliffs,

Fall the eternal dews. Like her, the god

Lulls me to sleep, and into stone!”

Afterward she adds in her beautiful lament, “That she has one comfort

--that she shall go to the grave dear to her parents and her brother.”

The grief of Antigone is in perfect harmony with her character--it

betrays no repentance, no weakness--it is but the natural sorrow, of

youth and womanhood, going down to that grave which had so little of

hope in the old Greek religion. In an Antigone on our stage we might

have demanded more reference to her lover; but the Grecian heroine

names him not, and alludes rather to the loss of the woman’s lot of

wedlock than the loss of the individual bridegroom. But it is not for

that reason that we are to conclude, with M. Schlegel and others, that

the Greek women knew not the sentiment of love. Such a notion, that

has obtained an unaccountable belief, I shall hereafter show to be at

variance with all the poetry of the Greeks--with their drama itself--

with their modes of life--and with the very elements of that human

nature, which is everywhere the same. But Sophocles, in the character

of Antigone, personifies duty, not passion. It is to this, her

leading individuality, that whatever might weaken the pure and

statue-like effect of the creation is sacrificed. As she was to her

father, so is she to her brother. The sorrows and calamities of her

family have so endeared them to her heart that she has room for little

else. “Formed,” as she exquisitely says of herself, “to love, not to

hate,” [356] she lives but to devote affections the most sacred to sad

and pious tasks, and the last fulfilled, she has done with earth.

When Antigone is borne away, an august personage is presented to us,

whose very name to us, who usually read the Oedipus Tyrannus before

the Antigone, is the foreteller of omen and doom. As in the Oedipus

Tyrannus, Tiresias the soothsayer appears to announce all the terrors

that ensue--so now, at the crowning desolation of that fated house,

he, the solemn and mysterious surviver of such dark tragedies, is

again brought upon the stage. The auguries have been evil--birds

battle with each other in the air--the flame will not mount from the

sacrificial victim--and the altars and hearths are full of birds and

dogs, gathering to their feast on the corpse of Polynices. The

soothsayer enjoins Creon not to war against the dead, and to accord

the rites of burial to the prince’s body. On the obstinate refusal of

Creon, Tiresias utters prophetic maledictions and departs. Creon,

whose vehemence of temper is combined with a feeble character, and

strongly contrasts the mighty spirit of Oedipus, repents, and is

persuaded by the chorus to release Antigone from her living prison, as

well as to revoke the edict which denies sepulture to Polynices. He

quits the stage for that purpose, and the chorus burst into one of

their most picturesque odes, an Invocation to Bacchus, thus

inadequately presented to the English reader.

“Oh thou, whom earth by many a title hails,

Son of the thunder-god, and wild delight

Of the wild Theban maid!

Whether on far Italia’s shores obey’d,

Or where Eleusis joins thy solemn rites

With the great mother’s [357], in mysterious vales--

Bacchus in Bacchic Thebes best known,

Thy Thebes, who claims the Thyads as her daughters;

Fast by the fields with warriors dragon-sown,

And where Ismenus rolls his rapid waters.

It saw thee, the smoke,

On the horned height--[358]

It saw thee, and broke

With a leap into light;

Where roam Corycian nymphs the glorious mountain,

And all melodious flows the old Castalian fountain

Vocal with echoes wildly glad,

The Nysian steeps with ivy clad,

And shores with vineyards greenly blooming,

Proclaiming, steep to shore,

That Bacchus evermore

Is guardian of the race,

Where he holds his dwelling-place

With her [359], beneath the breath

Of the thunder’s glowing death,

In the glare of her glory consuming.

Oh now with healing steps along the slope

Of loved Parnassus, or in gliding motion,

O’er the far-sounding deep Euboean ocean--

Come! for we perish--come!--our Lord and hope!

Leader of the stately choir

Of the great stars, whose very breath is light,

Who dost with hymns inspire

Voices, oh youngest god, that sound by night;

Come, with thy Maenad throng,

Come with the maidens of thy Naxian isle,

Who chant their Lord Bacchus--all the while

Maddening, with mystic dance, the solemn midnight long!”

At the close of the chorus the Nuntius enters to announce the

catastrophe, and Eurydice, the wife of Creon, disturbed by rumours

within her palace, is made an auditor of the narration. Creon and his

train, after burying Polynices, repair to the cavern in which Antigone

had been immured. They hear loud wailings within “that unconsecrated

chamber”--it is the voice of Haemon. Creon recoils--the attendants

enter--within the cavern they behold Antigone, who, in the horror of

that deathlike solitude, had strangled herself with the zone of her

robe; and there was her lover lying beside, his arms clasped around

her waist. Creon at length advances, perceives his son, and conjures

him to come forth.

“Then, glaring on his father with wild eyes,

The son stood dumb, and spat upon his face,

And clutched the unnatural sword--the father fled,

And, wroth, as with the arm that missed a parent,

The wretched man drove home unto his breast

The abhorrent steel; yet ever, while dim sense

Struggled within the fast-expiring soul--

Feebler, and feebler still, his stiffening arms

Clung to that virgin form--and every gasp

Of his last breath with bloody dews distained

The cold white cheek that was his pillow. So

Lies death embracing death!” [360]

In the midst of this description, by a fine stroke of art, Euridice,

the mother of Haemon, abruptly and silently quits the stage [361].

