'Ωιδὴv 'Ηροδότῳ τευξεv Σoφoκλης ἐτέωv ὢv ∏έvτ' ἐπὶ πεvτήκovτα—

is a slight ground on which to reject the stronger tradition according to which Herodotus was ere this established at Thurii; and the coincidences in their writings may be accounted for by their having drawn from a common source. The fact of Sophocles’s generalship is the less surprising if taken in connexion with the interesting remark of his biographer (whose Life, though absent from the earliest MS. through some mischance, bears marks of an Alexandrian origin) that he took his full share of civic duties, and even served on foreign embassies :—Καλώς √ ∈7rαιδ∈υ(h7 και ετράφη èv cυτrοplq, καϊ èv πολιτεία και èv πptσβ(ιaι<s efητaζeτo. The large acquaintanceship which this implies, not only in Athens, but in Ionic cities generally, is a point of main importance in considering the opportunities of information at his command. And, if we credit this assertion, we are the more at liberty to doubt the other statement, though it is not incredible, that his appointment as general was due to the political wisdom of the Antigone.

The testimony borne by Aristophanes to the amiability of the poet’s temper (ό δ ∈υκoλoς p.iv èvGàH, eυκο∖ος δ’ eκcι) agrees with the record of his biographer that he was universally beloved. And the anecdote recalled by Cephalus in Plato’s Republic, that Sophocles welcomed the release from the passions which is brought by age, accords with the spirit of his famous Ode to Love in the Antigone. The Sophocles who, according to Aristotle (Rhet., iii. 18), said of the Government of the Four Hundred that it was the better of two bad alternatives (probably the same who was one of the prοbuli) may or may not have been the poet. Other gossiping stories are hardly worth repeating,—as that Pericles rebuked his love of pleasure and thought him a bad general, though a good poet; that he humorously boasted of his own “generalship” in affairs of love; or that he said of Aeschylus that he was often right without knowing it, and that Euripides represented men as they are, not as they ought to be. Such trifles rather reflect contemporary or subsequent impressions of a superficial kind than tell us anything about the man or the dramatist. The gibe of Aristophanes (Pax, 695 sq.), that Sophocles in his old age was become a very Simonides in his love for gain, may turn on some perversion of fact, without being altogether fair to either poet. It is certainly irreconcilable with the remark (Vit. Anon.) that in spite of pressing invitations he refused to leave Athens for kings’ courts. And the story of his indictment by his son Iophon for incompetence to manage his affairs,—to which Cicero has given some weight by quoting it in the De Senectute,— appears to be really traceable to Satyrus (flor. c. 200 b.c.), the same author who gave publicity to the most ridiculous of the various absurd accounts of the poet’s death,—that his breath failed him for want of a pause in reading some passage of the Antigone. Satyrus is at least the sole authority for the defence of the aged poet, who, after reciting passages from the (Ed. Col., is supposed to have said to his accusers, “If I am Sophocles I am no dotard, and if I dote I am not Sophocles.” On the other hand, we need not the testimony of biographers to assure us that he was devoted to Athens and renowned for piety. He is said to have been priest of the hero Alcon (or Halon) in his old age, and himself to have received divine honours after death.

