eithe lyra kale genoimen elephantine,
kai me kaloi paides pheroien Dionysion es choron.#[129]
These facts are not unimportant, for no Greek poet was more thoroughly,
consistently, and practically #euphyes#, according to the comprehensive
meaning of that term, which denotes physical, as well as moral and
intellectual, distinction. The art of Sophocles is distinguished
above all things by its faultless symmetry, its grace and rhythm, and
harmonious equipoise of strength and beauty. In his own person the
poet realized the ideal combination of varied excellences which his
tragedies exhibit. The artist and the man were one in Sophocles. In his
healthful youth and sober manhood, no less than in his serene poetry,
he exhibited the pure and tempered virtues of #euphuia#. We cannot
but think of him as specially created to represent Greek art in its
most refined and exquisitely balanced perfection. It is impossible to
imagine a more plastic nature, a genius more adapted to its special
function, more fittingly provided with all things needful to its full
development, born at a happier moment in the history of the world, and
more nobly endowed with physical qualities suited to its intellectual
capacity.
In 468 B.C. Sophocles first appeared as a tragic poet in contest with
Æschylus. The advent of the consummate artist was both auspicious and
dramatic. His fame, as a gloriously endowed youth, had been spread
far and wide. The supremacy of his mighty predecessor remained as yet
unchallenged. Therefore the day on which they met in rivalry was a
great national occasion. Party feeling ran so high that Apsephion, the
Archon Eponymus, who had to name the judges, chose no meaner umpires
than the general Cimon and his colleagues, just returned from Scyros,
bringing with them the bones of the Attic hero Theseus. Their dignity
and their recent absence from the city were supposed to render them
fair critics in a matter of such moment. Cimon awarded the victory
to Sophocles. It is greatly to be regretted that we have lost the
tragedies which were exhibited on this occasion; we do not know,
indeed, with any certainty, their titles. As Welcker has remarked,
the judges were called to decide, not so much between two poets as
between two styles of tragedy; and if Plutarch's assertion, that
Æschylus retired to Sicily in consequence of the verdict given against
him, be well founded, we may also believe that two rival policies in
the city were opposed, two types of national character in collision.
Æschylus belonged to the old order. Sophocles was essentially a man
of the new age, of the age of Pericles and Pheidias and Thucydides.
The incomparable intellectual qualities of the Athenians of that
brief blossom-time have so far dazzled modern critics that we have
come to identify their spirit with the spirit itself of the Greek
race. Undoubtedly the glories of Hellas, her special _geist_ in art
and thought and state-craft, attained at that moment to maturity
through the felicitous combination of external circumstances, and
through the prodigious mental greatness of the men who made Athens so
splendid and so powerful. Yet we must not forget that Themistocles
preceded Pericles, while Cleon followed after; that Herodotus came
before Thucydides, and that Aristotle, at a later date, philosophized
on history; that Æschylus and Euripides have each a shrine in the
same temple with Sophocles. And all these men, whose names are notes
of differences deep and wide, were Greeks, almost contemporaneous.
The later and the earlier groups in this triple series are, perhaps,
even more illustrative of Greece at large; while the Periclean trio
represent Athenian society, in a special and narrow sense, at its most
luminous and brilliant, most isolated and artificial, most self-centred
and consummate point of #autarkeia#, or internal adequacy. Sophocles
was the poet of this transient phase of Attic culture, unexampled
in the history of the world for its clear and flawless character,
its purity of intellectual type, its absolute clairvoyance, and its
plenitude of powers matured, but unimpaired, by use.
From the date 468 to the year of his death, at the age of ninety,
Sophocles composed one hundred and thirteen plays. In twenty contests
he gained the first prize; he never fell below the second place. After
Æschylus he only met one formidable rival, Euripides. What we know
about his life is closely connected with the history of his works. In
440 B.C., after the production of the _Antigone_, he was chosen, on
account of his political wisdom, as one of the generals associated
with Pericles in the expedition to Samos. But Sophocles was not, like
Æschylus, a soldier; nor was he in any sense a man of action. The
stories told about his military service turn wholly upon his genial
temperament, serene spirits, unaffected modesty, and pleasure-loving
personality. So great, however, was the esteem in which his character
for wisdom and moderation was held by his fellow-citizens that they
elected him in 413 B.C. one of the ten commissioners of public safety,
or #probouloi#, after the failure of the Syracusan expedition. In
this capacity he gave his assent to the formation of the governing
council of the Four Hundred two years later, thus voting away the
constitutional liberties of Athens. It is recorded that he said this
measure was not a good one, but the best under bad circumstances. It
should, however, be said that doubt has been thrown over this part of
the poet's career; it is not certain that the Sophocles in question was
in truth the author of _Antigone_.
One of the best-authenticated and best-known episodes in the life of
Sophocles is connected with the _Oedipus Coloneus_. As an old man, he
had to meet a lawsuit brought against him by his legitimate son Iophon,
who accused him of wishing to alienate his property to the child of his
natural son Ariston. This boy, called Sophocles, was the darling of his
later years. The poet was arraigned before a jury of his tribe, and the
plea set up by Iophon consisted of an accusation of senile incapacity.
The poet, preserving his habitual calmness, recited the famous chorus
which contains the praises of Colonus. Whereupon the judges rose
and conducted him with honor to his house, refusing for a moment to
consider so frivolous and unwarranted a charge.