When next we hear of her, she has destroyed herself, with her last

breath cursing her husband as the murderer of her child. The end of

the play leaves Creon the surviver. He himself does not perish, for

he himself has never excited our sympathies [362]. He is punished

through his son and wife--they dead, our interest ceases in him, and

to add his death to theirs and to that of Antigone would be bathos.

VIII. In the tragedy of “Electra,” the character of the heroine

stands out in the boldest contrast to the creation of the Antigone;

both are endowed with surpassing majesty and strength of nature--they

are loftier than the daughters of men, their very loveliness is of an

age when gods were no distant ancestors of kings--when, as in the

early sculptors of Pallas, or even of Aphrodite, something of the

severe and stern was deemed necessary to the realization of the

divine; and the beautiful had not lost the colossal proportions of the

sublime. But the strength and heroism of Antigone is derived from

love--love, sober, serene, august--but still love. Electra, on the

contrary, is supported and exalted above her sex by the might of her

hatred. Her father, “the king of men,” foully murdered in his palace

--herself compelled to consort with his assassins--to receive from

their hands both charity and insult--the adulterous murderer on her

father’s throne, and lord of her father’s marriage bed [363]--her

brother a wanderer and an outcast. Such are the thoughts unceasingly

before her!--her heart and soul have for years fed upon the bitterness

of a resentment, at once impotent and intense, and nature itself has

turned to gall. She sees not in Clytemnestra a mother, but the

murderess of a father. The doubt and the compunction of the modern

Hamlet are unknown to her more masculine spirit. She lives on but in

the hope of her brother’s return and of revenge. The play opens with

the appearance of Orestes, Pylades, and an old attendant--arrived at

break of day at the habitation of the Pelopidae--“reeking with blood”

--the seats of Agamemnon. Orestes, who had been saved in childhood by

his sister from the designs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, has now

returned in manhood. It is agreed that, in order to lull all

suspicion in the royal adulterers, a false account of the death of

Orestes by an accident in the Pythian Games shall be given to

Clytemnestra; and Orestes and Pylades themselves are afterward to be

introduced in the character of Phocians, bearing the ashes of the

supposed dead. Meanwhile the two friends repair to the sepulchre of

Agamemnon to offer libations, etc. Electra then appears, indulges her

indignant lamentations at her lot, and consoles herself with the hope

of her brother’s speedy return.

She is joined by her sister Chrysothemis, who is bearing sepulchral

offerings to the tomb of Agamemnon; and in this interview Sophocles,

with extraordinary skill and deep knowledge of human nature, contrives

to excite our admiration and sympathy for the vehement Electra by

contrasting her with the weak and selfish Chrysothemis. Her very

bitterness against her mother is made to assume the guise of a solemn

duty to her father. Her unfeminine qualities rise into courage and

magnanimity--she glories in the unkindness and persecution she meets

with from Clytemnestra and Aegisthus--they are proofs of her reverence

to the dead. Woman as she is, she is yet the daughter of a king--she

cannot submit to a usurper--“she will not, add cowardice to misery.”

Chrysothemis informs Electra that on the return of Aegisthus it is

resolved to consign her to a vault “where she may chant her woes

unheard.” Electra learns the meditated sentence undismayed--she will

not moderate her unwelcome wo--“she will not be a traitoress to those

she loves.” But a dream has appalled Clytemnestra--Agamemnon has

appeared to her as in life. In the vision he seemed to her to fix his

sceptre on the soil, whence it sprouted up into a tree that

overshadowed the whole land. Disquieted and conscience-stricken, she

now sends Chrysothemis with libations to appease the manes of the

dead. Electra adjures Chrysothemis not to render such expiations to

scatter them to the winds or on the dust--to let them not approach the

resting-place of the murdered king. Chrysothemis promises to obey the

injunction, and departs. A violent and powerful scene between

Clytemnestra and Electra ensues, when the attendant enters (as was

agreed on) to announce the death of Orestes. In this recital he

portrays the ceremony of the Pythian races in lines justly celebrated,

and which, as an animated and faithful picture of an exhibition so

renowned, the reader may be pleased to see, even in a feeble and cold

translation. Orestes had obtained five victories in the first day--in

the second he starts with nine competitors in the chariot-race--an

Achaean, a Spartan, two Libyans--he himself with Thessalian steeds--a

sixth from Aetolia, a Magnesian, an Enian, an Athenian, and a Boeotian

complete the number.

“They took their stand where the appointed judges

Had cast their lots, and ranged the rival cars;

Rang out the brazen trump! Away they bound,

Cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened reins

As with a body the large space is filled

With the huge clangour of the rattling cars:

High whirl aloft the dust-clouds; blent together

Each presses each--and the lash rings--and loud

Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath,

Along their manes and down the circling wheels,

Scatter the flaking foam. Orestes still,

Ay, as he swept around the perilous pillar

Last in the course, wheel’d in the rushing axle,

The left rein curbed--that on the dexter hand

Flung loose. So on erect the chariots rolled!

Sudden the Aenian’s fierce and headlong steeds

Broke from the bit--and, as the seventh time now

The course was circled, on the Libyan car

Dash’d their wild fronts: then order changed to ruin:

Car crashed on car--the wide Crissaean plain

Was, sealike, strewn with wrecks: the Athenian saw,

Slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge,

Unscathed and skilful, in the midmost space,

Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm.

Behind, Orestes, hitherto the last,

Had yet kept back his coursers for the close;

Now one sole rival left--on, on he flew,

And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge

Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds.