That the duty of managing the actors as well as of training the chorus belonged to the author is well known. But did Aeschylus act in his own plays? This certainly is implied in the tradition that Sophocles, because of the weakness of his voice, was the first poet who desisted from doing so. In his Thamyras, however, he is said to have performed on the lyre to admiration, and in his Nausicaa (perhaps as coryphaeus) to have played gracefully the game of ball. Various minor improvements in decoration and stage carpentry are attributed to him,—whether truly or not who can tell? It is more interesting, if true, that he wrote his plays having certain actors in his eye; that he formed an association (6iασor) for the promotion of liberal culture; and that he was the first to introduce three actors on the stage. It is asserted on the authority of Aristoxenus that Sophocles was also the first to employ Phrygian melodies. And it is easy to believe that Aj., 693 sq., Trach., 205 sq., were sung to Phrygian music, though there are strains in Aeschylus (e.g., Choeph., 152 sq., 423 sq. ) , which it is hard to distinguish essentially from these. Ancient critics had also noted his familiarity with Homer, especially with the Odyssey, his power of selection and of extracting an exquisite grace from all he touched (whence he was named the “Attic Bee ”), his mingled felicity and boldness, and, above all, his subtle delineation of human nature and feeling. They observed that the balanced proportions and fine articulation of his work are such that in a single half line or phrase he often conveys the impression of an entire character. Nor is this verdict of antiquity likely to be reversed by modern criticism. The object of the present article, however, is not to praise Sophocles, but rather to describe him. And it is time to turn from Alexandrian or Byzantine fancies and judgments to the poet’s extant works.

His minor poems, elegies, paeans, &c., have all perished; and of his hundred and odd dramas only seven remain. These all belong to the period of his maturity (he had no decline); and not only the titles (as Lessing said) but some scanty fragments of more than ninety others have been preserved. Several of these were, of course, satyric dramas. And this recalls a point of some importance, which has been urged on the authority of Suidas, who says that “Sophocles began the practice of pitting play against play, instead of the tetralogy.” If it were meant that Sophocles did not exhibit tetralogies, this statement would have simply to be rejected. For the word of Suidas (950 a.d.) has no weight against quotations from the lists of tragic victories (διδασκαλίαι ) "which there is no other reason for discrediting. The remark might be due to the impression made on some critics by the greater complexity and completeness of a play of Sophocles—say the Oedipus Tyrannus or Antigone— as compared, say, with the Persae or the Septem contra Thebas. It is distinctly asserted, for example, on the authority of the διδασκαλίαι , that the Bacchae of Euripides, certainly as late as any play of Sophocles, was one of a trilogy or tetralogy. And if the custom was thus maintained for so long it was clearly impossible for any single competitor to break through it. But it seems probable that the trilogy had ceased to be the continuous development of one legend or cycle of legends,—“presenting Thebes or Pelops’ line,”—if, indeed, it ever was so exclusively; and if, as Schöll and others have suggested, a Sophoclean tetralogy was still linked together by some subtle bond of tragic thought or feeling, this would not affect the criticism of each play considered as an artistic whole. At the same time it appears that the satyric drama lost its grosser features and became more or less assimilated to the milder form of tragedy. And these changes, or something like them, may have given rise to the statement in Suidas.

If the diction of Sophocles sometimes reminds his readers of the Odyssey, the subjects of his plays were more frequently chosen from those later epics which subsequently came to be embodied in the epic cycle,—such as the Aethiopis, the Little Iliad, the Ilvupersis, the Cypria, the Nosti, the Telegonia (all revolving round the tale of Troy), the Thebaica, the Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις , and others, including probably, though there is no mention of such a thing, some early version of the Argonautic story. In one or other of these heroic poems the legends of all the great cities of Hellas were by this time embodied; and, though there must also have been a cloud of oral tradition floating over many a sacred spot, the dramatic poet does not seem, unless in the Oedipus Coloneus, to have directly drawn from this. He was content to quarry from the epic rhapsodies the materials for his more concentrated art, much as Shakespeare made use of Hollingshed or Plutarch, or as the subjects of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King have been taken from Sir Thomas Malory. As Sophocles has been accused of narrowing the range of tragic sympathy from Hellas to Athens, it deserves mention here that, of some hundred subjects of plays attributed to him, fifteen only are connected with Attica, while exactly the same number belong to the tale of Argos, twelve are Argonautic, and thirty Trojan. Even Corinthian heroes (Bellerophon, Polyidus) are not left out. It seems probable on the whole that, within the limits allowed by convention, Sophocles was guided simply by his instinctive perception of the tragic capabilities of a particular fable. This was evidently Lessing’s view, and may be confirmed by quoting his striking remarks upon the subject of one of the lost tragedies, the Thyestes at Sicyon :—