Personally Sophocles was renowned for his geniality and equability of
temper; #eukolos men enthad' eukolos d' ekei# is the terse and emphatic
description of his character by Aristophanes. That he was not averse to
pleasures of the sense is proved by evidence as good as that on which
such biographical details of the ancients generally rest. To slur these
stories over because they offend modern notions of propriety is feeble,
though, of course, it is always open to the critic to call in question
the authorities; and in this particular instance the witnesses are far
from clear. The point, however, to be remembered is that, supposing
them true to fact, Sophocles would himself have smiled at such
unphilosophical partisanship as seeks to overthrow them in the interest
of his reputation. That a poet, distinguished for his physical beauty,
should refrain from sensual enjoyments in the flower of his age is not
a Greek, but a Christian notion. Such abstinence would have indicated
in Sophocles mere want of inclination. The words of Pindar are here
much to the purpose:
#chren men kata kairon eroton drepesthai, thyme, syn halikiai.#[130]
All turned upon the #kata kairon#, and no one had surely a better
sense of the #kairos#, the proper time and season for all things,
than Sophocles. He showed his moderation--which quality, not total
abstinence, was virtue in such matters for the Greeks--by knowing how
to use his passions, and when to refrain from their indulgence. The
whole matter is summed up in this passage from the _Republic_ of Plato:
"How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when, in answer to the
question, 'How does love suit with age, Sophocles--are you still the
man you were?' 'Peace,' he replied; 'most gladly have I escaped from
that, and I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master.'"
A more serious defect in the character of Sophocles is implied in the
hint given by Aristophanes, that he was too fond of money. The same
charge was brought against many Greek poets. We may account for it
by remembering that the increased splendor of Athenian life, and the
luxuriously refined tastes of the tragedian, must have tempted him to
do what the Greeks very much disliked--make profit by the offspring
of his brain. To modern notions nothing can sound stranger than the
invectives of the philosophers against sophists who sold their wisdom;
it can only be paralleled by their deeply rooted misconceptions about
interest on capital, which even Aristotle regarded as unnatural and
criminal. That Sophocles was in any deeper sense avaricious or miserly
we cannot believe: it would contradict the whole tenor of the tales
about his geniality and kindness.
Unlike Æschylus and Euripides, Sophocles never quitted Athens, except
on military service. He lived and wrote there through his long career
of laborious devotion to the highest art. We have, therefore, every
right, on this count also, to accept his tragedies as the purest mirror
of the Athenian mind at its most brilliant period. Athens, in the age
of Pericles, was adequate to the social and intellectual requirements
of her greatest sons; and a poet whose earliest memories were connected
with Salamis may well have felt that even the hardships of the
Peloponnesian war were easier to bear within the sacred walls of the
city than exile under the most favorable conditions. No other centre
of so much social and political activity existed. Athens was the Paris
of Greece, and Sophocles and Socrates were the Parisians of Athens. At
the same time the stirring events of his own lifetime do not appear to
have disturbed the tranquillity of Sophocles. True to his destiny, he
remained an artist; and to this immersion in his special work he owed
the happiness which Phrynichus recorded in these famous lines:
#makar Sophoklees, hos polyn chronon bious
apethanen eudaimon aner kai dexios;
pollas poiesas kai kalas tragoidias
kalos eteleutes' ouden hypomeinas kakon.#
Thrice-happy Sophocles! in good old age,
Blessed as a man, and as a craftsman blessed,
He died: his many tragedies were fair,
And fair his end, nor knew he any sorrow.
The change effected by Sophocles in tragedy tended to mature the drama
as a work of pure art, and to free it further from the Dionysiac
traditions. He broke up the trilogy into separate plays, exhibiting
three tragedies and a satyric drama, like Æschylus before him, but
undoing the link by which they were connected, so that he was able to
make each an independent poem. He added a third actor, and enlarged
the number of the chorus, while he limited its function as a motive
force in the drama. These innovations had the effect of reducing the
scale upon which Æschylus had planned his tragedies, and afforded
opportunities for the elaboration of detail. It was more easy for
Sophocles than it had been for Æschylus to exhibit play of character
through the interaction of the _dramatis personæ_. Tragedy left the
remote and mystic sphere of Æschylean theosophy, and confined herself
to purely human arguments. Attention was concentrated on the dialogue,
in which the passions of men in action were displayed. The dithyrambic
element was lost; the choric odes providing a relief from violent
excitement, instead of embodying the very soul and spirit of the poet's
teaching. While limiting the activity of the chorus, Sophocles did not,
like Euripides, proceed to disconnect it from the tragic interest, or
pay less attention than his predecessors to its songs. On the contrary,
his choric interludes are models of perfection in this style of lyric
poetry, while their subject-matter is invariably connected with the
chief concerns and moral lessons of the drama.
The extant plays of Sophocles are all later than the year 440 B.C.
They may safely be said to belong to the period of his finished style;
or, in the language of art criticism, to his third manner. What this
means will appear from a valuable passage in Plutarch: "Sophocles used
to say that, when he had put aside the tragic pomp of Æschylus, and
then the harsh and artificial manner of his own elaborate style, he
arrived in the third place at a form of speech which is best suited
to portray the characters of men, and is the most excellent." Thus it
would appear that Sophocles had begun his career as a dramatist by
the study of the language of Æschylus; finding that too turgid and
emphatic, he had fallen into affectation and refinement, and finally
had struck the just medium between the rugged majesty of his master
and the mannered elegance which was in vogue among the sophists.