He nears--he reaches--they are side by side

Now one--the other--by a length the victor.

The courses all are past--the wheels erect

All safe--when as the hurrying coursers round

The fatal pillar dash’d, the wretched boy

Slackened the left rein; on the column’s edge

Crash’d the frail axle--headlong from the car,

Caught and all meshed within the reins he fell;

And masterless, the mad steeds raged along!

Loud from that mighty multitude arose

A shriek--a shout! But yesterday such deeds

To-day such doom! Now whirled upon the earth,

Now his limbs dash’d aloft, they dragged him--those

Wild horses--till all gory from the wheels

Released--and no man, not his nearest friends,

Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes.

They laid the body on the funeral pyre,

And while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear,

In a small, brazen, melancholy urn,

That handful of cold ashes to which all

The grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk.

Hither they bear him--in his father’s land

To find that heritage--a tomb!”

It is much to be regretted that this passage, so fine in the original,

is liable to one great objection--it has no interest as connected with

the play, because the audience know that Orestes is not dead; and

though the description of the race retains its animation, the report

of the catastrophe loses the terror of reality, and appears but a

highly-coloured and elaborate falsehood.

The reader will conceive the lamentations of Electra and the fearful

joy of Clytemnestra at a narrative by which the one appears to lose a

brother and a friend--the other a son and an avenging foe.

Chrysothemis joyfully returns to announce, that by the tomb of

Agamemnon she discovers a lock of hair; libations yet moisten the

summit of the mound, and flowers of every hue are scattered over the

grave. “These,” she thinks, “are signs that Orestes is returned.”

Electra, informing her of the fatal news, proposes that they, women as

they are, shall attempt the terrible revenge which their brother can

no longer execute. When Chrysothemis recoils and refuses, Electra

still nurses the fell design. The poet has more than once, and now

again with judgment, made us sensible of the mature years of Electra

[364]; she is no passionate, wavering, and inexperienced girl, but the

eldest born of the house; the guardian of the childhood of its male

heir; unwedded and unloving, no soft matron cares, no tender maiden

affections, have unbent the nerves of her stern, fiery, and

concentrated soul. Year after year has rolled on to sharpen her

hatred--to disgust her with the present--to root her to one bloody

memory of the past--to sour and freeze up the gentle thoughts of

womanhood--to unsex

“And fill her from the crown to the toe, topful

Of direst cruelty--make thick her blood

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,” [365]

and fit her for one crowning deed, for which alone the daughter of the

king of men lives on.

At length the pretended Phocians enter, bearing the supposed ashes of

Orestes; the chief of the train addresses himself to Electra, and this

is the most dramatic and touching scene in the whole tragedy. When

the urn containing, as she believes, the dust of her brother, is

placed in the hands of Electra, we can well overleap time and space,

and see before us the great actor who brought the relics of his own

son upon the stage, and shed no mimic sorrows [366]--we can well

picture the emotions that circle round the vast audience--pity itself

being mingled with the consciousness to which the audience alone are

admitted, that lamentation will soon be replaced by joy, and that the

living Orestes is before his sister. It is by a most subtle and

delicate art that Sophocles permits this struggle between present pain

and anticipated pleasure, and carries on the passion of the spectators

to wait breathlessly the moment when Orestes shall be discovered. We

now perceive why the poet at once, in the opening of the play,

announced to us the existence and return of Orestes--why he disdained

the vulgar source of interest, the gross suspense we should have felt,

if we had shared the ignorance of Electra, and not been admitted to

the secret we impatiently long to be communicated to her. In this

scene, our superiority to Electra, in the knowledge we possess,

refines and softens our compassion, blending it with hope. And most

beautifully here does Sophocles remove far from us the thought of the

hard hatred that hitherto animates the mourner--the strong, proud

spirit is melted away--the woman and the sister alone appear. He whom

she had loved more dearly than a mother--whom she had nursed, and

saved, and prayed for, is “a nothing” in her hands; and the last rites

it had not been hers to pay. He had been

“By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned.”

All things had vanished with him--“vanished in a day”--“vanished as by

a hurricane”--she is left with her foes alone. “Admit me” (she

cries), “to thy refuge--make room for me in thy home.”

In these lamentations, the cold, classic drama seems to warm into

actual life. Art, exquisite because invisible, unites us at once with

imperishable nature--we are no longer delighted with Poetry--we are

weeping with Truth.

At length Orestes reveals himself, and now the plot draws to its

catastrophe. Clytemnestra is alone in her house, preparing a caldron

for the burial; Electra and the chorus are on the stage; the son--the

avenger, is within; suddenly the cries of Clytemnestra are heard.

Again--again! Orestes re-enters a parricide! [367] He retires as

Aegisthus is seen approaching; and the adulterous usurper is now

presented to us for the first and last time--the crowning victim of

the sacrifice. He comes flushed with joy and triumph. He has heard

that the dreaded Orestes is no more. Electra entertains him a few

moments with words darkly and exultingly ambiguous. He orders the

doors to be thrown open, that all Argos and Mycenae may see the

remains of his sole rival for the throne. The scene opens. On the

threshold (where, with the Greeks, the corpse of the dead was usually

set out to view) lies a body covered with a veil or pall. Orestes

(the supposed Phocian) stands beside.

