The life of
Sophocles
was exactly conterminous
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SOCRATES
kill himself, steal or take away his sword, or any other weapon,
under which head must we place that act? " "That, assuredly,
we must place under justice. "-"You say, then," said Socrates,
"that not even towards our friends must we act on all occasions
without deceit ? " "We must not indeed," said he; "for I retract
what I said before, if I may be permitted to do so. " "It is
indeed much better that you should be permitted," said Socrates,
"than that you should not place actions on the right side. But
of those who deceive their friends in order to injure them (that
we may not leave even this point unconsidered), which of the
two is the more unjust,- he who does so intentionally or he
who does so involuntarily? " "Indeed, Socrates," said Euthyde-
mus, "I no longer put confidence in the answers which I give;
for all that I said before appears to me now to be quite different
from what I then thought: however, let me venture to say that
he who deceives intentionally is more unjust than he who deceives
involuntarily? "
"Does it appear to you, then, that there is a way of learning
and knowing what is just, as there is of learning and knowing
how to read and write ? " "I think there is. "-"And which
should you consider the better scholar, him who should purposely
write or read incorrectly, or him who should do so unawares ? »
"Him who should do so purposely; for whenever he pleased,
he would be able to do both correctly. "-"He therefore that
purposely writes incorrectly may be a good scholar, but he who
does so involuntarily is destitute of scholarship? " "How can it
be otherwise? "-"And whether does he who lies and deceives
intentionally know what is just, or he who does so unawares? "
"Doubtless he who does so intentionally. " "You therefore say
that he who knows how to write and read is a better scholar
than he who does not know? " "Yes. " — "And that he who
knows what is just is more just than he who does not know? "
"I seem to say so; but I appear to myself to say this I know
not how. "-"But what would you think of the man who, wish-
ing to tell the truth, should never give the same account of the
same thing, but in speaking of the same road, should say at one
time that it led towards the east, and at another towards the
west, and in stating the result of the same calculation, should
sometimes assert it to be greater and sometimes less,-what, I
say, would you think of such a man? " "It would be quite clear
that he knew nothing of what he thought he knew. "
---
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SOCRATES
13639
"I do. "
-
"Do you know any persons called slave-like ? »
"Whether for their knowledge or their ignorance ? » "For their
ignorance, certainly. "—"Is it then for their ignorance of working
in brass that they receive this appellation? " "Not at all. " — " Is
it for their ignorance of the art of building? " "Nor for that. ”—
"Or for their ignorance of shoemaking? " "Not on any one of
these accounts; for the contrary is the case, as most of those who
know such trades are servile. "—"Is this, then, an appellation of
those who are ignorant of what is honorable, and good, and
just? " "It appears so to me. " "It therefore becomes us to
exert ourselves in every way to avoid being like slaves. "
by the gods, Socrates," rejoined Euthydemus, "I firmly believed
that I was pursuing that course of study by which I should, as
I expected, be made fully acquainted with all that was proper
to be known by a man striving after honor and virtue; but
now, how dispirited must you think I feel, when I see that with
all my previous labor, I am not even able to answer a question
about what I ought most of all to know, and am acquainted with
no other course which I may pursue to become better! "
"But,
-
DUTY OF POLITICIANS TO QUALIFY THEMSELVES
From Xenophon's 'Memorabilia ›
.
“IT
T IS plain, Glaucon, that if you wish to be honored, you must
benefit the State. " "Certainly," replied Glaucon. "Then,"
. said Socrates,
"inform us with what pro-
ceeding you will begin to benefit the State?
As, if you
wished to aggrandize the family of a friend, you would endeavor
to make it richer, tell me whether you will in like manner also
endeavor to make the State richer? " "Assuredly," said he. -
"Would it then be richer if its revenues were increased? "—" That
is at least probable," said Glaucon. "Tell me then," proceeded
Socrates, "from what the revenues of the State arise, and what
is their amount; for you have doubtless considered, in order that
if any of them fall short, you may make up the deficiency, and
that if any of them fail, you may procure fresh supplies. " "These
matters, by Jupiter," replied Glaucon, "I have not considered. "
"Well then," said Socrates,
"tell me at least the annual
expenditure of the State; for you undoubtedly mean to retrench
whatever is superfluous in it. " "Indeed," replied Glaucon, "I
have not yet had time to turn my attention to that subject. "
•
•
-
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13640
SOCRATES
"Then," said Socrates, "we will put off making our State richer
for the present; for how is it possible for him who is ignorant
of its expenditure and its income to manage those matters ?
Tell us the strength of the country by land and sea, and next that
of our enemies. " "But, by Jupiter," exclaimed Glaucon, "I should
not be able to tell you on the moment, and at a word. "
« Well
then, if you have it written down," said Socrates, "bring it; for
I should be extremely glad to hear what it is. "
"But to say
the truth," replied Glaucon, "I have not yet written it down. ”
"We will therefore put off considering about war for the pres-
ent," said Socrates.
"You propose a vast field for me,"
observed Glaucon, "if it will be necessary for me to attend to
such subjects. " "Nevertheless," proceeded Socrates, "a man can-
not order his house properly, unless he ascertains all that it
requires, and takes care to supply it with everything necessary;
but since the city consists of more than ten thousand houses,
and it is difficult to provide for so many at once, how is it that
you have not tried to aid one first of all? -say that of your
uncle, for it stands in need of help. "
"But I would im-
prove my uncle's house," said Glaucon, "if he would only be per-
suaded by me. " "Then," resumed Socrates, "when you cannot
persuade your uncle, do you expect to make all the Athenians,
together with your uncle, yield to your arguments? . . . Do
you not see how dangerous it is for a person to speak of, or
undertake, what he does not understand? .