The result was that peculiar mixture of grace, dignity, and natural
eloquence which scholars know as Sophoclean. It is interesting to
notice that the first among the extant tragedies of Sophocles, the
_Antigone_, is more remarkable for studied phrase and verbal subtleties
than his later plays. The _Oedipus Coloneus_, which is the last of the
whole series, exhibits the style of the poet in its perfect purity
and freedom. A curious critical passage in Plutarch seems to indicate
that the ancients themselves observed the occasional euphuism of the
Sophoclean style as a blemish. It runs thus: #mempsaito d' an tis
Archilochou men ten hypothesin ... Euripidou de ten lalian, Sophokleous
de ten anomalian.#[131] "One might censure the garrulity of Euripides
and the inequality of Sophocles." I am not, however, certain whether
this or "linguistic irregularity" is the right meaning of the word
#anomalia#. Another censure, passed by Longinus upon Sophocles, points
out a defect which is the very last to be observed in any of the extant
tragedies: "Pindar and Sophocles at one time burn everything before
them in their fiery flight, but often strangely lack the flame of
inspiration, and fall most grievously to earth."[132] Then he adds:
"Certainly no wise critic would value all the plays of Ion put together
at the same rate as the single tragedy of _Oedipus_." The importance
of these critiques is to prove that the ancients regarded Sophocles
as an unequal, and in some respects a censurable poet, whence we may
infer that only masterpieces belonging to his later style have been
preserved to us, since nothing, to a modern student, is more obvious
than the uniform sustained perfection of our seven inestimably precious
tragedies. A certain tameness in the _Trachiniæ_, and a relaxation of
dramatic interest in the last act of the _Ajax_, are all the faults it
is possible to find with Sophocles.
What Sophocles is reported to have said about his style will
apply to his whole art. The great achievement of Sophocles was to
introduce regularity of proportion, moderation of tone, and proper
balance into tragedy. The Greek phrases #symmetria#, #sophrosyne#,
#metriotes#--proportion of parts, self-restraint, and moderation--sum
up the qualities of his drama when compared with that of Æschylus.
Æschylus rough-hewed like a Cyclops, but he could not at the same
time finish like Praxiteles. What the truth of this saying is, I have
already tried to show.[133] Sophocles attempted neither Cyclopean nor
Praxitelean work. He attained to the perfection of Pheidias. Thus
we miss in his tragedies the colossal scale and terrible effects of
Æschylean art. His plays are not so striking at first sight, because
it was his aim to put all the parts of his composition in their
proper places, and to produce a harmony which should not agitate or
startle, but which upon due meditation should be found complete. The
#sophrosyne#, or moderation, exhibited in all his work, implies by its
very nature the sacrifice of something--the sacrifice of passion and
impetuosity to higher laws of equability and temper. So perfect is the
beauty of Sophocles, that, as in the case of Raphael or Mozart, it
seems to conceal the strength and fire which animate his art.
Aristotle, in the _Poetics_, observes that "Poetry is the proper affair
of either enthusiastic or artistic natures," #euphyous e manikou#.
Now Æschylus exactly answers to the notion of the #manikos#, while
Sophocles corresponds to that of the #euphyes#. To this distinction
between the two types of genius we may refer the partiality of
Aristotle for the younger dramatist. The work of the artistic poet is
more instructive and offers more matter for profitable analysis, for
precept and example, than that of the divinely inspired enthusiast.
Where creative intelligence has been used consciously and effectively
to a certain end, critical intelligence can follow. It is clear that
in the _Poetics_, which we may regard as a practical text-book for
students, the philosopher is using the tragedy of Sophocles, and in
particular the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, as the standard of perfection.
Whatever he has to say about the handling of character, the treatment
of the fable, the ethics of the drama, the catastrophes and
recognitions (#peripeteiai# and #anagnoriseis#), that absorbed so large
a part of his dramatic analysis, he points by references to _Oedipus_.
In Sophocles Aristotle found the #mesotes#, or intermediate quality,
between two extremes, which, in æsthetics as in morals, seemed to his
Greek mind most excellent. Consequently he notes all deflections from
the Sophoclean norm as faulty; and, since in his day Euripides led the
taste of the Athenians, he frequently shows how tragic art had suffered
by a deviation from the principles Sophocles illustrated. The chief
point on which he insists is the morality of the drama. "The tragedies
of the younger poets for the most part are unethical." With his use of
the word #ethos# we must be careful not to confound the modern notion
of morality: #ethos# means, indeed, with Aristotle as with us, the
determination of the character to goodness or badness; but it also
includes considerations of what is appropriate to sex and quality and
circumstance in the persons of a work of fiction. The best modern
equivalent for #ethos#, therefore, is character. Since tragedy is an
imitation of men acting according to their character, #ethos#, in this
wide sense, is the whole stuff of the dramatist, and a proper command
of #ethos# implies real knowledge of mankind. Therefore, when Aristotle
accuses the tragedies of Euripides and his school of being "unethical,"
he does not merely mean that they were prejudicial to good manners, but
also that they were false to human nature, unscientific, and therefore
inartistic; exceptional or morbid, wavering in their conception and
unequal in their execution. The truly great poet, Sophocles, shows
his artistic tact and taste by only selecting such characters as are
suitable to tragedy. He depicts men, but men of heroic mould, men as
they ought to be.[134] When Sophocles said that he portrayed men as
tragedy required them to be, whereas Euripides drew them just as they
are, he indicated the real solution of the tragic problem.[135] The
point here raised by Aristotle has an intimate connection with its
whole theory of tragedy. Tragic poetry must purify the passions of
fear and pity; in other words, it must teach men not to fear when fear
is vile, or to pity where pity would be thrown away. By exhibiting a
spectacle that may excite the fear of really dreadful calamity, and
compassion for truly terrible misfortune, tragedy exalts the soul above
the ordinary miseries of life, and nerves it to face the darker evils
to which humanity in its blindness, sin, and self-pride is exposed. Now
this lesson cannot be taught by drawing men as they exist around us.
