Chapter 12

λέγεις ἀληθῆ, καίπερ ἐκ μακροῦ χρόνου.

The Women of Trachis[334](Trachiniæ, Τραχινίαι) is, perhaps, the next play in chronological order. The scene is before a house in the state of Trachis not far from Eubœa. Deianira, the wife of Heracles, is troubled by his absence because of an oracle which says that in this last enterprise he shall either die or win untroubled happiness. Hyllus, her son, goes off to help him in his attack on the city of Eurytus in Eubœa. The messenger Lichas brings news of Heracles’ triumph; with him are certain captive girls, one of whom, Iole, daughter of Eurytus, is beloved by Heracles. Deianira learns this fact after a pathetic appeal to Lichas; then she sends him back with a gift to Heracles—a robe which she has anointed with the blood of the Centaur Nessus as a charm to win back her husband’s love. After Lichas has gone she finds by an accident that the robe ispoisoned. Then Hyllus returns with news that his father is dying in torments, and reproaches his mother. She goes into the house and stabs herself. Hyllus learns the truth, and when the dying hero is carried in, cursing his false wife, he explains her error. Heracles gives orders that his body is to be burnt on Mount Œta and that Hyllus must marry Iole.

It is customary to regard theTrachiniæas the weakest extant play of Sophocles. The picture of Heracles’ physical agony near the close seems wearisomely elaborate; and in the second place we are utterly dissatisfied with him. He does not seem worthy of the trepidation, awe, and grief which he has excited throughout the play. All that follows the suicide of Deianira appears empty or offensive. This objection may be put[335]thus, that there are two tragedies, that of Deianira and that of the hero. Now though it is quite true that one can point to a thought which unifies the play—the passion of Heracles for Iole, or more fundamentally, the destructive power of love, this does not meet the difficulty, which will then simply be restated thus, that the poet has not maintained a due perspective; the story of Deianira’s emotions and of her plan bulks too largely and impedes what should have been the climax. But it is a fundamental law in the criticism of Greek Tragedy, and especially in the study of Sophocles, that we must ponder it until we find some central thought which accounts for the whole action and for the perspective in which the details are placed. Such a central thought is, after all, not lacking in theTrachiniæ. It is the character of Deianira, her instincts, and her actions. This play is in structure very similar to theAjax. In the earlier work Ajax’ death occurs far from the end, but the latter portion is no anti-climax. So here: the topic is not especially the death of Deianira or the end of Heracles; it is the heroine’s love for her husband and the attempt she makes to win him back. The poet’sinterest in her does not vanish at the moment of her silent withdrawal. Her act, her love, survive her. What is the result of her pathetic secret wooing of Heracles? She has longed for two things, his return and a renewal of his affection. To both these purposes is granted a dim painful phantom of success. Instead of tarrying in Eubœa Heracles hastens home, though every movement of his litter is torment; Deianira’s passion has brought him back, though not as she meant. As for her plan to regain his love, it is true that when he learns her innocence not a word of pity or affection falls from him; he never mentions her again. It may be that he is merely stupid and callous; it may be that he is ashamed to recant his bitter words; it may be that he is at once engrossed in the sudden light which is thrown upon his own fortunes. However this may be, the promise of Nessus on which she relied is fulfilled: “This shall be to thee a charm for the soul of Heracles, so that he shall never look upon any woman to love her more than thee!”[336]—the hero’s passion for Iole is quenched. This conception gives a wonderful beauty to what is otherwise a mere brutality of the dying man. In forcing his son to marry Iole he outrages our feelings as well as the heart of Hyllus—unless we have understood. But this is his reparation to Deianira. The charm of Nessus has been potent indeed; the maiden is nothing to him: he “loves no woman more” than Deianira. But this act is more than cold reparation; it is a beautiful stroke of silent eloquence. Heracles not only relinquishes Iole, he gives her to his son, to one many years his junior. This is an unconscious reply to the touching complaint[337]made by the wronged wife:—

The flower of her age is in its spring,But mine in autumn. And the eyes of menStill pluck the blossom, shunning withered charms.

The flower of her age is in its spring,

But mine in autumn. And the eyes of men

Still pluck the blossom, shunning withered charms.

