2 Ernest Heinrich Klofsche 



sublime imagination lifts him to a region where the great forces 

 of the universe seem to be close about him. No poet has sur- 

 passed him in his power of creative imagination, by which he 

 brings a whole world of mythical figures into being. With amaz- 

 ing impressiveness he presents the dim borderland between the 

 material and the spiritual. With dreams and visions he deals 

 habitually and brings them into his dramatic fabric with con- 

 summate skill. At times in his reference to the divine power of 

 Zeus he almost- approaches a stern and sombre monotheism. 

 " One God above all, who directs all, who is the cause of all " 

 (Ag., 163, 1485). 



Sophocles, on the other hand, has no profound interest in the 

 supernatural, but accepts it as a traditional feature of tragedy. 

 Though he is by no means unconscious of the discordant elements 

 in human life and destiny, he firmly believes in the goodness and 

 the justice of the Gods, not attempting to solve a problem in the- 

 odicy. His interest is primarily in the conflict of human passions, 

 set before us in definite characters. Behind the mortal passions, 

 however, are the gods, and with an original and skilful use of 

 the supernatural elements he makes them really contribute to the 

 whole design, without allowing them to overpower the mortal 

 participants. 



A man of a different spirit, and, although contemporary with_ 

 Sophocles, a man of a different world, is Euripides. The old 

 world was dying, the new world was not yet born. It was an age 

 of intellectual growth, but of religious decay, when most men 

 were disengaging themselves from their traditional belief. The 

 popular religion — the very foundation of tragedy — had been un- 

 dermined. Scepticism had begun to be busy with the legends 

 which that religion consecrated. Neither Gods nor heroes com- 

 manded all the old unquestioning faith, and yet the old religion 

 still kept a real hold on the minds even of the most thoughtful. 

 Under these circumstances the duty of the tragic poet was one of 

 some difficulty, especially as far as the handling of the super- 

 natural in tragedy was concerned. Sophocles remaining true to 

 the old faith in the Gods of his age and nation preserves an out- 

 ward acquiescence in the traditional beliefs, while Euripides, ap- 



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