“Aegisthus. Great Jove! a grateful spectacle!--if thus

May it be said unsinning; yet if she,

The awful Nemesis, be nigh and hear,

I do recall the sentence! Raise the pall.

The dead was kindred to me, and shall know

A kinsman’s sorrow.

Orestes. Lift thyself the pall;

Not mine, but thine, the office to survey

That which lies mute beneath, and to salute,

Lovingly sad, the dead one.

Aegisthus. Be it so--

It is well said. Go thou and call the queen:

Is she within?

Orestes. Look not around for her--

She is beside thee!”

Aegisthus lifts the pall, and beholds the body of Clytemnestra! He

knows his fate at once. He knows that Orestes is before him. He

attempts to speak. The fierce Electra cuts him short, and Orestes,

with stern solemnity, conducts him from the stage to the spot on which

Aegisthus had slain Agamemnon, so that the murderer might die by the

son’s hand in the place where the father fell. Thus artistically is

the catastrophe not lessened in effect, but heightened, by removing

the deed of death from the scene--the poetical justice, in the calm

and premeditated selection of the place of slaughter, elevates what on

the modern stage would be but a spectacle of physical horror into the

deeper terror and sublimer gloom of a moral awe; and vindictive

murder, losing its aspect, is idealized and hallowed into religious

sacrifice.

IX. Of the seven plays left to us, “The Trachiniae” is usually

considered the least imbued with the genius of Sophocles; and Schlegel

has even ventured on the conjecture, singularly destitute of even

plausible testimony, that Sophocles himself may not be the author.

The plot is soon told. The play is opened by Deianira, the wife of

Hercules, who indulges in melancholy reflections on the misfortunes of

her youth, and the continual absence of her husband, of whom no

tidings have been heard for months. She soon learns from her son,

Hyllus, that Hercules is said to be leading an expedition into Euboea;

and our interest is immediately excited by Deianira’s reply, which

informs us that oracles had foretold that this was to be the crisis

[368] in the life of Hercules--that he was now to enjoy rest from his

labours, either in a peaceful home or in the grave; and she sends

Hyllus to join his father, share his enterprise and fate. The chorus

touchingly paint the anxious love of Deianira in the following lines:

“Thou, whom the starry-spangled Night did lull

Into the sleep from which--her journey done

Her parting steps awake thee--beautiful

Fountain of flame, oh Sun!

Say, on what seagirt strand, or inland shore

(For earth is bared before thy solemn gaze),

In orient Asia, or where milder rays

Tremble on western waters, wandereth he

Whom bright Alcmena bore?

Ah! as some bird within a lonely nest

The desolate wife puts sleep away with tears;

And ever ills to be

Haunting the absence with dim hosts of fears,

Fond fancy shapes from air dark prophets of the breast.”

In her answer to the virgin chorus, Deianira weaves a beautiful

picture of maiden youth as a contrast to the cares and anxieties of

wedded life:

“Youth pastures in a valley of its own;

The scorching sun, the rains and winds of Heaven,

Mar not the calm--yet virgin of all care;

But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up

The airy halls of life.”

Deianira afterward receives fresh news of Hercules. She gives way to

her joy. Lichas, the herald, enters, and confides to her charge some

maidens whom the hero had captured. Deianira is struck with

compassion for their lot, and with admiration of the noble bearing of

one of them, Iole. She is about to busy herself in preparation for

their comfort, when she learns that Iole is her rival--the beloved

mistress of Hercules. The jealousy evinced by Deianira is beautifully

soft and womanly [369]. Even in uttering a reproach on Hercules, she

says she cannot feel anger with him, yet how can she dwell in the same

house with a younger and fairer rival;

“She in whose years the flower that fades in mine

Opens the leaves of beauty.”

Her affection, her desire to retain the love of the hero, suggests to

her remembrance a gift she had once received from a centaur who had

fallen by the shaft of Hercules. The centaur had assured her that the

blood from his wound, if preserved, would exercise the charm of a

filter over the heart of Hercules, and would ever recall and fix upon

her his affection. She had preserved the supposed charm--she steeps

with it a robe that she purposes to send to Hercules as a gift; but

Deianira, in this fatal resolve, shows all the timidity and sweetness

of her nature; she even questions if it be a crime to regain the heart

of her husband; she consults the chorus, who advise the experiment

(and here, it may be observed, that this is skilfully done, for it

conveys the excuse of Deianira, the chorus being, as it were, the

representative of the audience). Accordingly, she sends the garment

by Lichas. Scarce has the herald gone, ere Deianira is terrified by a

strange phenomenon: a part of the wool with which the supposed filter

had been applied to the garment was thrown into the sunlight, upon

which it withered away--“crumbling like sawdust”--while on the spot

where it fell a sort of venomous foam froths up. While relating this

phenomenon to the chorus, her son, Hyllus, returns [370], and relates

the agonies of his father under the poisoned garment: he had indued

the robe on the occasion of solemn sacrifice, and all was rejoicing,

when,

“As from the sacred offering and the pile

The flame broke forth,”

the poison began to work, the tunic clung to the limbs of the hero,

glued as if by the artificer, and, in his agony and madness, Hercules

dashes Lichas, who brought him the fatal gift, down the rock, and is

now on his way home. On hearing these news and the reproaches of her

son, Deianira steals silently away, and destroys herself upon the

bridal-bed. The remainder of the play is very feeble. Hercules is

represented in his anguish, which is but the mere raving of physical

pain; and after enjoining his son to marry Iole (the innocent cause of

his own sufferings), and to place him yet living upon his funeral

pyre, the play ends.