For him his wife was the true mate; let Iole wed aman of her own years.[338]Thus the hope of Deianira is in a terrible way half-fulfilled. Just as Heracles was mistaken in his reading of the oracle which promised him “rest” at the end of his toils, so was she mistaken in the meaning she put upon the Centaur’s promise. The oracles of heaven, by their own power and still more by the terrible misinterpretation of man, help to mould the play, as they mould theŒdipus Tyrannus. Thus theTrachiniæbecomes a real unity. Deianira’s fate is now no over-developed episode, for in a spiritual sense it fills the tragedy. The doom of Heracles is no anti-climax or tedious addendum; it is the exposition before our eye of the havoc which can be wrought by sincere love misled. A great structural danger lies herein, that the picture of Heracles’ torment may eclipse the tragedy of his wife. But the poet has surmounted this by making the agony-scene not too long, and above all by reminding us of Deianira through the repeated allusion to her made by Heracles and through the explanation of Hyllus.

Certain peculiarities of detail in the plot strongly support the view that Deianira is the subject of the whole drama. First is the conduct of Lichas. This part is carefully constructed so as to lead up to the great appeal in which the heroine describes the might of Love. If Lichas had really kept his secret instead of tattling to the townsfolk, Deianira would not have known it and so appealed to Lichas. If, on the other hand, Lichas had not tried to deceive his mistress, she would not have needed to offer any appeal. His conduct has been devised solely to portray her character by means of this marvellous speech. A second point is the way in which Hyllus learns his mother’s innocence. After his speech of denunciation she goes without a word into the house. The Trachinian maidens know the truth and have heard from Deianira[339]herself that she will not survive herhusband, but they say nothing to Hyllus. Yet the playwright who is here so strangely reticent allows the prince to learn the facts in a few minutes “from the people in the house” as he casually phrases it. The reason is that if Hyllus were informed at once he would prevent his mother’s suicide. This would have destroyed the dramatic treatment without altering events. For Deianira is not concerned in being proved innocent; she wishes to die now that Heracles is destroyed. Hyllus’ intervention would only mean procrastination of death.[340]In the interests of drama, it must happen now. Further he must learn the truth as soon as she is dead, for some one must confront Heracles with a defence of the dead woman, if her fate and her love are, as we said, dominant throughout the play. Here, too, there is a resemblance between theTrachiniæand theAjax; Hyllus, in this last scene, resembles Teucer championing the fame of Ajax.

The character-drawing is here as admirable as elsewhere. Lichas, well-meaning but foolish and shifty, is contrasted with the messenger who is perfectly honest though spiteful. Hyllus is a character of a type which we have often discussed already—he has no personality, and we are interested in him not because of what he is but because of what happens to him. The women of the chorus are simply a band of sympathetic friends. Heracles, on the customary reading of the tragedy, is the most callously brutal figure in literature. One need not labour the proof; his treatment of Deianira, of Iole, of Hyllus, of Lichas, of every one whom he meets,[341]is enough. The poet has taken the only possible course to make us witness the hero’s pangs at the close with a certain satisfaction. But the other possible theory does away with this sham “tragedy”. Heracles as a coarse stupid “man of action” who is yet capable of reflectionand a touch of “the melting mood” shown by his giving Iole to Hyllus when the secret of his wife’s heart is at last irresistibly pressed upon him, is dramatic indeed.

But the glory of this work is Deianira. A comparison of theTrachiniæwith theAjaxillustrates the development of ideas in the poet’s mind. Tecmessa’s character and position have been analysed, and we find, instead of one woman, two—Iole and Deianira. Iole is mute; it is not her conduct, but her involuntary influence, which contributes to the tragedy. In Deianira, however, we meet the Trojan princess once more, older and with more initiative—tenderer she could not be. It is this union of gentleness with force of mind, of love and sad knowledge of the world, which makes her character so appealing and gracious. A smaller poet would have made her haughty or abject, revengeful or contemptible; Sophocles has portrayed a noble lady, who will bend, but not kneel. Her interview with Iole and the later conversations in which first she excuses her husband and then on reflection finds that she cannot share his home with the newcomer—these scenes, painted with quiet mastery, are the greatest work of Sophocles in the portraiture of women.