If therefore you
desire to gain esteem and reputation in your country, endeavor
to succeed in gaining a knowledge of what you wish to do. "
BEFORE THE TRIAL
From Xenophon's Memorabilia ›
ERMOGENES SON of Hipponicus
H
said that after Meletus
had laid the accusation against him, he heard him speaking
on any subject rather than that of his trial, and remarked
to him that he ought to consider what defense he should make;
but that he said at first, "Do I not appear to you to have passed
my whole life meditating on that subject? " and then, when he
asked him "How so? " he said "he had gone through life doing
nothing but considering what was just and what unjust, doing
the just and abstaining from the unjust; which he conceived
to be the best meditation for his defense. " Hermogenes said
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SOCRATES
13641
again, "But do you not see, Socrates, that the judges at Athens
have already put to death many innocent persons, on account of
being offended at their language, and have allowed many that
were guilty to escape? " "But, by Jupiter, Hermogenes," replied
he, "when I was proceeding, awhile ago, to study my address to
the judges, the dæmon testified disapprobation. " "You say what
is strange," rejoined Hermogenes. "And do you think it
strange," inquired Socrates, "that it should seem better to the
divinity that I should now close my life? Do you not know that
down to the present time, I would not admit to any man that he
has lived either better or with more pleasure than myself? for I
consider that those live best who study best to become as good.
as possible; and that those live with most pleasure who feel the
most assurance that they are daily growing better and better.
This assurance I have felt, to the present day, to be the case
with respect to myself; and associating with other men, and
comparing myself with others, I have always retained this opinion
respecting myself: and not only I, but my friends also, main-
tain a similar feeling with regard to me; not because they love
me (for those who love others may be thus affected towards
the objects of their love), but because they think that while they
associated with me they became greatly advanced in virtue. If I
shall live a longer period, perhaps I shall be destined to sustain
the evils of old age, to find my sight and hearing weakened, to
feel my intellect impaired, to become less apt to learn and more
forgetful, and in fine, to grow inferior to others in all those
qualities in which I was once superior to them. If I should be
insensible to this deterioration, life would not be worth retaining;
and if I should feel it, how could I live otherwise than with less
profit, and with less comfort? If I am to die unjustly, my death
will be a disgrace to those who unjustly kill me; for if injustice.
is a disgrace, must it not be a disgrace to do anything unjustly?
But what disgrace will it be to me, that others could not decide
or act justly with regard to me? Of the men who have lived
before me, I see that the estimation left among posterity with
regard to such as have done wrong, and such as have suffered
wrong, is by no means similar; and I know that I also, if I now
die, shall obtain from mankind far different consideration from
that which they will pay to those who take my life: for I know
they will always bear witness to me that I have never wronged
any man, or rendered any man less virtuous, but that I have
always endeavored to make those better who conversed with me. "
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13642
SOLON
(638-559? B. C. )
OETRY is older than prose. Familiar as this assertion is, it yet
rings like a paradox, and is still often received with incre-
dulity. Indeed, it needs exposition, if not qualification. Of
course the rude beginnings of human speech-whatever their origin
were not rhythmical in any high artistic sense. But as soon as
men invoked the aid of "Memory, mother of the Muses," when they
wished to fix firmly, in the mind of the individual or of the clan, some
basic principle of justice, some heroic exploit, some tragic incident,-
then a regular recurrent movement of lan-
guage, effectively accompanied by drum or
foot beat, would almost instinctively be
sought and found. Hence the early and
all-but universal rise of the popular bal-
lad, the "folk-song. "
SOLON
That two great masses of hexameter
verse, and naught else, crossed successfully
the gulf into which the Homeric civiliza-
tion fell, is not perhaps so strange. Simi-
larly a Nibelungenlied, the Sagas, the Lays
of the Troubadours, float to us, bringing
almost the only distinct tidings from phases
of life else utterly sunken and forgotten.
But when the grave practical problems of civic organization and
foreign war were first effectively debated in the Athens of Solon, it
does strike us with surprise, that even the great lawgiver habitually
"recited a poem. " The dominant influence of Homeric epic doubt-
less aided largely here also. There are few loftier or stronger ora-
tions left us, even by the ten orators of the canon, than the speeches
in which Achilles justifies his withdrawal from the war, or Priam
pleads for mercy toward Hector dead. Then too, even this ruder
early Athenian folk can have been no ordinary race of tradesmen
or farmers. Many generations of artistic growth must have preceded
Eschylus and Phidias. Their language itself is sufficient evidence
of a shaping and molding instinct pervading a whole people. Indeed,
that language is already the plastic material waiting for the poet;
just as the melodious Italian speech performs beforehand for the
improvisator more than half his task.
## p. 13643 (#461) ##########################################
SOLON
13643
Moreover, even the prose of Demosthenes and his rivals is itself
no less truly rhythmical. It is subject to euphonic law which it
easily obeys, and of which-like great poetry-it makes a glorious
ornament instead of a fetter.
Solon's elegies, then, are poetical in form, largely because artistic
prose was not yet invented, and because Solon wished his memora-
ble words to be preserved in the memory of his Athenians. They
are not creative and imaginative poetry at all. Full of sound ethical
teaching, shot through by occasional graces of phrase and fancy,
warming to enthusiasm on the themes of patriotism and piety, they
still remain at best in that borderland where a rhymed satire by Dr.
