Chapter IV: The Works of Sophocles (1)

Of more than a hundred plays written by Sophocles, only seven survive entire. These shall now be discussed in what is probably the chronological order.

The AJAX[302] (Αἴας, sometimes called Αἴας μαστιγοφόρος, from his scourging of the cattle) cannot be dated. It is generally agreed that this work and the _Antigone_ are the two earliest extant plays; which of the two was produced first it is difficult to say.[303] Perhaps an important feature of technique settles this—both tragedies need three actors, but the _Ajax_ in this respect is more tentative than the _Antigone_.

The scene is laid before the tent of Ajax on the plain of Troy. Enraged by the action of the Greeks in awarding to Odysseus instead of to himself the arms of the dead Achilles, Ajax sought to slay Agamemnon, Menelaus, and others in their sleep. The goddess Athena sent madness upon him so that he slaughtered cattle in their stead. Coming to himself he realizes his shame, and eluding his friends—the chorus of Salaminian sailors and the Trojan captive, Tecmessa (who has borne him a son),—he retires to a lonely spot by the sea and falls upon his sword. His brother Teucer returns too late to save him, but in time to confront and defy Agamemnon and Menelaus, who have decreed that Ajax’ body shall be left unburied. At length Agamemnon is induced by Odysseus to forgo his purpose.

No Greek play gains so much by re-reading as the _Ajax_. The character of the hero steadily grows on us; it is not that we admire him more, but that we feel a deeper sympathy. As he gains in clearness, he lifts the other characters into the light. Ajax is a man dowered with nobility, sensitiveness, and self-reliance, but ruined by the excess of those qualities. His nobility has become ambition, his sensitiveness morbidity, his self-reliance pride. He offends Heaven by his haughtiness, and is humbled; then, rather than accept his lesson, he shuns disgrace by suicide. This resolution is strong enough to overbear the appeals of Tecmessa and the silent sway of his little son; he faces death calmly and even thoughtfully. Grouped round the central figure are first Tecmessa and Teucer, and on a lower plane Odysseus, Menelaus, Agamemnon, and the chorus. Athena stands apart.

Tecmessa is one of the loveliest creations of Sophocles; there clings about her a silvery charm which is strangely refreshing amid the turbid grandeur of the play. Tenderness, patience, courage—these are commonplace enough upon the stage; yet Sophocles has made of them something frail but indestructible, and touched her with his own greatest charm—an unearthly eloquence of which we shall speak later:—

ἀλλ’ ἴσχε κἀμοῦ μνῆστιν. ἀνδρί τοι χρεὼν
μνήμην προσεῖναι, τερπνὸν εἴ τί που πάθοι.[304]

When Ajax is dead, it is she, not Teucer (as Ajax had hoped) who finds the body, and this marvel of quiet tenderness gleams forth again. She hardly laments at all; the chorus who accompany her are more moved. So accustomed is she to sorrow and self-repression that grief is her natural element; she utters a few quiet words of noble pity, and when the sailors press forward to view the dead she gently says “ye must not look on him,” and covers the body with a robe. Her self-command is so absolute that it can bend; she will even say “Alas! What shall I do?” when confronted with a mere perplexity about the removal of the corpse.

Teucer is Ajax himself without the madness and the illumination; he stands in the same relation to his half-brother as Mark Antony in Shakespeare to Julius Cæsar; he is an ideal presenter of Ajax’ claims if they are to be presented at all to people like Menelaus and Agamemnon. Menelaus is more active in debate, more brilliantly vulgar, than his brother, who wisely takes his stand upon general principles, and hardly mentions at all the decision not to bury Ajax. Agamemnon is conscious of his weak position; finally, he succeeds in retiring without complete loss of dignity. Odysseus is apparently intended as the antithesis to Ajax—discreet, forgiving, and impressed by the power of Heaven. Though but a sketch, he is a striking figure; after all the anguish and outcry, it is the normal man who emerges as the pivot of events and saves the situation.

The Salaminian sailors offering no special features, there remains only Athena, who dominates the “prologue”. In contrast with the fully-developed beings whom we have studied in the _Oresteia_ she is amazingly crude. The fact is that we ought not to consider her “character” at all. She is simply divine punishment roughly (but not casually) personified and given the name Athena. She gloats over the madman whom even the mortal standing beside her pities, and the only lesson she draws for him is that men must shun pride. It is natural, but useless, to call her a fiend; she serves merely as the visible and audible symbol that Heaven punishes haughty independence of spirit. That instead of mere evolutions of puppets we have a striking drama is due simply to the fact that Sophocles is interested far more in Ajax than in the goddess.