There can be no doubt that theTrachiniæis the work of Sophocles; considerations of style, hard to describe but overwhelming, settle the case beyond dispute. None the less we cannot ignore the influence of another school of drama—the Euripidean. The features more or less certainly due to this influence are: (i) The subject itself. Sophocles has studied a woman’s love and its possibilities of unintended mischief in a way which recalls many plots[342]of Euripides. (ii) The “prologue,” especially the explanatory speech of Deianira, is not in the usual manner of the playwright, but quite in that of Euripides. (iii) The last lines, with their reproach against the hardness of the gods who neglecttheir children, and the total silence about the deification of Heracles, which was the most familiar fact of this story, a silence emphatic throughout, are in spirit Euripidean. (iv) The chorus is almost negligible as a dramatic factor, and one of its songs—the first stasimon—is literally “commonplace”; it would fit any kind of joyous occasion. (v) The turns of expression occasionally recall those of the younger poet. The colloquial ποίαν δόκησιν[343]cannot be paralleled in tragedy except in his work. One line[344]seems borrowed almost without change. Deianira’s homely, almost coarse, words, “and now we two await his embrace beneath one rug,” are not what one expects from the stately Sophocles. The prosaic φαρμακεύς[345]and the allusion[346]to Heracles’ unheroic side (ἡνίκ’ ἦν ᾠνωμένος, “when he was deep in wine”) are on the same level. But most Euripidean of all is the description[347]Deianira gives of her dreadful suitor. There is nothing unlike Sophocles in this acceptance of the legend that Deianira was wooed by a river-god. But the studied nonchalance of the first line “my suitor was a river, Acheloüs that is,” and the absurdity of the second, in which the divine wooer is represented as applying (with a punctilio strange to river-gods of legend) to the lady’s father for her hand, and “calling” (φοιτῶν) on different occasions as a different animal—all this mixture of horror and comedy is absolute Euripides. The fact appears to be that Sophocles deliberately took up the attitude of Euripides, for two reasons—firstly, for the sheer delight of a strange and difficult feat of artistry; secondly, in order to show how Euripides, even from his own standpoint, ought to have written.[348]

Philoctetes[349](Φιλοκτήτης) was produced in the spring of 409B.C., when the poet was eighty-seven years old, and won the first prize. The hero Philoctetes was one of the chieftains who sailed for Troy. When the fleet touched at Chryse, he was stung in the foot by a snake. The wound was incurable and its noxious odour, together with the cries of the sufferer, were so troublesome to the Greeks that they deserted him when asleep upon the island of Lemnos, leaving with him a little food and clothing, and his bow and arrows, the last a legacy from Heracles. In the tenth year of the war the Greeks learned that Troy could only be taken by help of Philoctetes and the weapons of Heracles. Two men were sent to Lemnos with the purpose of bringing the maimed warrior to Troy—Odysseus because of his craft, Neoptolemus because he was unknown to Philoctetes.

The scene is a desolate spot on the island, in front of the cliff-face in which is the cave inhabited by Philoctetes. Neoptolemus wins the confidence of the sufferer while Odysseus keeps in the background, though by a subtle device of a false message he aids the plot greatly. But when the fated weapons are secured and Philoctetes (who supposes he is to be conveyed back to Greece) is ready to accompany Neoptolemus, the latter tells him the truth. Philoctetes’ misery, rage, and reproaches induce the youth to restore the weapons despite Odysseus’ opposition, and to promise Philoctetes a passage home. But at the last moment Heracles appears in glory above their heads and commands Philoctetes to proceed Troywards. He willingly consents, and bids farewell to the scene of his long sorrow.