The beauty of the “Trachiniae” is in detached passages, in some

exquisite bursts by the chorus, and in the character of Deianira,

whose artifice to regain the love of her consort, unhappily as it

terminates, is redeemed by a meekness of nature, a delicacy of

sentiment, and an anxious, earnest, unreproachful devotion of conjugal

love, which might alone suffice to show the absurdity of modern

declamations on the debasement of women, and the absence of pure and

true love in that land from which Sophocles drew his experience.

X. The “Ajax” is far superior to the “Trachiniae.” The subject is

one that none but a Greek poet could have thought of or a Greek

audience have admired. The master-passion of a Greek was emulation--

the subject of the “Ajax” is emulation defeated. He has lost to

Ulysses the prize of the arms of Achilles, and the shame of being

vanquished has deprived him of his senses.

In the fury of madness he sallies from his tent at night--slaughters

the flocks, in which his insanity sees the Greeks, whose award has

galled and humbled him--and supposes he has slain the Atridae and

captured Ulysses. It is in this play that Sophocles has, to a certain

extent, attempted that most effective of all combinations in the hands

of a master--the combination of the ludicrous and the terrible [371]:

as the chorus implies, “it is to laugh and to weep.” But when the

scene, opening, discovers Ajax sitting amid the slaughtered victims--

when that haughty hero awakens from his delirium--when he is aware

that he has exposed himself to the mockery and derision of his foes--

the effect is almost too painful even for tragedy. In contrast to

Ajax is the soothing and tender Tecmessa. The women of Sophocles are,

indeed, gifted with an astonishing mixture of majesty and sweetness.

After a very pathetic farewell with his young son, Ajax affects to be

reconciled to his lot, disguises the resolution he has formed, and by

one of those artful transitions of emotion which at once vary and

heighten interest on the stage, the chorus, before lamenting, bursts

into a strain of congratulation and joy. The heavy affliction has

passed away--Ajax is restored. The Nuntius arrives from the camp.

Calchas, the soothsayer, has besought Teucer, the hero’s brother, not

to permit Ajax to quit his tent that day, for on that day only Minerva

persecutes him; and if he survive it, he may yet be preserved and

prosper. But Ajax has already wandered away, none know whither.

Tecmessa hastens in search of him, and, by a very rare departure from

the customs of the Greek stage, the chorus follow.

Ajax appears again. His passions are now calm and concentrated, but

they lead him on to death. He has been shamed, dishonoured--he has

made himself a mockery to his foes. Nobly to live or nobly to die is

the sole choice of a brave man. It is characteristic of the Greek

temperament, that the personages of the Greek poetry ever bid a last

lingering and half-reluctant farewell to the sun. There is a

magnificent fulness of life in those children of the beautiful West;

the sun is to them as a familiar friend--the affliction or the terror

of Hades is in the thought that its fields are sunless. The orb which

animated their temperate heaven, which ripened their fertile earth, in

which they saw the type of eternal youth, of surpassing beauty, of

incarnate poetry--human in its associations, and yet divine in its

nature--is equally beloved and equally to be mourned by the maiden

tenderness of Antigone or the sullen majesty of Ajax. In a Chaldaean

poem the hero would have bid farewell to the stars!

It is thus that Ajax concludes his celebrated soliloquy.

“And thou that mak’st high heaven thy chariot-course,

Oh sun--when gazing on my father-land,

Draw back thy golden rein, and tell my woes

To the old man, my father--and to her

Who nursed me at her bosom--my poor mother!

There will be wailing through the echoing walls

When--but away with thoughts like these!--the hour

Brings on the ripening deed. Death, death, look on me!

Did I say death?--it was a waste of words;

We shall be friends hereafter.

‘Tis the DAY,

Present and breathing round me, and the car

Of the sweet sun, that never shall again

Receive my greeting!--henceforth time is sunless,

And day a thing that is not! Beautiful light,

My Salamis--my country--and the floor

Of my dear household hearth--and thou, bright Athens,

Thou--for thy sons and I were boys together--

Fountains and rivers, and ye Trojan plains,

I loved ye as my fosterers--fare ye well!

Take in these words, the last earth hears from Ajax--

All else unspoken, in a spectre land

I’ll whisper to the dead!”

Ajax perishes on his sword--but the interest of the play survives him.

For with the Greeks, burial rather than death made the great close of

life. Teucer is introduced to us; the protector of the hero’s remains

and his character, at once fierce and tender, is a sketch of

extraordinary power. Agamemnon, on the contrary--also not presented

to us till after the death of Ajax--is but a boisterous tyrant [372].

Finally, by the generous intercession of Ulysses, who redeems his

character from the unfavourable conception we formed of him at the

commencement of the play, the funeral rites are accorded, and a

didactic and solemn moral from the chorus concludes the whole.

XI. The “Philoctetes” has always been ranked by critics among the

most elaborate and polished of the tragedies of Sophocles. In some

respects it deserves the eulogies bestowed on it. But one great fault

in the conception will, I think, be apparent on the simple statement

of the plot.