“Nach der abscheulichen Mahlzeit, die ihm sein Bruder bereitete, flog er nach Sicyon. Und hier war es wo er, auf Befragung des Orakels, wie er sich an seinem Bruder rächen sollte, die Antwort bekam, er sollte seine eigne Tochter entehren. Er überfiel dies auch unbekannter Weise; und aus diesem Beischlafe ward Aegisth, der den Atreus hernach umbrachte, erzeugt. Die Verzweiflung einer geschändeten Prinzessin! Von einem Unbekannten! In welchem sie endlich ihren Vater erkennt! Eine von ihrem Vater entehrte Tochter! Und aus Rache entehrt! Geschändet, einen Mörder zu gebären! Welche Situationen! welche Scenen!”

To say that subsidiary or collateral motives were never present to Sophocles in the selection of a subject would, however, be beyond the mark. His first drama, the Triptolemus, must have been full of local colouring; the Ajax appealed powerfully to the national pride; and in the Oedipus Coloneus some faint echoes even of oligarchical partisanship may be possibly discerned. But, even where they existed, such motives were collateral and subsidiary; they were never primary. All else was subordinated to the dramatic, or, in other words, the purely human, interest of the fable. This central interest is even more dominant and pervading in Sophocles than the otherwise supreme influence of religious and ethical ideas. The idea of destiny, for example, was of course inseparable from Greek tragedy. Its prevalence was one of the conditions which presided over the art from its birth, and, unlike Aeschylus, who wrestles with gods, our poet simply accepts it, both as a datum of tradition and a fact of life. But in the free handling of Sophocles even fate and providence are adminicular to tragic art. They are instruments through which sympathetic emotion is awakened, deepened, intensified. And, while the vision of the eternal and unwritten laws was holier yet, for it was not the creation of any former age, but rose and culminated with the Sophoclean drama, still to the poet and his Periclean audience this was no abstract notion, but was inseparable from their impassioned contemplation of the life of man—so great and yet so helpless, aiming so high and falling down so far, a plaything of the gods and yet essentially divine. This lofty vision subdued with the serenity of awe the terror and pity of the scene, but from neither could it take a single tremor or a single tear. Emotion was the element in which Greek tragedy lived and moved, albeit an emotion that was curbed to a serene stillness through its very depth and intensity.

The final estimate of Sophoclean tragedy must largely depend upon the mode in which his treatment of destiny is conceived. That Aeschylus had risen on the wings of faith to a height of prophetic vision, from whence he saw the triumph of equity and the defeat of wrong as an eternal process moving on toward one divine event,—that he realized sin, retribution, responsibility, as no other ancient did,—may be gladly conceded. But it has been argued that because Sophocles is saddened by glancing down again at actual life,—because in the fatalism of the old fables he finds the reflexion of a truth,—he in so far takes a step backward as a tragic artist. Now is this altogether just? His value for what is highest in man is none the less because he strips it of earthly rewards, nor is his reverence for eternal law less deep because he knows that its workings are sometimes pitiless. Nor, once more, does he disbelieve in providence, because experience has shown him that the end towards which the supreme powers lead forth mankind is still unseen. We miss something of the exultant energy of the Marathonian man, but under the grave and gentle guidance of his successor we lose nothing of the conviction that, “because right is right, to follow right were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.” Not only the utter devotion of Antigone, but the lacerated innocence of Oedipus and Deianira, the tempted truth of Neoptolemus, the essential nobility of Ajax, leave an impress on the heart which is ineffaceable, and must elevate and purify while it remains. In one respect, however, it must be admitted that Sophocles is not before his age. There is an element of unrelieved vindictiveness, not merely inherent in the fables, but inseparable from the poet’s handling of some themes, which is only too consistent with the temper of the “tyrant city.” Aeschylus represents this with equal dramatic vividness, but he associates it, not with heroism, but with crime.