In structure this play is perhaps the most interesting extant work of Sophocles. As elsewhere, we find a great simple character of vast will-power exposed to a strong temptation—Philoctetes confronted by the chance of healing, happiness, and glory, if only he will meet in friendship men whom he is determined to hate. Butfor once there is a secondary interest which is not purely secondary. Many will even find the development of Neoptolemus more impressive than the situation of Philoctetes. While the latter shows the heroic character as it appears after the experience of life, strong, reflective, sad, a little fierce if not soured, the other is the hero before such experience, eager and noble but too responsive to suggestion. Neoptolemus has just begun life, and his first task is to betray—for the public good, no doubt, but still to betray—a noble stranger who merits not only respect but instant pity and tendance. “Oh! that never had I left Scyros!” he exclaims. Life after all is not a blaze of glorious war as his father Achilles found it, but a sordid affair of necessary compromises. One of the most charming things in the drama is the clearness with which Philoctetes, in the midst of his rage, sees the tragedy of his youthful captor.[350]Confronted by the kindness of the youth, he reveals himself not as a mere savage, living only on thoughts of revenge; he becomes more flexible, open-hearted, almost sociable. So revealed, he is the direct cause of the change in Neoptolemus’ purpose.

Beside these stands Odysseus, only less striking and equally indispensable. For a chief note of this drama is the skill with which the poet avails himself of the three actors, whose possibilities are here for perhaps the first time fully employed. It is easy, but mistaken, to label Odysseus as “the villain”. In reality he is the State personified. There is no modern reader who does not hate and contemn him, but it remains true that whereas Philoctetes whom we pity and Neoptolemus whom we love both take a strictly personal view, Odysseus at the risk of his life insists on pressing the claim of the community. It is necessary to Greece that Troy should fall. She can only fall through the arrows of Heracles. The man who owns them will assuredly not consent. It follows that he must be compelled to help, by force orguile. A conquering nation must have its Philip as well as its Alexander; Odysseus stands for facts which twenty years of the Peloponnesian war had driven home into Athenian minds. Neoptolemus is the type of many a young warrior who has learned with aching disgust that the knightly exploits which tales of Marathon had fired him to perform must be thwarted unceasingly by the politic meanderings of Nicias, by considerations of corn-supply, or the “representations” of some remote satrap.

And in the end Odysseus gets his way. As the two friends start for home, leaving the Greeks at Troy to defeat and the oracles of Heaven to non-fulfilment, a god appears to command from the sky that self-sacrifice shall be revoked and hate forgotten. What are we to think of this intervention of Heracles? Is he not an extreme instance of thedeus ex machina? Is not mere compulsion employed to change a settled resolve? This is the most striking and the most difficult feature of the construction: rather it seems the negation of structure. Why is it employed? Some[351]have been content to suggest Euripidean influence—of course no answer at all. Some[352]have thought that Heracles is personified conscience, rising to remind Philoctetes of his duty to Greece; a suggestion ruled out by the fact that his duty has been urged clearly by Neoptolemus. A more attractive idea[353]is that the genuineperipeteiaof the play consists in Neoptolemus’ change of front; in this way an inner dramatic unity is secured, while the external change induced by Heracles is a mere concession to the data of legend. This in its turn is vitiated by the fact that for the dramatist Philoctetes, and not Neoptolemus, is the central figure: this is proved by the work as a whole and by the title which the poethimself gave it. If thedeus ex machinais not to be condemned utterly, it follows from the basic law of Attic art that the play up to the moment of Heracles’ appearance, however complete it seemed to us a moment ago, is not complete—that some coping-stone is still needed. And if we consider the action up to that point we cannot really be content. To disregard the oracles which tradition said were fulfilled, the action, as Sophocles depicts it, is unsatisfactory. Philoctetes is to get the revenge which seems rightly his, and we approve his young companion who aids him at such cost. But by this time we feel a little dubious about the sufferer. There has been perhaps too much detail in his outcries and his account of his sufferings. Hatred which will refuse both health and fame, without any loss but that of aged intentions, has begun to seem a moral falsetto. But who can say, without misgiving, that (on pagan principles) he is wrong? One person only in Heaven and earth—Heracles. Every ordinary consideration of public and personal interest has been put before Philoctetes in vain. But there is another thought which neither the victim himself nor Odysseus nor Neoptolemus has strength enough to suggest, or even to remember. One character alone in Greek story rises above the conception of personal injury or personal benefit as a motive to action; Heracles is the great reminder, not so much that wrongs to oneself should be forgiven, as that life is too short and precious to be wasted on revenge. Heracles would return a blow with vigour, but a vendetta, in the light of his career, seems a childish folly. One does not forget that some pictures of his character (that, for instance, in theTrachiniæ) belie this conception; but Sophocles here sees fit to choose a different, and the more usual, view. Suddenly the husk of selfish spite falls away from the sufferer’s soul. He who has just promised[354]to use the weapons of Heracles in a private quarrel and has already attempted[355]so to usethem, at last remembers that they are the rightful instrument of well-doing, and that it was for such a reason[356]that he received them from the hero at his passing into glory. Heracles then is introduced as the only person who can press upon Philoctetes an argument which the cunning of Odysseus and the candour of Neoptolemus have alike ignored. That he appears as adeus ex machinais in part accident—he is not selected by the poet for that reason. But it is a happy accident, for the glory which envelops him is the visible warrant of his inspiring behests—anything rather than the sign of overwhelming might summoned to break a reasonable human resolve. Thus the close of this play is a real ending, not a breakdown; it is the pagan analogue of theQuo Vadislegend.