Two real or apparent defects must be noted. Firstly, we are shocked, or we should be shocked, by the actions (if not the character) of Ajax—a point often disregarded, probably through an idea that his bloodshed was caused by madness. But the goddess, by so deluding him, turned his rage from man to beast. He makes a deliberate attempt to murder the Atridæ in their sleep, together with an indefinitely large number of their followers, and this in the course of a campaign. It can hardly be doubted that the doom pronounced by the general, that such a man (to ignore his personality for the moment) shall not be buried, would have met with faint reprobation, either at the time supposed or among the contemporaries of the poet. Again, the indifference with which Ajax treats Tecmessa amounts to sheer brutality. Many readers have supposed that the prince cherishes affection for her, but conceals it under a show of roughness to avoid “breaking down”. This is a mere fancy. Nothing in Ajax’ conduct, and practically[305] nothing in his words, betrays any interest whatsoever in Tecmessa. The man is absorbed almost entirely by his sense of wounded dignity. He bids an affectionate farewell to his child, he speaks lovingly of his own parents and of Teucer; but nothing can prevent him from escaping disgrace by self-destruction. When about to fall upon his sword he mingles with his farewells a fierce behest to the Furies to destroy the whole Greek host which has slighted him. So far as the first part of this tragedy is concerned, Ajax is a magnificent brute; he is better dead.

The second difficulty is that Ajax dies at v. 865, but the play continues for five or six hundred lines more. This great space is occupied by a long dispute about his burial, which modern readers find tedious. But the difficulty arises from a mischievous idea that the culmination of every tragedy is the hero’s death. Often it is only a step towards the real crisis. In _Ajax_ the theme is not his death, but his rehabilitation: the disgrace, the suicide, the veto on his burial, Teucer’s defiance, the persuasions of Odysseus, are all absolutely necessary. The culminating point is the dispute about his burial, especially since Ajax was one of the Attic “heroes,” and the centre of a hero’s cult was his tomb.[306] This explanation enables us to regard the whole play as an organic unity. It helps, moreover, to meet the first difficulty—the character of Ajax. It must be remembered that a man became a “hero” not necessarily through any nobility or holiness of his life. It was rather the fact that he had passed through strange, unnatural experiences, had even committed morbid crimes, so long as those offences were purged by strange sufferings and death, violent, superhuman, or pitiable. Such was Œdipus, and such is Ajax. Greek feeling would have made a “hero” of Lear, of Hamlet, perhaps of Othello. Ajax is a man of essentially noble mould—this the speeches of Teucer express admirably—who sins deeply and suffers strangely. That he happens to evoke less admiration from us than the other tragic figures just mentioned matters little. Lack of tenderness towards women was the rule at Athens; and hatred of enemies, which Ajax carried to such insane length, was commoner still. But what of the lowered tone which marks the end of the tragedy? Teucer’s speech on the warlike achievements of his brother is, indeed, beyond praise; but much of his other remarks, and of the language held by the Atridæ, is mere brawling. But these quarrels bring into relief the proud nobility of the man who lies between the disputants, dead because he would not stay to rehabilitate himself by such bickering.

The ANTIGONE[307] (Ἀντιγόνη) was produced about 441 B.C. The scene is laid before the palace at Thebes, on the morning after the repulse of the Argives who had come to restore Polynices. Creon, King of Thebes, publishes an edict that no one shall give burial to the corpse of Polynices on pain of death. Antigone, sister of the dead man, despite the advice of her sister Ismene, performs the rite and is haled before Creon. She insists that his edict cannot annul the unwritten primeval laws of Heaven. The king, disregarding the admonitions of his son Hæmon, betrothed to Antigone, sends her to the cave of death. The prophet Tiresias warns him that the gods are angered by the pollution which comes from the unburied corpse. Urged by the chorus, Creon relents, and hastens first to bury Polynices, then to release Antigone, who has, however, already hanged herself. Hæmon stabs himself by her body. On hearing of his death his mother Eurydice, wife of Creon, commits suicide. The play ends with Creon’s helpless grief.

This play is perhaps the most admired of Sophocles’ works. But the admiration often rests on a misunderstanding. It is customary to regard Antigone as a noble martyr and Creon as a stupidly cruel tyrant, because of an assumption that she must be what a similar figure would be, and often has been, in a modern play. Memories of Cordelia confronting Lear, of Dorothea in _The Virgin Martyr_ of Massinger and Dekker, beguile us so that we read that character into the play. The principle upheld by Antigone, and that upheld by Creon, are _prima facie_ of equal validity. The poet may, possibly, agree with Antigone rather than with the king, but the current belief, that the princess is splendidly right and her oppressor ignobly wrong, stultifies the play; it would become not tragedy but crude melodrama. In judging Attic literature there is nothing which it is more vital to remember than the immense importance attached by Athenians to the State and its claims. We are alive to the sanctity of human life, but think far less of the sanctity of national life. An English reader, therefore, regards Creon with all the reprobation which his treatment of Antigone can possibly deserve; but whatever justification is inherent in the case he almost ignores.