That method drags the mind back to the trivialities of every day.
What Aristotle says about the #ethe# of tragedy may be applied to
point the differences between Sophocles and Æschylus. He has not
himself drawn the comparison; but it is clear that, as Euripides
deflects on the one hand from the purely ethical standard, so also
does Æschylus upon the other. Æschylus keeps us in the high and mystic
region of religious fatalism. Sophocles transports us into the more
human region of morality. His problem is to exhibit the complexities
of life--"whatsoever has passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
reflexes of man's thoughts from within"--and to set forth men of noble
mental stature acting in subjection to the laws appointed for the
order of the world. His men and women are like ourselves, only larger
and better in so far as they are simpler and more beautiful. Like the
characters of Æschylus, they suffer for their sins; but we feel that
the justice that condemns them is less mystic in its operation, more
capable of philosophical analysis and scientific demonstration.
It must not be thought, therefore, that Sophocles is less religious
than Æschylus. On the contrary, he shows how the will and passion of
men are inevitably and invariably related to divine justice. Human
affairs can only be understood by reference to the deity; for the
decrees of Zeus, or of that power which is above Zeus, and which
he also obeys, give their moral complexion to the motives and the
acts of men. Yet, while Æschylus brings his theosophy in detail
prominently forward, Sophocles prefers to maintain a sense of the
divine background. He spiritualizes religion, while he makes it more
indefinite. By the same process it is rendered more impregnable within
its stronghold of the human heart and reason, less exposed to the
attacks of logic or the changes of opinion. The keynote to his tragic
morality is found in these two passages:[136]
"Oh! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy innocence of
word and deed, the path which august laws ordain, laws that in
the highest empyrean had their birth, of which heaven is the
father alone, neither did the race of mortal man beget them,
nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep. The power of God is
mighty in them, and groweth not old."
The second is like unto the first in spirit:
It was no Zeus who thus commanded me,
Nor Justice, dread mate of the nether powers,--
For they, too, gave these rules to govern men.
Nor did I fondly deem thy proclamations
Were so infallible that any mortal
Might overleap the sure unwritten laws
Of gods. These neither now nor yesterday,
Nay, but from everlasting without end,
Live on, and no man knows when they were issued.
The religious instinct in Sophocles has made a long step towards
independence since the days of Æschylus. No more upon Olympus or at
Delphi alone will the Greek poet worship. He has learned that "God is
a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth." The voice that speaks within him is the deity he recognizes.
At the same time the Chorus of the _Oedipus_, part of which has just
been quoted, and that of the _Antigone_, which bewails the old doom
of the house of Labdacus, might, but for their greater calmness, have
been written by Æschylus. The moral doctrine of Greek tragedy has not
been changed, but humanized. We have got rid in a great measure of
ancient demons, and brass-footed Furies, and the greed of earth for
blood in recompense for blood. We have passed, as it were, from the
shadow cast by the sun into the sunlight itself. And, in consequence
of this transfiguration, the morality of Sophocles is imperishable.
"Not of to-day nor of yesterday, but fixed from everlasting," are his
laws. We may all learn of him now, as when Antigone first stood before
the throne of Creon on the Attic stage. The deep insight into human
life, that most precious gift of the Greek genius, which produced their
greatest contributions to the education of the world, is in Sophocles
obscured no longer by mystical mythology and local superstition. His
wisdom is the common heritage of human nature.
The moral judgments of Æschylus were severe. Those of Sophocles,
implicit in his tragic situations rather than expressed, are not less
firm; but he seems to feel a more tender pity for humanity in its
weakness and its blindness. The philosophy of life, profoundly sad
upon the one side, but cheerful on the other, which draws lessons of
sobriety and tempered joy from the consideration of human impotence and
ignorance, is truly Greek. We find it nowhere more strongly set forth
than by Sophocles and Aristophanes--by the comic poet in the Parabasis
of the _Birds_, and in the songs of the Mystæ in the _Frogs_, by the
tragic poet in his choruses, and also in what is called his irony.
All that has been said about the art of Sophocles up to this point
has tended to establish one position. His innate and unerring tact,
his sense of harmony and measure, produced at Athens a new style of
drama, distinguished for finish of language, for careful elaboration
of motives, for sharp and delicate character-drawing, and for balance
of parts. If we do not find in Sophocles anything to match the passion
of Cassandra, the cry of Agamemnon, or the opening of the _Eumenides_,
there is yet in his plays a combination of quite sufficient boldness
and inventiveness with more exquisite workmanship than Æschylus could
give. The breadth of the whole is not lost through the minuteness
of the details. Unlike Æschylus, Sophocles opens very quietly, with
conversations, for the most part, which reveal the characters of the
chief persons or explain the situation. The passion grows with the
development of the plot, and it is only when the play is finished that
justice can be done to any separate part. Each of the seven tragedies
presents one person, who dominates the drama, and in whom its interest
is principally concentrated. Oedipus in his two plays, Antigone in
hers, Philoctetes in his, Deianeira in the _Trachiniæ_, Electra in her
play, and Ajax in his, stand forth in powerful and prominent relief.