Philoctetes, the friend and armour-bearer of Hercules, and the heir of

that hero’s unerring shafts and bow, had, while the Grecian fleet

anchored at Chryse (a small isle in the Aegaean), been bitten in the

foot by a serpent; the pain of the wound was insufferable--the shrieks

and groans of Philoctetes disturbed the libations and sacrifices of

the Greeks. And Ulysses and Diomed, when the fleet proceeded, left

him, while asleep, on the wild and rocky solitudes of Lemnos. There,

till the tenth year of the Trojan siege, he dragged out an agonizing

life. The soothsayer, Helenus, then declared that Troy could not fall

till Philoctetes appeared in the Grecian camp with the arrows and bow

of Hercules. Ulysses undertakes to effect this object, and, with

Neoptolemus (son of Achilles), departs for Lemnos. Here the play

opens. A wild and desolate shore--a cavern with two mouths (so that

in winter there might be a double place to catch the sunshine, and in

summer a twofold entrance for the breeze), and a little fountain of

pure water, designate the abode of Philoctetes.

Agreeably to his character, it is by deceit and stratagem that Ulysses

is to gain his object. Neoptolemus is to dupe him whom he has never

seen with professions of friendship and offers of services, and to

snare away the consecrated weapons. Neoptolemus--whose character is a

sketch which Shakspeare alone could have bodied out--has all the

generous ardour and honesty of youth, but he has also its timid

irresolution--its docile submission to the great--its fear of the

censure of the world. He recoils from the base task proposed to him;

he would prefer violence to fraud; yet he dreads lest, having

undertaken the enterprise, his refusal to act should be considered

treachery to his coadjutor. It is with a deep and melancholy wisdom

that Ulysses, who seems to comtemplate his struggles with

compassionate and not displeased superiority, thus attempts to

reconcile the young man:

“Son of a noble sire! I too, in youth,

Had thy plain speech and thine impatient arm:

But a stern test is time! I have lived to see

That among men the tools of power and empire

Are subtle words--not deeds.”

Neoptolemus is overruled. Ulysses withdraws, Philoctetes appears.

The delight of the lonely wretch on hearing his native language; on

seeing the son of Achilles--his description of his feelings when he

first found himself abandoned in the desert--his relation of the

hardships he has since undergone, are highly pathetic. He implores

Neoptolemus to bear him away, and when the youth consents, he bursts

into an exclamation of joy, which, to the audience, in the secret of

the perfidy to be practised on him, must have excited the most lively

emotions. The characteristic excellence of Sophocles is, that in his

most majestic creations he always contrives to introduce the sweetest

touches of humanity.--Philoctetes will not even quit his miserable

desert until he has returned to his cave to bid it farewell--to kiss

the only shelter that did not deny a refuge to his woes. In the joy

of his heart he thinks, poor dupe, that he has found faith in man--in

youth. He trusts the arrows and the bow to the hand of Neoptolemus.

Then, as he attempts to crawl along, the sharp agony of his wound

completely overmasters him. He endeavours in vain to stifle his

groans; the body conquers the mind. This seems to me, as I shall

presently again observe, the blot of the play; it is a mere exhibition

of physical pain. The torture exhausts, till insensibility or sleep

comes over him. He lies down to rest, and the young man watches over

him. The picture is striking. Neoptolemus, at war with himself, does

not seize the occasion. Philoctetes wakes. He is ready to go on

board; he implores and urges instant departure. Neoptolemus recoils--

the suspicions of Philoctetes are awakened; he thinks that this

stranger, too, will abandon him. At length the young man, by a

violent effort, speaks abruptly out, “Thou must sail to Troy--to the

Greeks--the Atridae.”

“The Greeks--the Atridae!” the betrayers of Philoctetes--those beyond

pardon--those whom for ten years he has pursued with the curses of a

wronged, and deserted, and solitary spirit. “Give me back,” he cries,

“my bow and arrows.” And when Neoptolemus refuses, he pours forth a

torrent of reproach. The son of the truth--telling Achilles can

withstand no longer. He is about to restore the weapons, when Ulysses

rushes on the stage and prevents him.

At length, the sufferer is to be left--left once more alone in the

desert. He cannot go with his betrayers--he cannot give glory and

conquest to his inhuman foes; in the wrath of his indignant heart even

the desert is sweeter than the Grecian camp. And how is he to sustain

himself without his shafts! Famine adds a new horror to his dreary

solitude, and the wild beasts may now pierce into his cavern: but

their cruelty would be mercy! His contradictory and tempestuous

emotions, as the sailors that compose the chorus are about to depart,

are thus told.

The chorus entreat him to accompany them.

Phil. Begone.

Chor. It is a friendly bidding--we obey--

Come, let us go. To ship, my comrades.

Phil. No--

No, do not go--by the great Jove, who hears

Men’s curses--do not go.

Chor. Be calm.

Phil. Sweet strangers!

In mercy, leave me not.

* * * * * *

Chor. But now you bade us!

Phil. Ay--meet cause for chiding,

That a poor desperate wretch, maddened with pain,

Should talk as madmen do!

Chor. Come, then, with us.

Phil. Never! oh--never! Hear me--not if all

The lightnings of the thunder-god were made

Allies with you, to blast me! Perish Troy,

And all beleaguered round its walls--yea; all

Who had the heart to spurn a wounded wretch;

But, but--nay--yes--one prayer, one boon accord me.

Chor. What wouldst thou have?

Phil. A sword, an axe, a something;

So it can strike, no matter!

Chor. Nay--for what?

Phil. What! for this hand to hew me off this head--

These limbs! To death, to solemn death, at last

My spirit calls me.