The truth is that Creon commits a terrible act owing to a terrible provocation. His act is the insult to Polynices’ body, which he maintains at the cost of Antigone’s life; his justification is the fact that the dead man, though a Theban, was attacking Thebes and would have destroyed the State. Antigone stands for respect to private affection, Creon for respect to the community. It is impossible to say at the outset which is the more important, and the problem may well be insoluble. But it is precisely because of this that the _Antigone_ is a tragedy. To accept the customary view, and yet insist that Sophocles is a great dramatist, is mere superstition; the work becomes the record of an insane murder. On _a priori_ grounds, then, we may believe that Sophocles by no means condemns Creon off-hand. It is not satisfactory to argue that Thebes should have been satisfied with the death of the invader. Since he was a Theban his attack was looked on as the foulest treachery, which merited extreme penalty, both by way of revenge and as a warning to others. (Just the same view is held by the authorities in the _Ajax_.) The play presents a problem both for the king and for his kinswoman: “I am right to punish this traitor’s corpse; am I justified in killing others who thwart the punishment?” “I am right to show love and pity for my dead brother; am I justified in flouting the State?” Antigone is only Creon over again with a different equipment of sympathies. That one loves his country with a cold concentration which finds enemies and treachery everywhere, while the other passionately loves her dead brother, should not blind us to the truth that Antigone has all Creon’s hardness and narrowness, and especially all his obstinacy. That tenderness and womanly affection which we attribute to the princess are amiable inventions of our own, except the love which she bears Polynices. This love is not to be in any sense belittled, but it is simply an instinct, like that of Creon in matters of State, an instinct to which she will, like him, sacrifice all else. If Creon sacrifices Antigone for his ideal, she sacrifices Hæmon for hers. He shows brutality to his son, she to her sister. That a compromise between the demands of the State and private conscience is, however unwelcome, necessary, never occurs to either party, and those who, like Hæmon and Ismene, urge such a thought upon them are insulted. This blindness to the psychology of Antigone has led to actual meddling with Sophocles’ text. In her last long speech occurs a celebrated “difficulty,” namely, her statement[308] that if the dead man had been a child or husband of hers, she would not thus have given her life; but the case of Polynices is different, since (her father and mother being dead) she can never have another brother. These lines are generally bracketed as spurious because unworthy of Antigone’s character and inconsistent with the reason for her act which she has already[309] given, namely, the “unwritten and unshaken laws of Heaven”. Any idea that the passage was inserted in “later times” is rendered impossible by the fact that Aristotle[310] quotes it (about 340 B.C.) and the presumption is that the words are the poet’s own. Indeed, the “difficulty” exists only in the minds of those who attribute inconsistency in a character to incompetence in the playwright. But while illogical people exist it is hard to see why a dramatist should not depict them. Antigone’s “reason” is stupid, no doubt, but what could be more dramatic? It is no novelty that a person capable of courageous action cannot argue well about it; there is a logic of the heart that has little to do with the logic of the brain. Antigone _has_ no reasons; she has only an instinct. Here, and here only, Sophocles has pressed this point home, and the popular view has no resource but to reject the passage.

Whom does Sophocles himself approve, the king or his opponent? Neither. Attention to the plot will make this clear. The _peripeteia_ or “recoil” is the revelation that the gods are angered by the pollution arising from the body, and that owing to their anger grave peril threatens Creon’s family. It is this news which causes his change of purpose. Polynices is therefore buried by the king himself despite his edict. These facts show that ultimately both Antigone and Creon are wrong. Heaven is against Creon, as he is forced at last to see—Antigone’s appeal to the everlasting unwritten laws is in this sense justified. But Antigone is wrong also. She should have left the gods to vindicate their own law. Such a statement may seem ignobly oblivious of religion, human nature, and the courage which she shows. But it is not denied that Antigone is noble and valiant: she may be both, yet mistaken and wrong-headed. One is bound to consider the facts of the plot. Why is she at first undetected yet compelled by circumstances to perform the “burial”-rites twice? Simply to remind us that, if Creon is resolved, she _cannot_ “bury” Polynices. The king has posted guards, who remove the pious dust which she has scattered; and this gruesome contest could continue indefinitely. She throws away her life, _and with no possible confidence that her brother will in the end be buried_. It is precisely this blindness of hers which makes the tragedy—her union of noble courage and unswerving affection with inability to see the crude facts of a hateful situation. Her obstinacy brings about the punishment of Creon’s obstinacy, for Eurydice’s death is caused by Hæmon’s, and Hæmon’s by Antigone’s. Had she not intervened all these lives would have been saved. The whole action might have dwindled to a mere revolting incident: the king’s barbarity, the anger of the gods, and the king’s submission. The tragedy would have disappeared: it is Antigone’s splendid though perverse valour which creates the drama.

