SOPHOCLES 



575 



celebrated the naval victory of Salami* (480). At 

 the ajge of twenty-eight he came to the front by 

 entering into competition with Aeschylus, his elder 

 by thirty years, whose pre-eminence as a tragic 

 poet had long l>een undisputed. The judges on 

 this occasion, according to an oft-repeated tradi- 

 tion, were Cimon and his fellow-generals, just 

 returned from Scyros. The younger poet was 

 preferred ; and his triumph had a decisive influ- 

 ence on the future of the tragic art. For not only 

 are the mature works of Sophocles and those of 

 Euripides, his younger brother in*poetry, the fulfil- 

 ment of the promise then given, out the Orestean 

 trilogy of .-Eschylus, in which Greek tragedy 

 attained its highest limit, was brought out ten 

 years after this, and bears unmistakable proofs of 

 the impression which the art of Sophocles had 

 made upon his elder and greater rival. Sophocles 

 never forsook Athens as both ^Eschylus and Euri- 

 pides did, but he was repeatedly employed on 

 embassies to other Grecian states, and in the 

 Saiman war of 440 he was appointed general in a 

 joint command with Pericles. This choice is said 

 to have been due to the success of the Antigone, 

 one of the earliest of the poet's seven extant plays, 

 as the (Edipus Coloneus and Philocletes are cer- 

 tainly the latest. The probable order is Ajax, 

 Antigone, Electra, (Edipus Tyranniis, Trachinice, 

 (Edipiu Coloneus, Philoctetes. Less than a tithe 

 of the work of Sophocles remains to us ; but of 

 the seven plays each one has superlative excel- 

 lMici:s, and stands prominently forth amongst the 

 master-works of the human spirit. The charac- 

 teristics of Sophocles are a dramatic structure all 

 but faultless, the combination of wonderful snbtletv 

 witli intense fire, and of a noble ideal with truth 

 and naturalness. His subjects were necessarily 

 drawn from Hellenic legend. His motives in 

 selecting them were mainly artistic, but to some 

 extent also religious or patriotic. In his treat- 

 ment of them he never loses sight of the main prin- 

 ciples of tragic art. His method turns largely on 

 pathetic contrasts ( 1 ) of situation, (2) of character. 



( 1 ) The change of fortune which forms the 

 crisis of each play is often rendered more impres- 

 sive through the profound unconsciousness, at the 

 beginning of the action, of the persons who are to 

 be affected by it. The case of CEdipus is the 

 capital illustration of this remark ; but it applies 

 also to Creon in the Antigone, to Electra, Deianira, 

 Philoctetes, and to the chorus in the Ajax and 

 CEdipus Coloneus. Sometimes the chief agent, 

 Antigone for example, is fully conscious of the 

 real position of things, but in every case appear- 

 ance and reality are strongly opposed. 



(2) The persons in Sophocles are most skilfully 

 adapted to the main situation and action of each 

 play. The addition of a third actor to the two 

 that had formerly sufficed enabled the poet not 

 only to contrast opposed natures, such as Antigone 

 and Creon, bnt to introduce finer shades of differ- 

 ence, as between Antigone and Ismene, or Aga- 

 memnon and Odysseus. Perhaps the most notable 

 instance of such delicate portraiture occurs in the 

 Philoctetes, where Neoptolemus, the ingenuous 

 youth, is contrasted equally with the politic 

 Odysseus and with the hero of the play, in whom 

 a generous nature has been embittered by ill- 

 treatment and solitude. 



The Ajax may be described as the tragedy of 

 wounded honour. Ajax and Odysseus nad re- 

 covered the dead body of Achilles, whose armour, 

 the miraculous work of Hephaestus, was then 

 awarded not to Ajax, the most valiant of the 

 surviving Greeks, but to Odysseus, the wisest. 

 Half-maddened by repulse, Ajax would have as- 

 sassinated the generals ; but, to defend Odysseus, 

 Athena made the Telamonian warrior wholly mad, 



and turned his violence against the flocks and 

 herds belonging to the army. On awaking from 

 his delirium, finding his honour lost, he resolves 

 on death. Agamemnon would have refused him 

 burial ; but Teucer vindicates him, and Odysseus, 

 with becoming magnanimity, ends the strife. 

 Tecmessa, the captive bride, who in her helpless- 

 ness defies the Argives and protects the hero's 

 child, is one of those female characters which 

 Sophocles portrays with so much skill. 



In the Antigone the claims of piety and natural 

 affection are seemingly overborne by the exag- 

 gerated assertion of state-authority in the person 

 of the ruler, but in the end it is the ruler who 

 succumbs. The virgin martyr is vindicated. 



In the Electra, in place of the fiery Thelian 

 maiden, the poet represents the faithful endurance 

 of the Argive princess, who in the Oresteia of 

 ^Eschylus had played a subordinate part, but here 

 rises to the height of female heroism. 



The (Ediptts Tyranniis was regarded by Aristotle 

 as the chef d'cemtre of tragedy, and nowhere else 

 is there to be found an equal combination of con- 

 structive ingenuity with tragic power. The hero 

 is represented as the most loyal and affectionate, 

 but also the most passionate, and, partly for that 

 reason, the most unfortunate of men. Doomed to 

 misery in his very birth, he appears to himself and 

 others at the opening of the play to be at the 

 height of prosperity. A stranger, he has earned 

 the affection of Thebes, and lightly he undertakes 

 the quest imposed by the god. In the sequel he 

 discovers that he is the forbidden child of the king 

 whom he has slain and of the queen whom lie 

 has married ! The poignancy and pathetic interest 

 which Sophocles extracts from this unnatural story 

 is a triumph of poetic skill. In the construction of 

 the piece the employment of the Theban slave, 

 who had been charged with the exposure of the 

 child, and had also witnessed the death of La'ius, 

 is especially noteworthy. 



The subject of the Trachinice is the death of 

 Heracles, but the fatal act of Deianira in sending 

 the poisoned robe (which she believes to be a, 

 charm for recovering the affection of her lord) 

 forms the central motive. She is one of the most 

 charming of poetic creations, ' the rival of Imogen 

 in purity, or Katharine of Aragon in her great 

 patience, and of both in wifely spirit." 



There was an interval probably of at least ten 

 years between the (Edipus Tyranniis and the com- 

 position of the (Edipus at Colomis, which indeed is 

 said to have been exhibited for the first time only 

 after the death of the poet. Meanwhile the genius 

 of Sophocles had mellowed, and the spirit of the 

 age had undergone some change. What in Enri- 

 pides becomes a sort of moral casuistry appears, 

 in Sophocles at this period as a serenely contem- 

 plative mood immersed in ethical reflection. He 

 lias adorned the legend of his birthplace with 

 undying beauty. But the moral dignity of the 

 Coloneus is different in kind from the tragic fire of 

 the Tyranniis. 



The Philoctetes was produced in 409. It is a 

 marvellous work for one in his eighty -seventh year 

 to have composed. The characters are powerfully 

 distinguished, and their mutual interaction is a new 

 thing in dramatic poetry. Philoctetes, like the 

 CEdipus of the Coloneus, is rejected by man, but 

 accepted by the jjods. Ill-usage and solitary 

 musing have fixed in him the resolution never to 

 return. The policy of Odysseus and the affection- 

 ate pleading of Neoptolemus are alike in vain, 

 until the hard knot is loosed by the apparition of 

 Heracles ( in Euripidean style ), who had been the 

 hero's master and patron in the world of men. 

 The interest of the action, which would else be 

 stationary for so long, is sustained by the conflict 