The whole play is an example of intrigue. The episode of the pseudo-merchant[357]is the most brilliant feat of Sophocles in this department. It reveals to Philoctetes that he is being pursued by the Greeks, without arousing his suspicion of Neoptolemus, and so gives occasion for the transfer of the bow when the sufferer’s fit seizes him; it conveys a strong reminder of urgency to Neoptolemus; and it enables Odysseus to learn how his plot progresses. Odysseus merely by telling of his promise to capture Philoctetes is in a fair way to fulfil it, as it throws his prey into the arms of Neoptolemus. One apparent fault of construction is of a type which we have already noted. It is vital that Philoctetes, before his first consent to leave the island, should know his friend’s real purpose of taking him to Troy. But why is he told of it? The merest beginner in duplicity would surely postpone such a revelation until the victim was at sea. But Sophocles chooses to tighten his plot up in order to give the situation in one picture.

Dio Chrysostom in one of his most valuable essays[358]sets up a comparison between the plays on Philoctetes composed by the three tragedians. The work of Sophocles is the latest, and two peculiarities help us to see how far his originality went. Firstly, as a companion to Odysseus he introduces, not Diomedes as Euripides had done, but a figure new to the Trojan war, an ingenuous lad whose sympathy brings out what gentleness remains in the sufferer’s heart. Secondly, the chorus consists of Greek sailors, not of Lemnian natives as in the two other playwrights. Sophocles will have no Lemnian visitors because for him it is a cardinal fact that Philoctetes all these years has been alone save for a chance ship. Thus we gain for a moment a glance into the actual thoughts of Sophocles: he has made up his mind that his Philoctetes must be quite solitary. So essential is this that he falsifies known facts. Lemnos, he says in the second line of his play, is “untrodden, uninhabited by men,” whereas, both in the times supposed and in the poet’s own day, it was a populous place. This, then, gives an invaluable indication of the extent to which Sophocles felt himself free to re-model his subject-matter. On the play itself it throws light. The question is to be studied not from the point of view of the Greek army, but from that of their potential helper, soured as he is by a more extreme suffering than Æschylus and Euripides had imagined.

The picture thus conceived is painted with splendid power. Romantic desolation makes itself felt in the opening words of Odysseus, and this sense of the frowning grandeur of nature to which Philoctetes in his despair appeals[359]is everywhere associated with the pathos of lonely suffering. “While the mountain nymph, babbling Echo, appearing afar, makes answer to his bitter cries.”[360]All that he says, from his first exclamation of joy at hearing again the Greek language to the noble speech in which he bids farewell to thebitter home which use has made something like a friend, is instinct with this mingling of romance and pathos. Deserted by all men he has yet found companions whom in his misery he addresses; his hands, his poisoned foot, his eyes, his bow, and the familiar landscape, vocal with the “bass roar of the sea upon the headland”.[361]Closer even than these is his eternal unseen companion, Pain, whom he found at his side on first awakening after the departure of the Greek host: “When my scrutiny had traversed all the land, no inhabitant could I find therein save Sorrow; and that, my son, could be met at every turn”.[362]