Johnson or a versified essay of Pope must also abide. Nearly every-
thing they offer us could have been as well and effectively said out-
side the forms of verse. This is the just and final test of the poet's
gold, but how much, even of what we prize, would bear that test
without appreciable loss?
Among creators of constitutions, Solon deservedly holds a very
high-perhaps the highest-place. His first public proposal, indeed,
was one to which he could hope to rally the support of all classes:
the reconquest of the lovely island of Salamis, lying close to the
Attic shores, and destined to give its name to the proudest day in
Athenian annals. With Spartan help it was actually wrested again
from Megara.
This success hastened the selection of Solon as mediator between
the bitterly hostile factions of a people on the verge of civil war.
By the desperate remedy of a depreciated coinage the debtor class
was relieved. Imprisonment or enslavement of innocent debtors was
abolished. Solon's political reforms left the fulcrum of power, at
least temporarily, among the wealthier and landed classes; and tended
at any rate to educate the common people to wield wisely that civic
supremacy which he may have foreseen to be inevitably theirs in
subsequent generations.
The story of Solon's prolonged voluntary exile-in order to cut off
any proposals for further change while his institutions endured the
test of years
may be pure invention. Certainly his famous meet-
ing with Croesus of Lydia, at the height of that monarch's power,
must be given up. Solon died before Croesus can have become lord
of Western Asia. On the other hand, his fearless disapproval of his
young kinsman, the "tyrant" Pisistratus, is at least probable. His
answer when asked what made him thus fearless: -"Old age! ” —
reminds us of Socrates. Solon's larger measures outlived the too
aggressive protectorate of Pisistratus, and remained the permanent
basis of the Athenian constitution. The tolerant, genial, self-forgetful,
and fearless character of the man was a legacy hardly less precious
to his countrymen; and they were nowise ungrateful to his memory.
―
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13644
SOLON
Solon's poetry comes to us almost wholly in the elegiac couplet.
This variation on the hexameter was the first invented form of
stanza, and appears to have been hit upon in the seventh century
B. C. It had for a time almost as many-sided currency as our own
heroic couplet or rhymed pentameter; but was soon displaced in
great degree by the iambic trimeter, which, like our "blank verse,"
was extremely close to the average movement of a colloquial prose
sentence. This latter rhythm (which is also used by Solon) became
the favorite form, in particular, for the dialogue of Attic drama.
Hence, even in the fifth century, both hexameter proper and the ele-
giac had already come to be somewhat archaic and artificial. This
is still truer of such verse in Latin; though Ovid wears the bonds
of elegiac with consummate ease and grace. In modern speech it is
all-but impossible. Longfellow composed, in his later years, clever
renderings from several of Ovid's 'Tristia'; but the best isolated ex-
amples are Clough's preludes to the 'Amours de Voyage,' especially
the verses on the undying charm of Rome:-
"Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,
Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?
Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,
Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate? »
But he would be a bold adventurer who would attempt to make
our Anglo-Saxon speech dance in this measure, while fast bound to
the practical prosaic ideas of Solon's political harangues!
There is no satisfactory annotation or translation of Solon's frag-
ments. They have been somewhat increased by citations in the
recently discovered Aristotelian Constitution of Athens'; and would
make a fruitful subject for a monograph, in which poetical taste,
knowledge of history, and philological acumen, might all work in
harmony.
[NOTE. The essentially prosaic character of Solon's thought makes him
doubly ineffective in translation. He seems to be hardly represented at all
in English versions. Neither of the experiments here appended satisfies the
translator himself. Solon's iambics are not quite so slow and prose-like as our
"blank verse. >> On the other hand, the Omar-like quatrain into which Mr.
Newcomer has fallen is both swifter and more ornate than the unapproachable
elegiac couplet of the Greeks. ]
DEFENSE OF HIS DICTATORSHIP
Y WITNESS in the court of Time shall be
The mighty mother of Olympian gods,
The dusky Earth,- grateful that I plucked up
The boundary stones that were so thickly set;
M
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SOLON
13645
So she, enslaved before, is now made free.
To Athens, too, their god-built native town,
Many have I restored that had been sold,
Some justly, some unfairly; some again
Perforce through death in exile. They no more
Could speak our language, wanderers so long.
Others, who shameful slavery here at home
Endured, in terror at their lords' caprice,
I rendered free again.
This in my might
I did, uniting right and violence;
And what I had promised, so I brought to pass.
For base and noble equal laws I made,
Securing justice promptly for them both. -
Another one than I, thus whip in hand,
An avaricious evil-minded man,
Would not have checked the folk, nor left his post
Till he had stolen the rich cream away!
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature› by W. C. Lawton.
SOLON SPEAKS HIS MIND TO THE ATHENIANS
EVER shall this our city fall by fate
Of Zeus and the blest gods from her estate,
So noble a warder, Pallas Athena, stands
NEV
With hands uplifted at the city's gate.
But her own citizens do strip and slay,
Led by the folly of their hearts astray,
And the unjust temper of her demagogues,—
Whose pride will tumble to its fall some day.
For they know not to hold in check their greed,
Nor soberly on the spread feast to feed;
But still by lawless deeds enrich themselves,
And spare not for the gods' or people's need.
They take but a thief's count of thine and mine;
They care no whit for Justice's holy shrine,—
Who sits in silence, knowing what things are done,
Yet in the end brings punishment condign.
See this incurable sore the State consume!
Oh, rapid are her strides to slavery's doom,
Who stirs up civil strife and sleeping war
That cuts down many a young man in his bloom.