A difficulty of structure has been found[311] in the fact that Creon, despite his haste to free Antigone, tarries for the obsequies of Polynices. Why does he not save the living first? This “problem” arises merely from our insistence on the overwhelming importance of Antigone and our disregard of the real perspective. The explanation is simply that Creon has just been warned of the grave danger to the whole State and his family from the anger with which the gods view his treatment of Polynices—an offence which Tiresias emphasizes far more than that against Antigone; and the community, nay, even the several persons of Creon’s family, are more important than one woman.

The lyrics of this play are among the finest in existence. The first ode expressing the relief of Thebes at the destruction of the ravening monster of war, the third which describes the persistence of sorrow from generation to generation of the Theban princes, the brief song which celebrates the all-compelling influence of love, with its exquisite reminiscence of Phrynichus,[312] the last lyric, a graceful invocation to the God Dionysus, and above all, the famous ode upon man and his quenchless enterprise, all these are truly Attic in their serene, somewhat frigid, loveliness.

The ELECTRA[313] (Ἠλέκτρα) has by most[314] critics been regarded as next in time to the _Antigone_. The scene shows the palace of Agamemnon now inhabited by his murderers, Clytæmnestra and her lover Ægisthus. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, returns to avenge him by slaying his own mother Clytæmnestra; he is accompanied by Pylades, his friend, and by an old slave. Chrysothemis, daughter of Agamemnon and sister of Electra, is sent by Clytæmnestra to appease the ghost of Agamemnon, but is persuaded by Electra to pray his help for Orestes. The slave of Orestes brings false news to the palace that Orestes has been killed in a chariot-race at Delphi, so that the queen is relieved from fear of vengeance. Chrysothemis returns, joyfully announcing Orestes’ arrival—she has seen a lock of his hair on the tomb; but her sister replies that he is dead. While Electra mourns for her brother he himself brings in an urn, pretending to be a messenger who has conveyed home the ashes of Orestes. Electra’s lamentation over it reveals who she is, and Orestes makes himself known. Then the men go inside to slay Clytæmnestra, while Electra remains watching for Ægisthus. After the slaughter he arrives and triumphantly orders the body to be carried forth, but when he uncovers it he finds the corpse of Clytæmnestra. He is then driven within to death.

The _Choephorœ_, the _Electra_ of Sophocles, and the _Electra_ of Euripides supply the only surviving instance in which the three tragedians handled the same story; at present it is enough to note the differences between the method of Sophocles and that of the _Choephorœ_. For Æschylus the slaying of Clytæmnestra is a question of religion and ethics, for Sophocles it is a matter of psychology, the emotional history of Electra. He is content to take the religious facts for granted, and then to proceed with no misgivings to a purely human drama. The play begins amid the bright, cheerful surroundings of dawn and ends with happiness. When Orestes comes forth, his sword wet with his mother’s blood, he is entirely satisfied and untouched by any misgivings, simply because the question of matricide has been settled for him by Heaven. He is a personified theory of Olympian religion. His words to Electra after the queen is dead: “In the house all is well, if Apollo’s oracle spoke well,”[315] are the summary of Sophocles’ religious point of view. Carefully and confidently referring the question of this matricide to a higher judge than Man, he proceeds to his actual business. Equally marked is the difference between the closing sentence of the _Choephorœ_, “Where then will end the fatal fury, when pass into closing calm?”[316] and that of the later work: “O house of Atreus, through how many sufferings hast thou come forth at last in freedom, crowned with good by this day’s enterprise!”[317] For Sophocles the deed is done and behind us; for Æschylus it lives to beget new sorrows.