Then come figures on the second plane, no less accurately conceived
and conscientiously delineated, but used with a view to supporting the
chief personages, and educing their decisive action.[137] A _role_ of
this kind is given to Orestes in the _Electra_, to Neoptolemus in the
_Philoctetes_, to Teucer in the _Ajax_, to Creon in the _Antigone_,
to Teiresias in the _Oedipus_. Clytemnestra and Tecmessa, Odysseus
and Theseus, play similar parts. Again, there is a third plane for
characters still more subordinate, but no less artistically important,
such as Jocasta, Ismene, Chrysothemis, Ægisthus, Hyllus. Then follow
the numerous accessory persons--_instrumenta dramatis_--the guardian of
the corpse of Polyneices, the shepherd of Laius, the tutor of Orestes,
messengers and servants, all of whom receive their special physiognomy
from the great master. In this way Sophocles made true æsthetic use of
the three agonistæ. The principle on which these parts were distributed
in his tragedies will be found to have deep and subtle analogies with
the laws of bass-relief in sculpture. Poetry, however, being a far more
independent art than sculpture, may employ a greater multiplicity of
parts, and produce a far more complex effect than can be realized in
bass-relief.
The _Philoctetes_ might be selected as an example of the power in
handling motives possessed by Sophocles. The amount of interest he has
concentrated by a careful manipulation of one point--the contest for
the bow of Herakles--upon so slight and stationary a plot, is truly
wonderful. Not less admirable is the contrast between the youthful
generosity of Neoptolemus and the worldly wisdom of Odysseus--the
young man pliant at first to the crafty persuasions of the elder, but
restored to his sense of honor by the compassion which Philoctetes
stirs, and by the trust he places in him. Nothing more beautiful can be
conceived than this moral revolution in the character of Neoptolemus.
It suited the fine taste and exquisite skill of Sophocles not only to
exhibit changes in circumstance and character, but also to compel a
change of sympathy and of opinion in his audience. Thus, in the _Ajax_,
he contrives to reverse the whole situation, by showing in the end
Ajax sublime and Odysseus generous, though at first the one seemed
sunk below humanity, and the other hateful in his vulgar scorn of a
fallen rival. The art which works out psychological problems of this
subtle kind, and which invests a plot like that of the _Philoctetes_
with intense interest, is very far removed from the method of Æschylus.
The difference between the two styles may, however, be appreciated
best by a comparison of the _Electra_ with the _Choephoroe_. In these
two tragedies very nearly the same motives are employed; but what was
simple and straightforward in Æschylus becomes complex and involved
in Sophocles. Instead of Orestes telling the tale of his own death,
we have the narrative of his tutor, confirmed and ratified by himself
in person. Instead of Electra at once recognizing her brother, she
is brought at first to the verge of despair by hearing of his death.
Then Chrysothemis informs her of the lock of hair. This, however,
cannot reassure Electra in the face of the tutor's message. So the
situation is admirably protracted. Æschylus misses all that is gained
for the development of character by the resolve of Electra, stung to
desperation by her brother's death, to murder Ægisthus, and by the
contrast between her single-hearted daring and the feebler acquiescent
temper of Chrysothemis. Also the peripeteia whereby Electra is made
to bewail the urn of Orestes, and then to discover him alive before
her, is a stroke of supreme art which was missed in the _Choephoroe_.
The pathos of the situation is almost too heart-rending; at one moment
its intensity verges upon discord; but the resolution of the discord
comes in that long cadence of triumphant harmony when the anagnorisis
at length arrives. Nor is the ingenuity of Sophocles, in continuing
and sustaining the interest of this one set of motives, yet exhausted.
While the brother and sister are rejoicing together, the action waits,
and every moment becomes more critical, until at last the tutor
reappears and warns them of their perilous imprudence. To take another
point: the dream of Clytemnestra is more mysterious and doubtful in
the _Electra_ than in the _Choephoroe_; while her appearance on the
stage at the beginning of the play, her arguments with Electra, her
guarded prayers to Phoebus, and her reception of the tutor's message,
enable Sophocles fully to develop his conception of her character. On
the other hand, Sophocles has sacrificed the most brilliant features
of the _Choephoroe_--the dreadful scene of Clytemnestra's death, than
which there is nothing more passionately piteous and spirit-quelling in
all tragedy, and the descent of his mother's furies on the murderer.
It was the object of Sophocles not so much to dwell upon the action
of Orestes as to exhibit the character of Electra; therefore, at the
supreme moment, when the cry of the queen is heard within the palace,
he shows his heroine tremendous in her righteous hatred and implacable
desire for vengeance. Such complete and exhaustive elaboration of
motives, characters, and situations, as forms the chief artistic
merit of the _Electra_, would, perhaps, have been out of place in the
_Choephoroe_, which was only the second play in a trilogy, and had,
therefore, to be simple and stationary, according to the principles
of Æschylean art. The character of Clytemnestra, for example, needed
no development, seeing that she had taken the first part in the
_Agamemnon_. Again, it was necessary for Æschylus to insist upon the
action of Orestes more than Sophocles was forced to do, in order
that the climax of the _Choephoroe_ might produce the subject of the
_Eumenides_. In comparing Sophocles with his predecessor, we must never
forget that we are comparing single plays with trilogies. This does
not, however, make the Sophoclean mastery of motives and of plots the
less admirable; it only fixes our attention on the real nature of the
innovations adopted by the younger dramatist.
Another instance of the art wherewith Sophocles prepared a tragic
situation, and graduated all the motives which should conduct the
action to a final point, may be selected from the _Oedipus Coloneus_.