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13646
SOLON
Such are the evils rife at home; while lo,
To foreign shores in droves the poor-folk go,
Sold, and perforce bound with disfiguring chains,
And knowing all the shame that bondsmen know.
So from the assembly-place to each fireside
The evil spreads; and though the court-doors bide
Its bold assault, over the wall it leaps
And finds them that in inmost chambers hide. -
Thus to the Athenians to speak, constrains
My soul: Il fares the State where License reigns;
But Law brings order and concordant peace,
And fastens on the unjust, speedy chains.
She tames, and checks, and chastens; blasts the bud
Of springing folly; cools the intemperate blood;
Makes straight the crooked; - she draws after her
All right and wisdom like a tide at flood.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by
A. G. Newcomer
TWO FRAGMENTS
I
GAVE the people freedom clear
But neither flattery nor fear;
I told the rich and noble race
To crown their state with modest grace:
And placed a shield in either's hand,
Wherewith in safety both might stand.
—
THE people love their rulers best
When neither cringed to nor opprest.
From an article on Greek Elegy' in British Quarterly Review, Vol. xlviii. ,
page 87
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SOPHOCLES.
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13647
SOPHOCLES
(495-405? B. C. )
BY J. P. MAHAFFY
F THE reader should remark with surprise that I do not intro-
duce this study with an account of the parentage, family
circumstances, and descendants of so great a figure in the
history of art, he will be led to consider a very interesting feature,
- not unique, but very characteristic of Sophocles and his age. I
do not feel bound to give the reader any idle details about him, such
as the record of an obscure father or an equally obscure son,- of no
use except to burden the memory with useless names, unless it
be to remind us that the gift of genius is isolated and not an affair
of heredity. We have not yet extorted from Nature the method, far
less the secret, of its production. But were I disposed to gather
all the gossip about the poet, and write a chronicle of his life such
as the idler and the scandal-monger think so interesting, there are no
materials extant; nor were they extant even in the generations that
followed close upon his death. Living in a brilliant age, the con-
temporary and probably the companion of splendid intellects in
sciences, arts, politics,- he lived a life, like our own Shakespeare,
only surprising us from its utter want of social importance or of
social interest. If he performed public duties, it was done without
exciting any comment; if he was the intimate of great men, it was
as a jovial associate, not as a strong and leading personality. If he
had no enemies, he probably owed it to a want of interest in aught
beyond his art; if he was the favorite of the Attic theatre, he was
certainly not its idol, for some of his finest works were defeated in
competition with those of far inferior poets. If the fable that his
ungrateful children tried to oust him from the management of his
property on the ground of decrepitude have any truth to tell us, it is
that he showed that indolence in practical affairs which has often
kept even the most exalted genius from gaining any importance in
public life.
Thus Sophocles lives for us only in his works, as Shakespeare
does; and very possibly it is for this very reason that both are to us
the most faithful mirrors of all that was greatest and unique in their
splendid epochs.
The life of Sophocles was exactly conterminous
## p. 13648 (#470) ##########################################
13648
SOPHOCLES
with the great Athenian empire; an infant at its dawn with the
battle of Marathon (490 B. C. ), he passed away full of years, in time
to escape the downfall of his country at Ægospotami (405 B. C. ).
His maturity was the maturity of the most brilliant society the world
has yet seen.
In the Athens where he lived all his life, and where
his handsome figure was familiar to every citizen, he was either the
intimate or the acquaintance of Pericles, of Phidias, of Herodotus, of
Thucydides, of Socrates, of Anaxagoras, of Ictinus, of Mnesicles, repre-
senting politics, history, philosophy, architecture. His rivals in the
drama were Æschylus and Euripides. Nor may we doubt that among
the crowd of artists, orators, men of letters of less note in our scanty
annals of that day, there were many not less able and stimulating in
their conversation than those who perhaps talked little because they
were working for posterity. Socrates, the greatest talker of them all,
left no written record behind him. Those that wrote great books or
accomplished great works of art men like Sophocles-left no per-
sonal opinions, no evidence of their private life, to posterity. Of
Pericles we know hardly anything but his public acts; and were it
not for Plutarch's 'Life,' which gathered what could be found of
tradition and of anecdote after four centuries had passed away, we
should know nothing but these acts. Of Phidias and Polycletus the
sculptors, of Ictinus the designer and builder of the Parthenon, of
Eschylus and Euripides the great rival dramatists, we know but
snatches of idle gossip, or the inventions of disappointed anecdotists.
All these personages are, however, the constituents of the Periclean
age; they are absorbed into its splendid life. As every citizen is
exhorted in the Thucydidean paraphrases of Pericles's eloquence, it
is the greatness and the glory of Athens which makes the greatness
and the happiness of all her citizens. Private affairs at such an
epoch sink into utter insignificance. Each man is valued for his con-
tribution to the public life of the city; and therefore each great art-
ist of that day, whatever the species of his art, strives mainly to
express Attic purity, Attic grace, Attic power.
In the case of no member of that matchless company is this so
true as in the case of Sophocles; his whole genius is essentially Attic,
and even Attic of that special generation, both in its perfection and
in its limitation. Never was such perfection attained, nor is it attain-
able, without many limitations. Sophocles, for example, is smaller
than Eschylus, whose colossal conceptions outstrip the Greek horizon,
and combine Hellenic force and beauty with Semitic gloom and grand-
eur. Sophocles is narrower than Euripides, who embraced every
human sympathy in his pictures of life. But this life is often too
poor and mean even as the ideas of Eschylus are too vague, and
his language too pompous-for the perfect bloom of the Attic stage.