Electra dominates the action, scarcely leaving the scene after her first entry. Though not a great character-study, she impresses us by the pathos of her situation and by the splendid expression of her emotions; her lament over the funeral urn is perfect in the rhetoric of sorrow. Almost motionless throughout the long and varied action; the mark for successive onslaughts of insult, misery, surprise, grief, hatred, and joy, she is thrown into relief by all who approach her, especially Chrysothemis, whose princely robes add emphasis to the heroic meaning of the sordid dress worn by her royal sister. She is a simple character and needs little ornament; her devotion, patience, and courage are plain to behold. But we should note the masterly, yet unobtrusive way in which her feelings towards Clytæmnestra are portrayed. Hating her steadily as the slayer of Agamemnon, she cannot quite forget (as does Euripides’ heroine) that Clytæmnestra is her mother. After her outburst of reproach against the queen she has enough flexibility of mind to own[318] that she is in a way ashamed of it—a simple touch which shows Sophocles a master, not a slave, of his own conceptions. A more subtle indication of her spirit is shown in Electra’s speech to Chrysothemis urging her to aid in the deed of vengeance. All she proposes is that they should slay Ægisthus. But there is an undercurrent of emphasis which shows[319] that she intends the death of Clytæmnestra also.

The other personages are mostly well-drawn. Orestes is commonplace, but the other four are distinctly imagined. The tiny part of Ægisthus admirably reveals the malicious upstart; Chrysothemis is another Ismene, with more energy and lightness. The Pædagogus reminds one of the guard in the _Antigone_ by his quaint witticisms—“if I had not been watching at the door from the first, your plans would have entered the house before your bodies”.[320] Clytæmnestra, too, is admirable. More closely akin to an Euripidean than to an Æschylean character, she defends herself elaborately and gives way to fits of ill-temper and petty rancour; but she has some maternal feeling left—witness the confusion of emotions with which she greets the news of Orestes’ death.

The sorrows and character of Electra form one of the two great features of this tragedy. The other is the stage-craft. First there is a distinct element of intrigue, that is, of plot as contrived not by the poet but by the characters. Not only do the avengers gain access to the house by a false story; this much is to be found already in the _Choephorœ_. There are two distinct visitors to the house: the Pædagogus with his tale of the fatal race, and Orestes bringing the funeral urn. It is to this duplication—for otherwise Clytæmnestra would have been present when the urn was brought—that we owe the splendid scene of the Recognition, with its introductory lament by Electra. Again, as in Æschylus the nurse sent by Clytæmnestra is induced to change her message to Ægisthus in a way vital to the conspirators, so here Chrysothemis is caused by her sister to invoke the aid of Agamemnon against the queen instead of seeking to assuage his wrath. Further, whereas Ægisthus might have entered the house and been slain without more ado, Electra, by telling him that the messengers have brought the very body of Orestes home, induces the king to summon them forth with the corpse; thus the end of the play is rendered vigorous (indeed melodramatic) by his triumphant unveiling of the body which proves to be that of the queen.

Besides these admirable strokes of a rather sophisticated “sense of the theatre” there are powerful effects which arise naturally from the circumstances. Clytæmnestra offers a prayer to the very god who has sent the avenger. Electra’s wonderful address to the ashes of her brother gains greatly by the fact that he stands living beside her. A splendidly dramatic effect is obtained by the return of Chrysothemis—the most “modern” point of the whole work. She has been sent away for a certain purpose, but in the stress of later happenings we forget her. Suddenly she re-appears with news—the result of her mission—news startling in itself, but ten times more so because of the events which (without her knowledge) have just occurred. Again, it is quite natural that Electra should come forth while Clytæmnestra is being slain, since some one must be on the alert for Ægisthus. This gives opportunity for the terrible little passage where the queen’s agonized appeals inside the house are answered by the tense answers or comments of this tragic figure rigid before the gate.

The ŒDIPUS TYRANNUS[321] (Οἰδίπους Τύραννος), often called _Œdipus Rex_ or _Œdipus the king_, is a play of uncertain date, but it seems later than _Electra_ and earlier than _Philoctetes_.