It was necessary to describe the death of Oedipus, since the fable
selected for treatment precluded anything approaching to a presentation
on the stage of this supreme event. Oedipus is bound to die alone
mysteriously, delivering his secret first in solitude to Theseus. A
Messenger's speech was, therefore, imperatively demanded, and to render
that the climax of the drama taxed all the resources of the poet. First
comes thunder, the acknowledged signal of the end. Then the speech of
Oedipus, who says that now, though blind, he will direct his steps
unhelped. Theseus is to follow and to learn. Oedipus rises from his
seat; his daughters and the king attend him. They quit the stage, and
the Chorus is left alone to sing. Then comes the Messenger, and gives
the sublime narration of his disappearance. We hear the voice that
called--
#o houtos houtos Oidipous ti mellomen
chorein? palai de tapo sou bradynetai.#
We see the old man descending the mysterious stairs, Antigone and
Ismene grouped above, and last, the kneeling king, who shrouds his eyes
before a sight intolerable. All this, as in a picture, passes before
our imagination. To convey the desired effect otherwise than by a
narrative would have been impossible, and the narrative, owing to the
expectation previously raised, is adequate.
To compare Sophocles with Euripides, after having said so much about
the points of contrast between him and Æschylus, and to determine
how much he may have owed in his later plays to the influence of
the younger poet, would be an interesting exercise of criticism.
That, however, belongs rather to an essay dealing directly with the
third Greek dramatist in detail. It is sufficient here to notice a
few points in which Sophocles seems to have prepared the way for
Euripides. In the first place he developed the part of the Messenger,
and made far more of picturesque description than Æschylus had done.
Then, again, his openings suggested the device of the prologue by
their abandonment of the eminently scenic effects with which Æschylus
preferred to introduce a drama. The separation of the Chorus from the
action was another point in which Sophocles led onward to Euripides.
So also was the device of the _deus ex machina_ in the _Philoctetes_,
unless, indeed, we are to regard this as an invention adopted from
Euripides.[138] Nor, in this connection, is it insignificant that
Aristotle credits Sophocles with the invention of #skenographia#,
or scene-painting. The abuse of scenical resources to the detriment
of real dramatic unity and solidity was one of the chief defects of
Euripidean art.
It may here be noticed that Sophocles in the _Trachiniæ_ took up the
theme of love as a main motive for a drama. By doing so he broke ground
in a region that had been avoided, as far as we can judge from extant
plays, by Æschylus, and in which Euripides was destined to achieve his
greatest triumphs. It is, indeed, difficult to decide the question of
precedence between Sophocles and Euripides in this matter. Except on
this account the _Trachiniæ_ is the least interesting of his tragedies.
The whole play seems like a somewhat dull, though conscientious,
handling of a fable in which the poet took but a slight interest.
Compared with Medea or with Phædra, Deianeira is tame and lifeless.
She makes one fatal and foolish mistake through jealousy, and all is
over. Hyllus, too, is a mere _silhouette_, while the contention between
him and Herakles about the marriage with Iole, at the end, is frigid.
Here, if anywhere, we detect the force of the critique quoted above
from Longinus. At the same time the _Trachiniæ_ offers many points
of interest to the student of Greek sentiment. The phrase #tautes ho
deinos himeros# is significant, as expressing the pain and forceful
energy which the Greeks attributed to passion; nor is the contrast
drawn by Deianeira between #posis# and #aner# without value. The
motive used by Sophocles in this tragedy was developed by Euripides
with a comprehension so far deeper, and with a fulness so far more
satisfactory, that the _Hippolytus_ and the _Medea_ must always take
rank above it.
The deepest and most decisive quality in which the tragic art of
Sophocles resembled that of Euripides is rhetoric. Sophocles was the
first to give its full value to dramatic casuistry, to introduce
sophistic altercations, and to set forth all that could be well said
in support of a poor argument. A passage on this subject may be quoted
from "Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe:"[139]
"That is the very thing," said Goethe, "in which Sophocles is
a master; and in which consists the very life of the dramatic
in general. His characters all possess this gift of eloquence,
and know how to explain the motives for their action so
convincingly that the hearer is almost always on the side of
the last speaker. One can see that in his youth he enjoyed an
excellent rhetorical education, by which he became trained to
look for all the reasons and seeming reasons of things. Still
his great talent in this respect betrayed him into faults, as
he sometimes went too far."
The special point selected by Goethe for criticism is the celebrated
last speech of Antigone:
"At last, when she is led to death, she brings forward a motive
which is quite unworthy, and almost borders on the comic. She
says that if she had been a mother she would not have done
either for her dead children or for her dead husband what she
has done for her brother. 'For,' says she, 'if my husband died
I could have had another, and if my children died I could
have had others by my new husband. But with my brother the
case is different. I cannot have another brother; for since
my mother and father are dead, there is none to beget one.'
This is, at least, the bare sense of the passage, which, in
my opinion, when placed in the mouth of a heroine going to
her death, disturbs the tragic tone, and appears to me very
far-fetched--to savor too much of dialectical calculation. As I
said, I should like a philologist to show us that the passage
is spurious."
In truth this last speech of Antigone is exactly what the severer
critics of Euripides would have selected in a play of his for
condemnation. It exhibits, after all allowance for peculiar Greek
sentiments, the rhetorical development of a sophistic thesis. In the
simple thought there is pathos. But its elaboration makes it frigid.
Sophocles, though he made the subsequent method of Euripides not only
possible but natural by the law of progressive evolution, was very
far indeed from disintegrating the tragic structure as Euripides
was destined to do. The _deus ex machina_ of the _Philoctetes_, for
example, was only employed because there was absolutely no other way
to solve the situation. Rhetoric and wrangling matches were never
introduced for their own sake. The choric odes did not degenerate
into mere musical interludes. Description and narration in no case
took the place of action, by substituting pictures to the ear under
conditions where true art required dramatic presentation. It remains
the everlasting glory of Sophocles that he realized the mean between
Æschylus and Euripides, sacrificing for the sake of his ideal the
passionate and enthusiastic extremes of the older dramatist, without
imperilling the fabric of Greek tragedy by the suicidal innovations of
Euripides. He and he alone knew how to use all forms of art, to express
all motives, and to hazard all varieties, with the single purpose of
maintaining artistic unity.