It has been suspected that the play contains allusions to contemporary politics, that the poet is thinking of Alcibiades’ return from exile. In 410—the year before this play was produced—he had gained credit from the naval victory of Cyzicus. Some, moreover, have seen in Odysseus the cynical politician of the day. Other passages read like criticism of the public “atmosphere” at Athens in the closing years of the great war. The dramatist is making deliberate comments on contemporary Athenian politics, but he assuredly did not choose the whole theme of Philoctetes merely because of Alcibiades’ restoration.[363]

The Œdipus Coloneus[364](Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ) orŒdipus at Colonuswas according to the customary view produced in 401B.C., three years after the poet’s death, by his namesake and grandson. The backgroundrepresents the grove of the Furies at Colonus, a village near Athens. Œdipus, exiled from Thebes, an aged blind wanderer, enters led by his daughter Antigone. They obtain the favour of King Theseus and the citizens, Œdipus promising that after his death his spirit shall defend Athens. Ismene, his daughter, brings news that an oracle has said that in the struggle between Thebes and the Seven led by Polynices, son of Œdipus, that side shall win which has possession of Œdipus. Both parties are now eager for his support, but he curses both his sons. Creon, King of Thebes, enters, and failing to gain aught but reproaches, carries off the two girls, and is about to seize the father also when he is checked by the arrival of Theseus, who rescues the maidens. Polynices next comes to beg his father’s aid, but is sent to his doom with curses. Then a peal of thunder announces to Œdipus that the moment of his passing is at hand. He bids farewell to his daughters, and, watched only by Theseus, descends to the underworld; the place of his burial is to be known to none save Theseus and his successors. Ismene and Antigone in vain beg to be shown the spot, and finally Antigone resolves to seek Thebes that she may reconcile her brothers.

This play is simple in structure, superbly rich in execution. Œdipus dominates all the scenes, which reveal with piercing intensity his physical helplessness and the spiritual might which, marked at the opening, is overwhelming at the close. The poet’s task is not merely to portray the last hours of a much-tried man, but the novitiate of a superhuman Power. Œdipus at last reaches peace and a welcome from the infernal gods—he becomes a δαίμων. The terrific feature is that even in the flesh he anticipates his dæmonic qualities. In the interview between him and Polynices, the implacable hatred, the strength, the prophetic sight of the father, and the hopeless prayers, the wretchedness, the despair and moral collapse of the doomed son, are nothing but the presentation in human life of the actual dæmon’s power as prophesied for future generations. Before theclose we feel that the aged exile’s sufferings, sombre wisdom, and simple burning emotions have already made him a being of unearthly powers, sundered from normal humanity; his strange passing is but the ratification of a spiritual fact already accomplished. But this weird climax is preceded by an equally wonderful study of the human Œdipus. The king who appears in theŒdipus Tyrannuscan here still be recognized. Passionate anger still directs much of his conduct, as friend and foe alike remind[365]him. But even his faults are mellowed by years and contemplation; his very anger shows some gleam of a profounder patience. Throughout, the temper of Œdipus is like that of the heavens above him—gloom cleft by flashes of insight, indignation, and love. Unlike other aged sufferers, he does not dwell in the past; unlike the saint and martyr whom a Christian dramatist might have portrayed, he does not lean upon a future of glory or happiness. Nor again has he sunk into a senile acquiescence in the present; he is far from being absorbed by the loving tendance of his daughters. The centre of his life has shifted, but not to any period of time—rather to another plane of being. Still in the flesh, his human emotions as essential as ever, his life is growing assimilated to the non-human existence of the whole earth. And so it is that Œdipus meets “death” with cheerfulness; he is departing to his own place. At the last moment the blind man leads those who see to the place of his departure. What to them is dreadful and secret is to him the centre of his longing; the terrific figures who inhabit his new home are welcome friends—at the beginning of the play he addresses the Furies themselves as “sweetdaughters of primeval Night”.[366]The whole drama at the end is full of this sense. In the farewell song of the chorus which commends the wanderer to the powers of Earth, there is an eerie precision and picturesqueness in the description of the lower world; the “infernal moor”[367]and the guardianhound gleam forth for an instant into strange familiarity.