The plot is rather intricate and must be given at greater length. The scene shows the palace of Œdipus at Thebes. The people are smitten by a pestilence; and all look to the king, who has already sent his wife’s brother, Creon, to ask advice from the Delphic oracle. Creon enters, bringing tidings that Thebes will be freed if the city is purged of those who killed Laius, the former king. Œdipus asks for particulars, and learns that Laius was killed by some robbers. Only one man escaped. The king calls upon the slayer to declare himself, promising no worse treatment than exile; he asks also any man who knows the guilty one to speak. If no one confesses, he denounces civil and religious excommunication against the unknown. The chorus-leader suggests that the prophet Tiresias should be consulted; Œdipus replies that he has been already summoned. The coryphæus remarks casually that some say Laius was slain by certain wayfarers. Tiresias enters, but shows a repugnance even to discuss the problem, till Œdipus in a rage accuses Tiresias of complicity in the murder. An altercation follows in which the prophet accuses Œdipus of having killed Laius. The other, filled with wrath, proclaims that Tiresias and Creon are plotting to make Creon king in his stead. Tiresias threatens the king with mysterious horrors and downfall. Œdipus bids him begone, and rates him for a fool. “Foolish, perhaps, in your eyes,” says the old man, “but thought wise by the parents that begat thee.” Œdipus is startled. “Parents? Stay! What man begat me?” The answer is: “This day shall show thy birth and thy destruction”. The king again bids him go. As he turns away, Tiresias utters his farewell speech. The murderer of Laius is here, supposed an alien, but in reality Theban-born. Bereft of his sight and his riches he shall go forth into a strange land, and shall be found brother and father of his children, son and husband of his wife, murderer and supplanter of his father. Creon enters, dismayed by the charges of Œdipus, when the king appears, heaps reproaches upon the supposed traitor, and insists that Creon shall die. The noise of their dispute brings from the palace Jocasta, sister of Creon and wife of Œdipus; she brings about a half-reconciliation between the two princes, and asks the cause of the quarrel. Œdipus tells of the accusation pointed at himself by Tiresias. Jocasta seeks to console him by a proof that soothsaying is not trustworthy. “An oracle once came to Laius that he should be slain by a son of his and mine. None the less, he was slain by foreign robbers at a place where three roads meet; and the child, not three days old, was cast out upon a mountain, his ankles yoked together.” This speech, so far from comforting the king, fills him with alarm. The phrase “a place where three roads meet” has struck him. He anxiously asks for a description of Laius and the number of his followers. The replies disturb him still more, and he asks that the single survivor, now a herdsman far from the city, should be sent for. Jocasta asks the reason. He tells the story of his early manhood: he is the son of Polybus, King of Corinth, but one day a man insulted him by saying he was no son of Polybus. The youth asked the Delphic oracle of his birth, but the god, instead of answering directly, announced that he was fated to marry his mother and kill his father. Œdipus cheated the oracle by never seeing his parents again. On his way from Delphi he met a body of men such as Jocasta has described, and after a quarrel slew them all. It seems that he is himself the slayer of Laius and is subject to the curses which he has himself uttered. His only hope lies in the survivor who, it is understood, always spoke of robbers, not of a single assailant. If this is accurate, Œdipus is not meant by the recent oracle. A messenger from Corinth enters, bringing news that the people of that city intend to make Œdipus their king; Polybus is dead. Jocasta exclaims that Polybus was the man whom Œdipus feared he must slay. She mocks at the oracle and summons Œdipus, who shares her relief, but reminds her that his mother still lives. The messenger asks what woman they are discussing. “I can free you from that fear,” he exclaims; “Œdipus is not the son of Polybus and Merope.” Further questioning from Œdipus brings forth the explanation. The present messenger gave Œdipus, when a babe, to Polybus. He was found in the glens of Cithæron, where the man was tending flocks, his ankles fastened by an iron thrust through them. Who did this the Corinthian cannot say, but the man who gave him to the Corinthian should know—another herdsman brought him, one of the household of Laius. Œdipus asks if this man can be found. The chorus answer that probably he is the person already summoned, and that perhaps the queen can tell. Œdipus turns to Jocasta, who flings him a few words of agony and sorrow and rushes into the house. Œdipus turns away in contempt, for he believes that Jocasta’s distress springs from a fear that he will be found of ignoble birth. The aged servant of Laius now approaches, and is recognized by the Corinthian as the man who gave him the child. A conversation of intensest thrill follows between the two herdsmen, in which the Corinthian is eager, while the Theban is utterly reluctant, only answering under the direst threats from the king. At length it becomes plain that the babe Œdipus is the son of Laius and Jocasta. The king with a cry of horror rushes into the palace. A slave enters and tells how Jocasta has hanged herself, and how Œdipus has destroyed his own sight. After an interval Œdipus staggers forth, a sight of ghastliness and woe. Creon now appears as ruler of the city and bids Œdipus be hidden in the house. The wretched man asks that he be cast forth to dwell upon Cithæron; Creon replies that the oracle must first be consulted. Œdipus bids a heart-broken farewell to his little daughters, and Creon takes them all into the palace.