What remains to be said about Sophocles, and in particular about
his delineation of character, may be introduced in the course of an
analysis of his tragedies upon the tale of Thebes.
These three plays do not, like the three plays of Æschylus upon the
tale of the Atridæ, form a trilogy. That is to say, they are not so
connected in subject as to form one continued series. A drama, for
example, similar to the _Seven against Thebes_ might be interpolated
between the _Oedipus Coloneus_ and _Antigone_; while the _Oedipus
Tyrannus_ might have been followed by a tragedy upon the subject of
the king's expulsion from Thebes. Nor, again, are they artistically
designed as a trilogy. There is no change of form, suggesting the
beginning, middle, and ending of a calculated work of art, like that
which we notice in the _Oresteia_. Moreover, the protagonist is absent
from the _Antigone_, and, therefore, to call the three plays an
_Oedipodeia_ is impossible. Finally, they were composed at different
periods: the _Antigone_ is the first extant tragedy of Sophocles; the
_Oedipus Coloneus_ is the last.
So much it was necessary to premise in order to avoid the imputation
of having treated the three masterpieces of Sophocles as in any true
sense a trilogy. The temptation to do so is at first sight almost
irresistible; for they are written on the same legend, and the same
characters are throughout sustained with firmness, proving that, though
Sophocles composed the last play of the series first and the second
last of all, he had conceived them in his brain before he undertook to
work them out in detail. Or, if this assumption seem unwarranted, we
may at least affirm with certainty that at some point of time anterior
to the production of the _Antigone_ he had subjected the whole legend
of the house of Laius to his plastic imagination, and had given it
coherence in his mind. In other words, it was impossible for him to
change his point of view about this mythus in the same way as Euripides
when he handled that of Helen according to two different versions.
It so happens, moreover, that the climax of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_
prepares us, by the revolution in the character of the protagonist, for
the _Oedipus Coloneus_; while the last act of the second tragedy, by
the prominence given to Antigone, serves as a prelude to the third and
final play.
The house of Laius was scarcely less famous among the Greeks than the
house of Atreus for its overwhelming disasters, the consequences of an
awful curse which rested on the family. Laius, the son of Labdacus, was
supposed to have introduced an unnatural vice into Hellas; and from
this first crime sprang all the subsequent disasters of his progeny.
He took in marriage Jocasta, the sister of Prince Creon, and swayed
the State of Thebes. To him an oracle was given that a son of his by
Jocasta should kill him. Yet he did not therefore, in obedience to
the divine warning, put away his wife or live in chastity. A boy was
born to the royal pair, who gave him to one of their shepherds, after
piercing his feet and tying them together, and bound the hind to expose
him on Cithæron. Thus they hoped to defeat the will of heaven. The
shepherd, moved by pity, saved the baby's life and handed him over to
a friend of his, who used to feed his master's sheep upon the same
hill-pastures. This man carried the infant, named Oedipus because
of his wounded and swollen feet, to Polybus of Corinth, a childless
king, who brought him up as his own son. Oedipus when he had grown to
manhood, was taunted with his obscure birth by his comrades in Corinth.
Thereupon he journeyed alone to Delphi to make inquiry concerning his
parentage from Phoebus. Phoebus told him naught thereof, but bade him
take heed lest he slay his father and wed his mother. Oedipus, deeming
that Polybus was his father and Merope his mother, determined to
return to Corinth no more. At that time Thebes was troubled with the
visitation of the Sphinx, and no man might rede her riddle. Oedipus,
passing through the Theban land, was met in a narrow path, where
three roads joined, by an old man on a chariot attended by servants.
The old man spoke rudely to him, commanding him to make way for his
horses, and one of the servants struck him. Whereupon Oedipus slew the
master, knowing not that he was his own father, Laius, and the men too,
all but one, who fled. Thereafter he passed on to Thebes, and solved
that riddle of the Sphinx, and the Thebans made him their king, and
gave him the lady Jocasta to be his wife. Thus were both the oracles
accomplished, and yet Oedipus and Jocasta remained ignorant of their
doom. For many years Oedipus ruled Thebes like a great and warlike
prince; and to him and Jocasta in wedlock were born two daughters and
two sons--Antigone and Ismene, Polyneices and Eteocles. These grew to
youth, and a seeming calm of fair weather and prosperity abode upon
their house. Yet the gods were mindful of the abomination, and in
course of time a plague was sent, which ravaged the people of Thebes.
Sorely pressed by calamity, Oedipus sent his brother-in-law Creon to
inquire at Delphi of the causes of the plague and of the means of
staying it. This brings us to the opening of _Oedipus the King_. At
this point something should be said about the mythus itself and about
the position of the several persons at the commencement of the tragedy.
The fable is obviously one of those which Max Muller and his school
describe as solar. Oedipus, who slays his father and weds his mother,
may stand for the Sun, who slays the Night and is married to the Dawn.
We know how all legends can fall into this mould, and how easy it is to
clap the Dawn on to the end of every Greek tale, like the #lekythion
apolesen# of the _Frogs_. This, however, is nothing to our purpose; for
Sophocles had never heard of solar myths. The tale of Thebes supplied
him with the subject of three dramas; he used it as a story well suited
for displaying passions in their strongest and most tragic workings.