-
-
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SOPHOCLES
13649
Critics ancient and modern are agreed that the intermediate attitude
of Sophocles - not only in his person, but in his art-attained that
highest perfection, which lasts but a moment and is marred by the
smallest change. They will not allow any imperfection in the poet,
the most modest right of criticism in his exponent. We have nothing
but a chorus of praise. But this is no intelligent appreciation. Let
us rather seek to question him as men, than to run after him like
wondering children.
We have only seven plays extant from the large number that he
wrote. In those days a tragic poet, himself an actor, devoted his life
to the drama; and apparently competed at least every second year in
the trial of new tragedies. So far as we know, only three poets were
admitted to each contest; but as each of them then put a group of
three plays and an afterpiece upon the stage, the labor of so doing
at frequent intervals must have been very arduous. (We have only
one specimen of a whole group of three preserved, and that is by
Eschylus. In all the rest the leading favorite play of a group has
been preserved by the reading public. We are told that Sophocles so.
loosened the connection in his group that each play could stand by
itself. ) It is well, however, to observe in limitation of our estimate
that each play was shorter than the average of our five-act dramas:
the extant trilogy of Æschylus is not as long as the single play of
'Hamlet. ' But if the alleged number of his tragedies-seventy, with
eighteen satiric afterpieces — be correct, no great poet ever bequeathed
a larger heritage to posterity. Yet perhaps the small remnant which
has escaped the shipwreck of time has maintained his reputation
as well as if the whole treasure had come down to us. In our own
literature, Gray and Coleridge take their high rank in spite of the
scantiness of their works; among the Greeks, we even recognize
the greatness of Sappho in the few quotations from her lyrics that
have survived. It cannot, therefore, be maintained that we have no
sufficient means of judging Sophocles; very possibly a larger bequest
might have disclosed to us works weaker and less characteristic than
those now before us, of which several were noted in antiquity as
among his noblest efforts. The first and last in order, both of which
obtained the first prize,- the 'Antigone' and the 'Philoctetes,' — are
not superior to the rest. But even the former, brought out in 440
B. C. , and numbered by the critics as his Opus 32, was the play of
no youngster; for he had defeated the older master Æschylus twenty-
eight years before. This was the celebrated occasion when Cimon
and his victorious colleagues, just returned from their campaigns,
were appointed judges by the acclamation of the people, instead of
holding the usual selection by lot. The production of thirty-two plays
in twenty-eight years gives us indeed cause to wonder at the poet's
XXIII-854
-
## p. 13650 (#472) ##########################################
13650
SOPHOCLES
fertility. But as it was the common remark of those who admired
the matchless Parthenon and Propylæa, that their everlasting perfec-
tion was in no way impaired by the extraordinary rapidity of their
construction, so the poets working during the very same epoch seemed
to rival the architects not only in grace and strength, but in the rapid
strides of their work. Nor is this quickness of production uncommon
in other great moments of art. Molière could write a play in a fort-
night. Händel wrote the 'Messiah' in twenty-one days.
Let us now turn to the plays in order, and learn from them the
causes of the poet's great and permanent success in the world of let-
ters. For even in modern times, the admiration and the imitation of
him have not ceased. The 'Antigone' was not one of a trilogy or
connected group of three plays; nor has the poet's treatment of his
heroine anything to say to his treatment of the same personage in
his subsequent plays (on dipus) in which she appears. As soon as
Sophocles adopted the practice of competing with isolated plays, he
assumed the further liberty of handling the same personage quite
differently in different plays. This apparent inconsistency was due
to the fact that the ancients, unlike the moderns, had no unlimited
field of subjects; but were restricted by the conditions of their art to
a small number of legends, wherein the same heroes and heroines
constantly reappeared. They therefore avoided the consequent mo-
notony by varying the character to suit the circumstances of each
play. The Antigone of the play before us is not the Antigone of the
Edipus at Colonus. '
The plot is very simple, and was not in any sense novel. It is
completely sketched in the last seventy lines of the Seven Against
Thebes' of Eschylus. Polynices, slain in his unnatural invasion of
his fatherland, -and what was worse, in single combat with his
own brother, is refused burial by the new head of the State, Creon.
Eschylus represents a herald as announcing this decision, at which
Antigone at once rebels, while her weaker sister submits. The cho-
rus, dividing, take sides with both; and show the conflict between the
sacred claims of family affection and the social claims of the State,
demanding obedience to a decree not unreasonable and issued by
recognized authority. But Eschylus gives us no solution. This is
the problem taken up by Sophocles, and treated with special refer-
ence to the character of Antigone. He greatly simplifies his problem;
for he allows but little force to the arguments for punishing with
posthumous disgrace the criminal Polynices, - the parricide, as the
Greeks would call him, of his fatherland.
The tyrant Creon, indeed, talks well of obedience as the first con-
dition of public safety:-
-
## p. 13651 (#473) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13651
Creon-
But praise from me that man shall never have
Who either boldly thrusts aside the law,
Or takes upon him to instruct his rulers,—
Whom, by the State empowered, he should obey
In little and in much, in right and wrong.
The worst of evils is to disobey.
Cities by this are ruined, homes of men
Made desolate by this; this in the battle
Breaks into headlong rout the wavering line;
The steadfast ranks, the many lives unhurt,
Are to obedience due. We must defend
The government and order of the State,
And not be governed by a willful girl.
We'll yield our place up, if we must, to men:
To women that we stooped, shall not be said.
(I quote uniformly throughout this essay from the version of Mr.