Chor. Why?

Phil. To seek my father.

Chor. On earth?

Phil. In Hades.

Having thus worked us up to the utmost point of sympathy with the

abandoned Philoctetes, the poet now gradually sheds a gentler and

holier light over the intense gloom to which we had been led.

Neoptolemus, touched with generous remorse, steals back to give the

betrayed warrior his weapons--he is watched by the vigilant Ulysses--

an angry altercation takes place between them. Ulysses, finding he

cannot intimidate, prudently avoids personal encounter with the son of

Achilles, and departs to apprize the host of the backsliding of his

comrade.--A most beautiful scene, in which Neoptolemus restores the

weapons to Philoctetes--a scene which must have commanded the most

exquisite tears and the most rapturous applauses of the audience,

ensues; and, finally, the god so useful to the ancient poets brings

all things, contrary to the general rule of Aristotle [373], to a

happy close. Hercules appears and induces his former friend to

accompany Neoptolemus to the Grecian camp, where his wound shall be

healed.. The farewell of Philoctetes to his cavern--to the nymphs of

the meadows--to the roar of the ocean, whose spray the south wind

dashed through his rude abode--to the Lycian stream and the plain of

Lemnos--is left to linger on the ear like a solemn hymn, in which the

little that is mournful only heightens the majestic sweetness of all

that is musical. The dramatic art in the several scenes of this play

Sophocles has never excelled, and scarcely equalled. The contrast of

character in Ulysses and Neoptolemus has in it a reality, a human

strength and truth, that is more common to the modern than the ancient

drama. But still the fault of the story is partly that the plot rests

upon a base and ignoble fraud, and principally that our pity is

appealed to by the coarse sympathy with physical pain: the rags that

covered the sores, the tainted corruption of the ulcers, are brought

to bear, not so much on the mind as on the nerves; and when the hero

is represented as shrinking with corporeal agony--the blood oozing

from his foot, the livid sweat rolling down the brow--we sicken and

turn away from the spectacle; we have no longer that pleasure in our

own pain which ought to be the characteristic of true tragedy. It is

idle to vindicate this error by any dissimilarity between ancient and

modern dramatic art. As nature, so art, always has some universal and

permanent laws. Longinus rightly considers pathos a part of the

sublime, for pity ought to elevate us; but there is nothing to elevate

us in the noisome wounds, even of a mythical hero; our human nature is

too much forced back into itself--and a proof that in this the ancient

art did not differ from the modern, is in the exceeding rarity with

which bodily pain is made the instrument of compassion with the Greek

tragedians. The Philoctetes and the Hercules are among the exceptions

that prove the rule. [374]

XII. Another drawback to our admiration of the Philoctetes is in the

comparison it involuntarily courts with the Prometheus of Aeschylus.

Both are examples of fortitude under suffering--of the mind’s conflict

with its fate. In either play a dreary waste, a savage solitude,

constitute the scene. But the towering sublimity of the Prometheus

dwarfs into littleness every image of hero or demigod with which we

contrast it. What are the chorus of mariners, and the astute Ulysses,

and the boyish generosity of Neoptolemus--what is the lonely cave on

the shores of Lemnos--what the high-hearted old warrior, with his

torturing wound and his sacred bow--what are all these to the vast

Titan, whom the fiends chain to the rock beneath which roll the rivers

of hell, for whom the daughters of Ocean are ministers, to whose

primeval birth the gods of Olympus are the upstarts of a day, whose

soul is the treasure-house of a secret which threatens the realm of

heaven, and for whose unimaginable doom earth reels to its base, all

the might of divinity is put forth, and Hades itself trembles as it

receives its indomitable and awful guest! Yet, as I have before

intimated, it is the very grandeur of Aeschylus that must have made

his poems less attractive on the stage than those of the humane and

flexible Sophocles. No visible representation can body forth his

thoughts--they overpower the imagination, but they do not come home to

our household and familiar feelings. In the contrast between the

“Philoctetes” and the “Prometheus” is condensed the contrast between

Aeschylus and Sophocles. They are both poets of the highest

conceivable order; but the one seems almost above appeal to our

affections--his tempestuous gloom appals the imagination, the vivid

glare of his thoughts pierces the innermost recesses of the intellect,

but it is only by accident that he strikes upon the heart. The other,

in his grandest flights, remembers that men make his audience, and

seems to feel as if art lost the breath of its life when aspiring

beyond the atmosphere of human intellect and human passions. The

difference between the creations of Aeschylus and Sophocles is like

the difference between the Satan of Milton and the Macbeth of

Shakspeare. Aeschylus is equally artful with Sophocles--it is the

criticism of ignorance that has said otherwise. But there is this

wide distinction--Aeschylus is artful as a dramatist to be read,

Sophocles as a dramatist to be acted. If we get rid of actors, and

stage, and audience, Aeschylus will thrill and move us no less than

Sophocles, through a more intellectual if less passionate medium. A

poem may be dramatic, yet not theatrical--may have all the effects of

the drama in perusal, but by not sufficiently enlisting the skill of

the actor--nay, by soaring beyond the highest reach of histrionic

capacities, may lose those effects in representation. The storm in

“Lear” is a highly dramatic agency when our imagination is left free

to conjure up the angry elements,

“Bid the winds blow the earth into the sea,

Or swell the curled waters.”