As usual, he was not contented with merely following the traditional
version of the legend, nor did he insist upon its superstitious
elements. That the gods had a grudge against the Labdacidæ, that
the oracles given to Laius and Oedipus were not warnings so much as
sinister predictions of a doom inevitable, that the very powers who
uttered them were bent on blinding the victims of fate to their true
import, were thoroughly Greek notions, consistent with the divine
#phthonos#, or envy, of Herodotus, and not wholly inconsistent with
the gloomy theology of Æschylus. But it was no part of the method
of Sophocles to emphasize this horrible doctrine of destiny. On the
contrary, he moralized it. While preserving all the essential features
of the myth, he made it clear that the characters of men constitute
their fatality.
As our own Fletcher has nobly written:
Man is his own star, and the soul, that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late;
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
What to the vulgar apprehension appears like doom, and to the
theologian like the direct interposition of the Deity, is to the tragic
poet but the natural consequence of moral, physical, and intellectual
qualities. These it is his function to set forth in high and stately
scenes, commingling with his psychological analysis and forcible
dramatic presentation somewhat of the old religious awe.
It may be urged that this is only shifting the burden of necessity,
not removing it. It is, perhaps, impossible scientifically to avoid a
fatalistic theory of some sort, since in one sense it is true that
A fish-wife hath a fate, and so have I--
But far above your finding.
Yet practically we do not act upon such theories, and, from the point
of view of ethics, there is all the difference in the world between
showing how the faults and sins of men must lead them to fearful ends,
and painting them in the grip of a remorseless and malignant deity.
Laius was warned that his son by Jocasta would kill him. Yet he begat a
son; and in his presumptuous disregard of heaven, thinking, forsooth,
that by mere barbarity a man may cheat the Omnipotent, and that the
All-seeing cannot save a child of prophecy and doom, he exposed this
son upon Cithæron. The boy lived. Thus the crime of Laius is want of
self-restraint in the first instance, contempt of God in the second,
and cruelty in the third. After this, Oedipus appears upon the theatre
of events. He, too, receives oracular warning--that he will slay his
sire and wed his mother. Yet, though well aware of the doubt which
rests upon his own birth--for it was just on this account that he
went to Delphi--he is satisfied with avoiding his supposed parents.
The first man whom he meets, while the words of the oracle are still
ringing in his ears, he slays; the first woman who is offered to him
in marriage, though old enough to be his mother, he weds. His crime
is haste of temper, heat of blood, blind carelessness of the divine
decrees. Jocasta shows her guilty infatuation in another form. Not
only does she participate in the first sin of Laius, but she forgets
the oracle which announced that Laius should be slain by his own
son. She makes no inquiry into the causes of his death. She does not
investigate the previous history of Oedipus, or observe the marks upon
his feet, but weds him heedlessly. Here, indeed, the legend itself
involves monstrous improbabilities--as, for instance, that Jocasta,
while a widow of a few days, should have been thus wedded to a stranger
young enough to be her son, that the Thebans should have made no
strict search for the murderer of their king, that Oedipus himself
should have heard nothing about the death and funeral of Laius, but
should have stepped incuriously into his place and sat upon his throne
without asking further questions either of his wife or of his subjects.
Previous to the opening of _Oedipus the King_, there is, therefore,
a whole tissue of absurdities; and to these Aristotle is probably
referring when he says: #alogon de meden einai en tois pragmasin, ei de
me, exo tes tragoidias, hoion ta en toi Oidipodi toi Sophokleous#.
Granting this, the vigorous logic wherewith the conclusions are wrought
out by Sophocles leaves nothing to be desired on the score of truth to
nature. There is, indeed, no work of tragic art which can be compared
with the _Oedipus_ for the closeness and consistency of the plot. To
use the critical terms of the _Poetics_, it would rank first among
tragedies for its #mythos# and for the #systasis pragmaton#, even were
its #ethe# far less firmly traced. The triumph of Sophocles has been,
however, so to connect the #ethe# of his persons with the #pragmata#,
characters with plot, as to make the latter depend upon the former; and
in this kind of ethical causality lies the chief force of his tragic
art.
If questioned concerning the situation of events previous to the play
of _Oedipus_, it is possible that Sophocles would have pointed out that
the #hamartia#, or error common to all the _dramatis personæ_, was an
unwarrantable self-confidence. One and all they consult the oracle,
and then are satisfied with taking the affairs they had referred to
Phoebus into their own hands. Unlike the Orestes of Æschylus, they
do not endeavor to act up to the divine commands, and, having done
so, place themselves once more beneath the guidance of the god. The
oracle is all-important in the three plays on the tale of Thebes, and
Sophocles seems to have intended to inculcate a special lesson with
regard to the submission of the human will. Those who inquire of a god,
and who attempt to thwart his decrees by human skill and foresight,
will not prosper. The apparent success of their shifty schemes may
cause them to exclaim: "The oracle was false; how weak are those who
look for its accomplishment!" Thus they are lured by their self-conceit
into impiety. In the end, too, the oracle is found to be fearfully
exact. Those, therefore, who take the step of consulting Phoebus must
hold themselves responsible to him, must expect the fulfilment of his
prophecy; or if they seek to avert the promised evils, they must, at
all events, not do so by criminal contrivances and petty lawlessness,
such as man thinks that he may practise upon man. It was thus that
Sophocles conceived of the relation of human beings to the deity. He
delights in exhibiting the blindness of arrogance and self-confidence,
and in showing that characters determined by these qualities rush
recklessly to their own doom. At the same time he draws a clear
distinction between the man who is hardened in godless folly and one
who errs through simple haste. The impiety of Jocasta ends in suicide.
Oedipus, who has been impetuous and self-willed, finds a place for
repentance, and survives his worst calamities, to die a god-protected and god-honored hero. |
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