Whitelaw, London, 1883,— which upon careful examination appears
to me very much the best attempt yet made at the well-nigh hope-
less problem of rendering the beauties of Sophocles in English. )
But Creon's rigid ordinance carries no weight with it; and obedi-
ence is only a matter of acquiescence in the minds of the vulgar and
the mean, as the chorus is represented. Antigone is accordingly
sustained throughout by a clear consciousness that she is absolutely
right: the whole sympathy of the spectator is with her, and the
play is only of interest in bringing out her character in strong relief.
This is splendidly expressed in her answer to Creon, when she is
brought in prisoner by a craven guard, who has surprised her in per-
forming the funeral rites over her brother: —
Creon-
Speak thou, who bendest on the earth thy gaze,-
Are these things which are witnessed true or false?
Antigone-Not false, but true: that which he saw, he speaks.
Creon [to the guard]-
So, sirrah, thou art free: go where thou wilt,
Loosed from the burden of this heavy charge.
But tell me thou,- and let thy speech be brief,—
The edict hadst thou heard which this forbade ?
Antigone-I could not choose but hear what all men heard.
Creon- And didst thou dare to disobey the law?
Antigone-Nowise from Zeus, methought, this edict came,
Nor Justice, that abides among the gods
In Hades, who ordained these laws for men.
Nor did I deem thine edicts of such force
That they, a mortal's bidding, should o'erride
## p. 13652 (#474) ##########################################
13652
SOPHOCLES
Unwritten laws, eternal in the heavens.
Not of to-day or yesterday are these;
But live from everlasting, and from whence
They sprang none knoweth. I would not, for the breach
Of these, through fear of any human pride,
To Heaven atone. I knew that I must die:
How else? without thine edict that were so;
And if before my time,-why, this were gain,
Compassed about with ills; - who lives as I,
Death to such life as his must needs be gain.
So is it to me to undergo this doom
No grief at all: but had I left my brother,
My mother's child, unburied where he lay,
Then I had grieved; but now this grieves me not.
Senseless I seem to thee, so doing? Belike
A senseless judgment finds me void of sense.
But as she consciously faces death for an idea, she may rather
be enrolled in the noble army of martyrs who suffer in the broad
daylight of clear conviction, than among the more deeply tried, like
Orestes and Hamlet, who in doubt and darkness have striven to feel
out a great mystery, and in their very failure have "purified the ter-
ror and the pity," as Aristotle puts it, of awe-struck humanity. A
martyr for a great and recognized truth, for the laws of God against
the laws of man, is not the most perfect central figure for a tragedy
in the highest Greek sense. Hence I regard myself justified in call-
ing this famous play rather an exquisite dramatic poem than a very
great tragedy. With consummate art, the poet makes Antigone a
somewhat harsh character. She stands up before Creon; she answers
his threats with bold contumacy.
"How in the child the sternness of the sire
Shows stern, before the storm untaught to bend! "
She even despises and casts aside her more feminine sister Ismene,—
who at first counseled submission, but who stands nobly by Antigone
when her trial before Creon comes, and is ready to go to death for a
breach of the law which she had not committed; but Antigone will
have neither her companionship nor her sympathy. The fatal effects
of the ancestral curse on the house of Edipus are indeed often men-
tioned, and would be, to a Greek audience, a quite sufficient cause
for the misfortunes of Antigone; but her character, together with
that of the weak and misguided figures around her, make the plot
quite independent of this deeper mystery,- the hereditary nature not
only of sin and crime, but of suffering.
## p. 13653 (#475) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13653
The very
Thus she stands alone, amid the weak and selfish.
watchman who comes with the news of her capture as she was tend-
ing the outcast corpse is so cowardly in his views and so homely in
his language as to afford a contrast to the high tragic vein such as
we meet in Shakespeare, but what the more ceremonious tragedy of
the French would avoid as unseemly.
The intention of the poet to isolate Antigone in her conflict with
the ruler of the State is most strongly marked in his treatment of
Hæmon, Creon's son, who is betrothed to the princess. How can a
heroine be isolated when she has the support of her lover? This is
indeed the point in which the tragedy of Sophocles is most to be
contrasted with any conceivable modern treatment of the subject;
even, so far as we can tell from scanty allusions, contrasted with
its treatment by his younger rival Euripides. Hæmon does indeed
come upon the stage to plead for Antigone, but wholly upon public
grounds: that her violation of Creon's edict has the sympathy of the
public, and will bring the tyrant into disrepute and danger. But
though his father taunts him with having personal interests behind
his arguments, and though the chorus, when he rushes away to his
suicide, indicate very plainly that love is the exciting cause of his
interference, not one word of personal pleading for his betrothed
as such escapes from his lips.
The brief choral ode just mentioned is so famous that we quote
it here entire:-
-
STROPHE
Chorus O Love, our conqueror, matchless in might,
Thou prevailest, O Love, thou dividest the prey;
In damask cheeks of a maiden
Thy watch through the night is set.
Thou roamest over the sea;
On the hills, in the shepherds' huts, thou art;
Nor of deathless gods, nor of short-lived men,
From thy madness any escapeth.
ANTISTROPHE
Unjust, through thee, are the thoughts of the just;
Thou dost bend them, O Love, to thy will, to thy spite.
Unkindly strife thou hast kindled,
This wrangling of son with sire.
For great laws, throned in the heart,
To the sway of a rival power give place,
To the love-light flashed from a fair bride's eyes.