The _Œdipus Tyrannus_ has been universally admired as a masterpiece, ever since the time of Aristotle, who in his _Poetic_ takes this play as a model of tragedy. The lyrics are simple, beautiful, and even passionately vigorous; the dialogue in language and rhythm is beyond praise; and the tragic irony, for which this poet is famous, is here at its height. But the chief splendour of the work is its construction, its strictly dramatic strength and sincerity. The events grow out of one another with the ease of actual life yet with the accuracy and the power of art. We should note the two great stages: first, the king fears that he has slain Laius; second, that he has slain _his father Laius_. This distinction, so vital to the growing horror, is kept admirably clear and is especially pointed by the part of the aged Theban. When he is summoned, it is to settle whether Laius was slain by one man or by a company; by the time he arrives, this is forgotten, and all wait to know from whom he received the outcast infant. Equally wonderful is the skill with which almost every stage in the discovery is made to rise from the temperament of Œdipus. He is the best-drawn character in Sophocles. Not specially virtuous, not specially wise—though full of love and pity for his people and vigorous in his measures for their safety, he is too imperious, suspicious, and choleric. His exaggerated self-confidence, dangerous in a citizen, is almost a crime in a prince. The only notable virtue in his character is the splendid moral courage with which he faces facts, nay, more, with which he insists on unearthing facts which he might have left untouched. And the core of the tragedy is that this virtue of Œdipus, his insistence on knowing the truth, is the source of his downfall. Had he not sent for Tiresias, Tiresias would not have come forward. Had he not urged the prophet to reply, Tiresias would not have uttered his accusations. By these apparently mad charges, Œdipus is stung into accusing Tiresias of plotting with Creon. This in turn brings Creon to the palace. The anger with which he reviles Creon causes a dispute which draws Jocasta from the house. Then, to calm Œdipus, she gives him the dreadful “consolation”—that oracles have no weight—which first makes the king fear he may have done the deed which is plaguing Thebes. And so to the end. One exception to this sequence should be noticed. The arrival of the Corinthian messenger at this moment is purely accidental. Without it, the witness of the old retainer would have fastened upon Œdipus the slaying of Laius (not known to be the king’s father); and he would have gone forth from the city, but not as a parricide; moreover, the relation between him and the queen would have remained unknown. Judged by the standard of the whole play, this fact constitutes a flaw in construction. Why did not the poet contrive that the news of Polybus’ death should arrive, and arrive now, as the direct result of something said or done by Œdipus, just as the arrival of the old Theban, with his crushing testimony, is due to the king’s own summons? No doubt this occurrence is meant to mirror the facts of life, which include accidents as well as events plainly traceable to character.

At this point should be mentioned other possible faults, whether inherent in the drama or antecedent to it. Some of the preliminary facts are to a high degree unlikely. These points are three. First, Œdipus and Jocasta, though each separately has received oracular warning about a marriage, make no kind of inquiry at the time of their own wedding. Secondly, Œdipus all these years has never heard or inquired into the circumstances in which Laius was killed. Third, Jocasta has never yet been told of the incident at Corinth which sent Œdipus to Delphi; indeed she has apparently not even heard that he is the son of the king and queen of Corinth.[322] Within the play itself is the strange feature that when Tiresias accuses Œdipus of slaying Laius and hints darkly at greater horrors—hints which in spite of their obscurity might surely (one would think) have united themselves in the mind of Œdipus with the oracle of long ago—Œdipus is merely moved to fury, not to misgiving.[323] Now of the first three difficulties it must be owned that despite the palliatives suggested, they are irritating. These things are “impossible,” or, if not, they are oddly irrational, which is the same thing so far as the enjoyment of dramatic art is concerned. They are, however, to be explained thus. The unquestioning marriage of Œdipus and Jocasta is a _datum_ of the legend with which the poet could not tamper. All that the dramatist could do he did—he placed the unlikely fact “outside the plot”[324] and dwelt on it as little as possible. Indeed, he hints at some sort of excuse—the confusion in Thebes owing to the oppression of the Sphinx.[325] Next, the postponement of explanations about the death of Laius and the exile of Œdipus from Corinth is a direct result of dramatic treatment. Just as Æschylus,[326] in order to handle dramatically a religious question, the bearings of which fill the whole of time, insists on contracting the issue to a single great instance, so Sophocles forces into the compass of one day’s happenings the life of years. In actuality, this tragedy would have been spread over a great lapse of time. The climax and the horror would have been much the same essentially, but the poet presents the whole in a closely-knit nexus of occurrence, so as to make the spectator feel the full impact undissipated by graduations.

The difficulty concerning Tiresias is of another sort. Œdipus’ apparent madness is not so great as it seems. Not only is he by his rank and superb self-confidence shielded from misgivings, not only is he already suspicious that the murderer must be some treacherous Theban,[327] but he has now lost his temper, and has just been furious enough to accuse Tiresias himself of complicity in the deed. It is therefore easy for him to assume that the prophet in his turn is only uttering his accusations as a wild insult.