But a storm on the stage, instead of exceeding, so poorly mimics the

reality, that it can never realize the effect which the poet designs,

and with which the reader is impressed. So is it with supernatural

and fanciful creations, especially of the more delicate and subtle

kind. The Ariel of the “Tempest,” the fairies of the “Midsummer

Night’s Dream,” and the Oceanides of the “Prometheus,” are not to be

represented by human shapes. We cannot say that they are not

dramatic, but they are not theatrical. We can sympathize with the

poet, but not with the actor. For the same reason, in a lesser

degree, all creations, even of human character, that very highly task

the imagination, that lift the reader wholly out of actual experience,

and above the common earth, are comparatively feeble when reduced to

visible forms. The most metaphysical plays of Shakspeare are the

least popular in representation. Thus the very genius of Aeschylus,

that kindles us in the closet, must often have militated against him

on the stage. But in Sophocles all--even the divinities themselves--

are touched with humanity; they are not too subtle or too lofty to be

submitted to mortal gaze. We feel at once that on the stage Sophocles

ought to have won the prize from Aeschylus; and, as a proof of this,

if we look at the plays of each, we see that scarcely any of the great

characters of Aeschylus could have called into sufficient exercise the

powers of an actor. Prometheus on his rock, never changing even his

position, never absent from the scene, is denied all the relief, the

play and mobility, that an actor needs. His earthly representative

could be but a grand reciter. In the “Persians,” not only the

theatrical, but the dramatic effect is wanting--it is splendid poetry

put into various mouths, but there is no collision of passions, no

surprise, no incident, no plot, no rapid dialogue in which words are

but the types of emotions. In the “Suppliants” Garrick could have

made nothing of Pelasgus. In the “Seven before Thebes” there are not

above twenty or thirty lines in the part of Eteocles in which the art

of the actor could greatly assist the genius of the poet. In the’

trilogy of the “Agamemnon,” the “Choephori,” and the “Orestes,”

written in advanced years, we may trace the contagious innovation of

Sophocles; but still, even in these tragedies, there is no part so

effective in representation as those afforded by the great characters

of Sophocles. In the first play the hypocrisy and power of

Clytemnestra would, it is true, have partially required and elicited

the talents of the player; but Agamemnon himself is but a thing of

pageant, and the splendid bursts of Cassandra might have been

effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In the

second play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in the

gathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably

task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the last

play (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which

opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furies

sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to the

end in which an eminent actor could exhibit his genius.

But when we come to the plays of Sophocles, we feel that a new era in

the drama is created; we feel that the artist poet has called into

full existence the artist actor. His theatrical effects [375] are

tangible, actual--could be represented to-morrow in Paris--in London--

everywhere. We find, therefore, that with Sophocles has passed down

to posterity the name of the great actor [376] in his principal plays.

And I think the English reader, even in the general analysis and

occasional translations with which I have ventured to fill so many

pages, will perceive that all the exertions of subtle, delicate, and

passionate power, even in a modern actor, would be absolutely

requisite to do justice to the characters of Oedipus at Coloneus,

Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes.

This, then, was the distinction between Aeschylus and Sophocles--both

were artists, as genius always must be, but the art of the latter

adapts itself better to representation. And this distinction in art

was not caused merely by precedence in time. Had Aeschylus followed

Sophocles, it would equally have existed--it was the natural

consequence of the distinctions in their genius--the one more sublime,

the other more impassioned--the one exalting the imagination, the

other appealing to the heart. Aeschylus is the Michael Angelo of the

drama, Sophocles the Raffaele.

XIII. Thus have I presented to the general reader the outline of all

the tragedies of Sophocles. In the great length at which I have

entered in this, not the least difficult, part of my general task, I

have widely innovated on the plan pursued by the writers of Grecian

history. For this innovation I offer no excuse. It is her poetry at

the period we now examine, as her philosophy in a later time, that

makes the individuality of Athens. In Sophocles we behold the age of

Pericles. The wars of that brilliant day were as pastimes to the

mighty carnage of oriental or northern battle. The reduction of a

single town, which, in our time, that has no Sophocles and no

Pericles, a captain of artillery would demolish in a week, was the

proudest exploit of the Olympian of the Agora; a little while, and one

defeat wrests the diadem of the seas from the brows of “The Violet

Queen;” scanty indeed the ruins that attest the glories of “The

Propylaea, the Parthenon, the Porticoes, and the Docks,” to which the

eloquent orator appealed as the “indestructible possessions” of

Athens; along the desolate site of the once tumultuous Agora the

peasant drives his oxen--the champion deity [377] of Phidias, whose

spectral apparition daunted the barbarian Alaric [378], and the gleam

of whose spear gladdened the mariner beneath the heights of Sunium,

has vanished from the Acropolis; but, happily, the age of Pericles has

its stamp and effigy in an art more imperishable than that of war--in

materials more durable than those of bronze and marble, of ivory and

gold. In the majestic harmony, the symmetrical grace of Sophocles, we

survey the true portraiture of the genius of the times, and the old

man of Coloneus still celebrates the name of Athens in a sweeter song

than that of the nightingale [379], and melodies that have survived

the muses of Cephisus [380]. Sophocles was allegorically the prophet

when he declared that in the grave of Oedipus was to be found the

sacred guardian and the everlasting defence of the city of Theseus.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] “Cum consuetudine ad imperii cupiditatem trahi videretur.”--Nepos

in Vit. Milt., cap. 8.