Antigone, when she sings her long musical threnody or lament,
as she goes to her death, does not call upon her lover to mourn her
## p. 13654 (#476) ##########################################
13654
SOPHOCLES
personal loss, but rather bewails her loss of the joys and dignities of
the married state,- exactly what a modern heroine would have kept
in the background. She quails however at the presence of death,
which she had faced with contemptuous boldness at the opening of
the piece; thus showing a human inconsistency very unlike that of
Euripides's great heroines, Iphigenia in Aulis, for example, who first
wails bitterly and pleads passionately for life, and then rises above
all her weakness and faces her actual doom with glorious courage.
But these are the independent standpoints of two great poets; both
are human: and though I personally prefer the latter type, others
may prefer the former.
――
The whole play is but one instance of the subject Sophocles seems
to have preferred to any other: the exhibition of a strong human
will, based upon a moral conviction, dashing itself against the obsta-
cles of fate, of human ordinance, of physical weakness, and showing
its ineradicable dignity-
"Though heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom. ”
Let us next consider the very kindred 'Electra. ' Here we have
the rare opportunity of comparing the handling of the same subject
by the three great tragedians; the extant Choephori' of Eschylus
and the 'Electra' of Euripides all dealing with the vengeance of
Orestes upon his mother Clytemnestra, who had treacherously mur-
dered his father Agamemnon, and was living with her paramour
Ægisthus. The outline of the tragedy is therefore strikingly similar
to the play of 'Hamlet,' in which the conflict of dread duties seems
to unhinge the mind of the prince upon whom the action devolves.
Eschylus alone, however, feels the gravity of the crime of matricide
to be such that no guilt on the queen mother's part can justify it;
while the other two Greek poets regard it as mere lawful vengeance.
These profound questions, however, are rather to be discussed in
connection with Eschylus than with Sophocles; and for my part, I
cannot but award the older poet the palm in this splendid competi-
tion. The Greek legend had a feature quite strange to Shakespeare:
a sister of the exiled prince living in the palace, watching daily
her mother's disgrace, suffering persecution from her, and hoping
against hope for the return of her brother, while at open and angry
variance with the reigning king and queen. This is the character
that Sophocles has chosen for his principal study. She is, like Antig-
one, harsh and uncompromising: rude to her weaker sister, who will
not protest enough against the crimes of the house; bursting into a
paroxysm of grief when she thinks her hopes annulled; and setting
## p. 13655 (#477) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13655
on her brother, when she recognizes him, to do the bloody vengeance,
without the smallest compunction. In the course of the play the
pretended urn of Orestes's ashes is brought in: but this device, well
conceived to lull the suspicions of the guilty pair, is made the occas-
ion not only of a brilliant fabrication of the circumstances of his
death, but also of a pathetic lament over the empty urn by Electra;
splendid passages no doubt, but of no effect upon the spectator, who
knows that both are the produce of a fraud.
Electra [holding the supposed urn of Orestes's ashes] -
O poor last relic of Orestes's life,—
Dearest of men to me,- with hopes how other
Than forth I sent do I receive thee back!
Now in these hands I take thee, and thou art naught;
But beautiful and bright I sent thee forth,
Child, from thy home. Oh, would that I had died
Or ever to a strange land I sent thee hence,
And stole thee in my arms and saved from death,
When on that day thou mightest have lain dead,
And of thy father's tomb have earned a share.
Now, far from home, in a strange land exiled,
A woeful end was thine, no sister near;
And woe is me, I neither laved thy limbs
And decked with loving hands, nor, as was meet,
Snatched this sad burthen from the scorching fire:
By hands of strangers tended thou art come,
A little handful in this little urn.
Alas for me my nursing long ago,-
Unprofitable care, that with sweet pain
I ofttimes spent for thee: for thou wast never
Thy mother's darling,- rather mine; nor they
O' the house, but I it was, whom all were wont
Sister at once to call and nurse of thee.
Now thou art dead, and all in a day these things
Have ceased to be; all with thy passing swept
As by a whirlwind hence. Thy father is gone,
And I am dead, thy sister; and thine own life
Has past from earth. Our foes ugh us to scorn,
Our mother-nay, no mother-is mad with joy:
Of whom so often thou didst send secret word
Thou'dst come to be avenged on her; but now
Hard fortune, thine and mine, robs me of this,
Sending me hither, in thy dear body's stead,
Mere dust and shadow of thee, and good for naught.
Ah me, alas!
-
## p. 13656 (#478) ##########################################
13656
SOPHOCLES
Oh, piteous ashes! alas and woe is me!
Oh, sadly, strangely –
Alas, my brother! —
Thus journeying hither, how me thou hast undone!
Undone undone indeed, O brother mine!
Therefore to thy dark chamber take me in;
Me, dust to dust, receive: that I may dwell
Henceforth i' the dark with thee. For, living, I shared
With thee and shared alike; and now in death
Not to be sundered from thy tomb I crave,
For in the grave I see that grief is not.
--
This composing of splendid poetry for a fictitious situation seems to
me the point of dramatic weakness in the piece.
pass to the much more interesting, though less appreciated,
'Trachiniæ. ' It was named by the poet not after the principal char-
acter, but as was the habit of Eschylus, after the chorus; and not
because that chorus occupied, as it did in Æschylus, the leading part
in the play, but that the poet must have felt a difficulty in selecting
his title rôle. To the ancients, as to Euripides, the death of Hera-
cles was the real core of the story; and the conclusion of Sophocles's
play, in which this event occurs, was accordingly to them the princi-
pal moment in the action: whereas Sophocles makes the interest
centre in Dejanira,—perhaps an early attempt to make a heroine
more important than the men of the play. Yet the character of
Dejanira can only be compared with the second-rate Tecmessa in the
'Ajax,' and differs completely from the first-class heroines we have
just considered. Nevertheless there is the deepest pathos in his draw-
ing of a loving, patient wife, widowed afresh for weary months while
the roving Heracles seeks new adventures, and now distracted by the
want of all news for a full year. His enforced absence (to atone for
a homicide), his careful disposition of his affairs at his departure, and
the voice of vague oracles, fill her soul with dark foreboding. Her
son Hyllus is sent out for news; and the chorus of the maidens of
Trachis come in to cheer and encourage the anxious wife, who envies
their virgin days of security, and reflects on the troubles of married
life.