It might also be asked, why is not the scene with Jocasta, in which she fortifies the king against soothsayers and oracles, not placed at the end of the Tiresias-episode? This question leads one to suppose that there is great importance in the quarrel with Creon which intervenes between the departure of Tiresias and the queen’s appearance. Its importance clearly is, partly to depict Œdipus more plainly, by contrast with his equable kinsman, but most of all to give force and impressiveness to the end of the play, in which Creon appears as king. After the appalling climax of the play, and the frightful return of the blind Œdipus, there is danger that Creon’s entry will fall flat.[328] But with faultless skill Sophocles has prepared the ground so well that when the agony is at its worst our interest is not indeed increased, but refreshed and relieved by the appearance of this man whom we have forgotten, but whom we recognize in a flash as being now the pivot of events. This admirable stroke reminds one of the return of Chrysothemis in the _Electra_, but it is far more powerful.

Another feat of dramatic power must be noted, marvellous even where all is masterly: the re-appearance of Œdipus after the climax. Nothing in Greek tragedy is more common than for a person after learning frightful news to rush within the doors in despair. But he does not return; a messenger tells the news of his fate. In this play news is indeed brought of the bloody deeds that have befallen. Then comes a sight almost too appalling for art: the doors open and the man of doom staggers into the light of day once more. Spiritually he is dead, but he may not destroy himself since he cannot go down to Hades where his father and mother dwell. He must live, surviving himself, as it were a corpse walking the upper earth. The waters of doom have closed over his head, but he re-appears.

Jocasta is more slightly drawn than Œdipus, yet what we have suffices. Two features are stressed by the poet—her tenderness for Œdipus and her flippant contempt in regard to the oracles. This last is clearly a dramatic lever of great power; through it the king is first brought to suspect that he is the guilty man. It has a strong and pathetic excuse. Because of the oracle, she was robbed of her child and yet all in vain—the infant not yet three days old was cast away, but none the less Laius was killed. It is precisely her rage against the oracle for cheating her which brings to Œdipus the knowledge that it has been fulfilled. Further than this Sophocles has not characterized the queen; he places an ordinary woman in a situation of extraordinary horror and pathos, leaving us to feel her emotions, without any elaboration of his own. To read the conversation between Œdipus and the Corinthian, with the short colloquy of Œdipus and Jocasta which follows, is to experience as perhaps nowhere else can be experienced that “purgation of pity and terror” which is the function of tragedy. It all centres for the moment in Jocasta, yet she says very little. We are required to imagine it for ourselves—the intertwined amazement, joy, loathing, despair, which fill the woman’s heart during the few minutes for which she listens in silence to the king and the messenger. To have lost her child at birth, then after mourning his death for many years at length to find that he lives, that he stands before her, mature, strong, and kingly, but her own husband; then to realize that not now but long ago did she recover him, yet did not know him but loved him otherwise—this even Sophocles has not put into speech. Only one hint of it comes to us in the queen’s last words:—

ἰοὺ, ἰού, δύστηνε· τοῦτο γάρ σ’ ἔχω
μόνον προσειπεῖν, ἄλλο δ’ οὔποθ’ ὕστερον.

First she screams at his ignorance and would tell all in one word “Son!” But she cannot say it, nor dare she use again the name “husband”. All dear titles have been forfeited by being all merited together; and with the cry “Unhappy one!” she goes to death.

The two herdsmen are perfect in their degree. Instead of mere machines for giving evidence we have a pair of real men, subtly differentiated and delightful. The Corinthian, as befits a man coming from a great centre of civilization to the quieter town of dull Bœotians, is polite, rhetorical,[329] ready of tongue, and conscious of his address; eager and inquisitive, he increases his importance by telling the tale piecemeal, and will even tell it wrongly[330] for that purpose. The Theban herdsman is an excellent foil to his brisk acquaintance; quiet and slow, with the breeding and dignity often found in the lowly members of a backward community, he does his best to recall the memories on which a king and a nation are hanging in suspense, until he begins to see whither the questions tend; then, only the fiercest threats can drag the truth from his stubborn loyalty. Sophocles loved this character; long before he appears we have a charming little description of him from hints of Jocasta[331] and the chorus;[332] the poet has even given him one[333] of those magical lines to which we shall come again later:—

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 is poisoned. 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 the _Trachiniæ_ as 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 the _Trachiniæ_. It is the character of Deianira, her instincts, and her actions. This play is in structure very similar to the _Ajax_. 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’s interest 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 men
Still pluck the blossom, shunning withered charms.

For him his wife was the true mate; let Iole wed a man 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 the _Œdipus Tyrannus_. Thus the _Trachiniæ_ becomes 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 her husband, 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 the _Trachiniæ_ and the _Ajax_; 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 reflection and 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.