Sophocles is often praised for skilful construction. But the secret of his skill depends in large measure on the profound way in which the central situation in each of his fables has been conceived and felt. Concentration is the distinguishing note of tragedy, and it is by greater concentration that Sophocles is distinguished from other tragic poets. In the Septem contra Thebas or the Prometheus there is still somewhat of epic enlargement and breadth; in the Hecuba and other dramas of Euripides separate scenes have an idyllic beauty and tenderness which affect us more than the progress of the action as a whole, a defect which the poet sometimes tries to compensate by some novel denouement or catastrophe. But in following a Sophoclean tragedy we are carried steadily and swiftly onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left; the more elaborately any scene or single speech is wrought the more does it contribute to enhance the main emotion, and if there is a deliberate pause it is felt either as a welcome breathing space or as the calm of brooding expectancy.

The result of this method is the union, in the highest degree, of simplicity with complexity, of largeness of design with absolute finish, of grandeur with harmony. Superfluities are thrown off without an effort through the burning of the fire within. Crude elements are fused and made transparent. What look like ornaments are found to be inseparable from the organic whole. Each of the plays is admirable in structure, not because it is cleverly put together, but because it is so completely alive.

The spectator of a Sophoclean tragedy was invited to witness the supreme crisis of an individual destiny, and was possessed at the outset with the circumstances of the decisive moment. Except in the Trachiniae, where the retrospective soliloquy of Deianira is intended to emphasize her lonely position, this exposition is effected through a brief dialogue, in which the protagonist may or may not take part. In the Oedipus Tyrannus the king’s entrance and his colloquy with the aged priest introduce the audience at once to the action and to the chief person. In the Ajax and Philoctetes the entrance or discovery of the hero is made more impressive by being delayed. Immediately after the prologos the chorus enter, numbering fifteen, either chanting in procession as in the Antigone and Oed. Tyr., or dispersedly as in the Oed. Col. and Philoctetes, or, thirdly, as in the Electra, where, after entering silently during the monody of the heroine, and taking up their position in the orchestra, they address her one by one. With a remarkable exception, to be noted presently, the chorus having once entered remain to the end. They always stand in some carefully adjusted relation to the principal figure. The elders of Thebes, whose age and coldness throw into relief the fervour and the desolation of Antigone, are the very men to realize the calamity of Oedipus, and, while horror-stricken, to lament his fall. The rude Salaminian mariners are loyal to Ajax, but cannot enter into his grief. The Trachinian maidens would gladly support Deianira, who has won their hearts, but they are too young and inexperienced for the task. The noble Argive women can sympathize with the sorrows of Electra, but no sympathy can soothe her distress.

The parodos of the chorus is followed by the first scene or epeisodion, with which the action may be said to begin. For in the course of this the spectator’s interest is strongly roused by some new circumstance involving an unforeseen complication,—the awakening of Ajax (Aj .), the burial of Polynices (Ant. ) the dream of Clytemnestra (El.), the dark utterance of Tiresias (Oed. Tyr.), the arrival of Lichas with Iole (Trach.), the report of Ismene announcing Creon’s coming (Oed. Col.), the sudden entreaty of Philoctetes crossed by the entrance of the pretended mariner (Phil.). The action from this point onwards is like a steadily flowing stream into which a swift and turbulent tributary has suddenly fallen, and the interest advances with rapid and continuous climax until the culmination is reached and the catastrophe is certain. The manner in which this is done, through the interweaving of the ῥήσεις and στιχoμυφία of the dialogue with the στάσιμα of the chorus, and the κομμοί and κομματικά (where there is interchange between the chorus and the persons), is very different in different dramas, one of the principal charms of Sophocles being his power of ingenious variation in the employment of his resources. Not less admirable is the strength with which he sustains the interest after the peripeteia, whether, as in the Antigone, by heaping sorrow upon sorrow, or, as in the first Oedipus, by passing from horror to tenderness and unlocking the fountain of tears. The extreme point of boldness in arrangement is reached in the Ajax, where the chorus and Tecmessa, having been warned...