The other characters are carved, though in lower relief, yet with richness and vigour. Theseus is the ideal Athenian gentleman,[368]suddenly called to show pity to a pair of helpless wanderers, then unexpectedly involved in battle with a neighbour state, and finally confronted with the most awful mysteries of divine government, without ever losing his courage or his discretion. Creon and Polynices, such is the immense understanding of the aged poet, share too in this nobility of mind. They can face facts; and whether villains or not, they are men of breeding. The “stranger” who first accosts Œdipus is a charming embodiment of that local patriotism to which we shall return in a moment. The two sisters are beautifully distinguished by the divergent experiences of years. Antigone’s wandering and hardship have made her the more intense and passionate; Ismene’s life in Thebes have given her comprehension of more immediate issues. It is through Antigone, moreover, who declares that she will seek Thebes and attempt to save her brothers, that the poet obtains one of his noblest effects. Overwhelming as is the story of Œdipus, his end does not close all; life goes on to further mysteries of pain and affection.

On the purely literary side theŒdipus Coloneusis certainly the greatest and the most typical work of Sophocles. The most celebrated lyric in Greek is the splendid ode in praise of Colonus—“our white Colonus; where the nightingale, a constant guest, trills her clear note in the covert of green glades, dwelling amid the wine-dark ivy and the god’s inviolate bowers, rich in berries and fruit, unvisited by sun, unvexed by wind of any storm; where the reveller Dionysus ever walks the ground, companion of the nymphs that nursed him,”[369]—and of the whole land with its peculiar glories,the olive of peace and the steed of war. To this should be added that address of Œdipus to Theseus concerning the fickleness of all things earthly which is less the speech of one man than the voice of Life itself.[370]Noblest of all is the account of Œdipus’ last moments, a passage which in breathless loveliness, pathos, and religious profundity is beyond telling flawless and without peer. It is curious that Sophocles in this work which, more than any other, reveals his own poetic mastery should have definitely drawn attention to the power of language. At various crises in the play he speaks of the “little word”[371]and its potency. Œdipus reflects how his two sons for lack of a “little word” in his defence have suffered him to be thrust forth into exile; the nobility of Theseus, the sudden hostility of Thebes in days to come, the appearance of Polynices, are all matters of the “little word” which means so much. And in his marvellous farewell to his daughters, Œdipus speaks of the “one word” which has made all his sorrows vanish—“love”.

Every master-work of literature has a prophetic quality, and sending its roots down near to the deepest wells of life is instinct with unconscious kinships. TheŒdipus Coloneusis rich in this final glory of art. The whole conception of the sufferer, aged and blind but gifted with spiritual sight, recalls the blind Milton’s sublime address to the Light which “shines inward”; and the thought adds charm to Sophocles’ description of the nightingale[372]which

Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hidTunes her nocturnal note.

Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid

Tunes her nocturnal note.

Again, just as the whole scheme suggestsKing Lear, so does the simple vigour of Theseus’ words,[373]when heenters at the terrific close amid the bellowing of the unnatural tempest:—

πάντα γὰρ θεοῦτοιαῦτα χειμάζοντος εἰκάσαι πάρα,

πάντα γὰρ θεοῦ

τοιαῦτα χειμάζοντος εἰκάσαι πάρα,

recall the “pelting of this pitiless storm”.[374]So too the divine summons[375]which comes “many times, and manifold” to Œdipus brings to mind the call “Samuel! Samuel!” The mystery of Œdipus’ tomb suggests the passing of another august soul: “No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day,”[376]and of Joseph, named among the faithful, who “when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones”.[377]

This play is deeply religious in the very details of its theme as well as in its tone. Besides the usual orthodox background there is the lovely presentation of a minor local worship—the cult of the Eumenides at Colonus, Sophocles’ native village. The aged poet in his last years seems to have returned with special affection to the simple observances which he had learnt as a boy, and which evoke one of his most characteristic phrases:—[378]

τοιαῦτά σοι ταῦτ’ ἐστίν, ὦ ξέν’, οὐ λόγοιςτιμώμεν’, ἀλλὰ τῇ ξυνουσίᾳ πλέον,

τοιαῦτά σοι ταῦτ’ ἐστίν, ὦ ξέν’, οὐ λόγοις

τιμώμεν’, ἀλλὰ τῇ ξυνουσίᾳ πλέον,

the piercing simplicity of which, as well as the theme, suggests Wordsworth. The lustral bowls, he is careful to tell us, are “the work of a skilled craftsman”;[379]he is almost on the point of telling us his name—one can imagine the boy of eighty years ago gazing on these cups, and his first sense of beauty in workmanship. Those who would offer sacrifice will find dwelling on the spot a sacristan to instruct and aid them.[380]Everything on this ground is both familiar and hallowed; the mysterious “brazen threshold,” the statues of local deities andheroes, the hollow pear-tree, and the other local sanctities are carefully particularized, so that the calm beauty of the country-side and the terrors of religion are strangely and beautifully interwoven. As for religion in the broader, profounder sense, we have as elsewhere a reference of human suffering merely to an inscrutable, divine purpose.[381]But the dramatist indicates carefully the contribution of human nature to the fulfilment of the oracles; Polynices[382]becomes subject to his father’s curse because his own sense of honour forbids him to relinquish his foredoomed enterprise. Œdipus himself has attained to a wiser conception of sin[383]than that which rules him at the close of theTyrannus. He has acted wrongly, therefore his suffering is just; but he is morally innocent, and his past actions afflict him as sorrows, not as crimes.[384]

The fragments of the lost plays are on the whole disappointing; a large proportion are single rare words quoted by ancient lexicographers, and most of the rest are short sentences or phrases. There remain the few longer fragments, to which in recent years important additions have been made.

It seems that theTriptolemuswas his first play, produced in 468B.C.when the poet was twenty-eight. It would then be one of the works with which he won his victory[385]over Æschylus, and it bore marks of the older writer’s influence. The theme is the mission of Triptolemus, who traversed the earth distributing to men corn, the gift of Demeter, and founded the mysteries at Eleusis. This topic gave room for a long geographical passage which recalls those of thePrometheus. Other early dramas were theThamyrasin which the dramatist himself took the name-part and played the cithara, andtheNausicaaorWomen Washingwherein Sophocles acted the part of that princess and gained applause by his skill in a game of ball. The satyric dramaAmphiarauscontained a curious scene wherein an illiterate man conveyed some name or other word to his hearers by a dance in which his contortions represented successive letters. Another satyric playThe Mustering of the Greeks(Ἀχαιῶν Σύλλογος) or theDinner-Party(Σύνδειπνοι) earned the reprobation of Cicero[386]apparently for its coarseness, which can still be noted in the fragments. InThe Lovers of Achilles(Ἀχιλλέως ἐρασταί) there was a passage describing the perplexity of passion, which in its mannered felicity recalls Swinburne or the Sonnets of Shakespeare:—

Love is a sweet perplexity of soul,Most like the sport of younglings, when the skyIn winter-clearness scatters frost abroad:They seize a glittering icicle, filled a whileWith joy and wonder; but ere long the toyMelts, and they know not how to grasp it still,Tho’ loth to cast it from them. So with lovers:Their yearning passion holds them hour by hourPoised betwixt boldness and reluctant awe.

Love is a sweet perplexity of soul,

Most like the sport of younglings, when the sky

In winter-clearness scatters frost abroad:

They seize a glittering icicle, filled a while

With joy and wonder; but ere long the toy

Melts, and they know not how to grasp it still,

Tho’ loth to cast it from them. So with lovers:

Their yearning passion holds them hour by hour

Poised betwixt boldness and reluctant awe.

TheLaocoon, which dealt with a famous episode in the capture of Troy, supplies a fragment describing Æneas’ escape from the city with his father upon his shoulders; one or two other passages[387]besides this recall Vergil’s treatment. Another tragedy from the same cycle of stories, thePolyxena, is praised by “Longinus”[388]in the same terms of eulogy as the culmination of theŒdipus Coloneusitself. TheTereus,[389]to judge from the number of fragments, was very popular; it dealt with the frightful fable of the Thracian King Tereus, his wife Procne, and her sister Philomela, all of whom were at last changed into birds. Aristophanes[390]has an obscureseries of jests about this play and the beak-mask with which Sophocles “outraged” the Thracian monarch. A solitary relic of theOrithyiatells how the maiden was carried off by the wind-god Boreas

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