Hyllus-Nay, mother, I will go; and had I known
What was foretold, I had been there long since.
Only his constant fortune suffered me not
To fear for him, nor overmuch to doubt.
Now that I know, trust me, I shall not spare
Pains in the quest until I find the truth.
## p. 13657 (#479) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13657
Dejanira-Go then, my son.
Chorus -
Good news, though it come late,
So it might come at last is fraught with gain.
STROPHE I
Thee whom the starry night,
Beneath the spoiler's hand
Breathing her last, brings forth,
Whom then she lays to sleep,-
Thee, Sun-god, thee bright-burning I implore,-
O tell me of Alcmena's son,
O thou, whose rays are as the lightnings bright:
Where, where he dwelleth,—
Defiles of the Egean threading,
Or from mid-strait beholding either continent,—
O tell me, god of keenest sight!
ANTISTROPHE I
For with an ever-hungry heart, they say,
Fair Dejanira, she for whom the suitors strove,
Like some unhappy bird,
Lulls never into tearless sleep
That hunger of her eyes;
But unforgetful fear
For him, her absent lord,
She entertaining, pines
Upon her widowed couch of care,-
Ill-starred, foreboding all distressful chance.
STROPHE II
For, as before the untiring blast of south or north,
Across the boundless sea
We watch the march of waves
That come, and ever come,-
Even so upon this son of Cadmus's house attends
His hard life's toilsomeness,
Increasing more and more;
Of troubles a Cretan sea.
But from the halls of death
Some god restrains his feet,
Suffering them not to stray.
ANTISTROPHE II
-
Therefore I chide thee, and this word
Of contradiction, not ungrateful, I will speak:
## p. 13658 (#480) ##########################################
13658
SOPHOCLES
I say thou dost not well
To kill the better hope.
For think, a lot exempt from pain
The son of Cronos, king who governs all,
Ordainèd not for men.
To all men sorrow and joy alternate come,
Revolving, as in heaven
The twisting courses of the Bear.
EPODE
For neither starry night
Abides with men, nor death, nor wealth-
But quickly it is gone;
And now another learns
The changeful tale of joy and loss.
Therefore I counsel thee, the queen,
To keep this ever in thy hopes:
For when was Zeus so careless for his sons?
Dejanira-Ye come, I must conjecture, having heard.
My trouble; but how the trouble eats my heart,
Ye know not,-may ye not by suffering learn.
In such a well-fenced place, in native soil,
The tender plant grows, where no sun may scorch,
Nor rain nor any wind is rough with it;
Upward a painless pleasant life it lifts.
Until such time the maiden is called a wife:
And in a night her share of trouble comes,-
By husband or by children made afraid.
Suddenly comes the news of her husband's return; and the spoils
are brought in, among whom a fair captive (lole) excites Dejanira's
interest, especially as she can learn nothing concerning her, from
the herald Lichas who has escorted her, or from the girl herself
who maintains an obstinate silence. Of course it very soon comes
out that this is the new flame for whom the truant hero has sacked
Echalia, and that she has come no ordinary captive to the house.
Dejanira's speech charging the herald Lichas to tell her the whole
truth, is full of pathos.
Dejanira-
Mad indeed were I myself
To blame this maiden, cause with him of that
Which causes me no shame, does me no wrong.
I cannot blame. But now, if taught of him
You lie, no noble lesson have you learned;
## p. 13659 (#481) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13659
Chorus
Or if you school yourself, take heed lest then
You be found cruel when you would be kind.
Nay, tell me all the truth: to be called false
Is for free men no honorable lot.
That you should 'scape discovery cannot be :
Many are they who heard you, and will speak.
And if you are afraid, you fear amiss:
For not to know - this would afflict me; but
Fear not my knowing: hath not Heracles
Loved many another-most of all men he?
And never any of them bore from me
Harsh word or gibe: nor shall, howe'er she be
Consumed with love, this maiden; nay, for her
Most of them all I pity, having seen
That 'twas her beauty that made waste her life,-
Poor soul, who sacked, unwitting, and enslaved,
The city of her home. But now I charge thee,
Heed not what winds blow whither: but be false
To others if thou wilt; to me speak truth.
When considering this largeness of heart regarding her husband's
new passion, we must remember we are reading of Greek heroic
times and manners, when such license, though censured as bringing
discord into a household, was in no way regarded as the violation of
a moral law. The chorus in a very fine ode recalls the desperate
struggle of Heracles for the possession of this very Dejanira, whom
he has now slighted and forgotten. But her charms are fading, while
Iole is in the first flush of youth. Then comes her hasty resolve to
send him as a present, which she had been preparing for his return,
the "shirt of Nessus» anointed with the deadly poison of the Cen-
taur's wound. She has been unaware of its fatal power; but the wool
she had used to anoint the present takes fire when heated by the
sun, and before the news comes back she has anticipated the whole
catastrophe. Then follows the terrible narrative of Hyllus, and his
fierce accusation of his mother, who rushes in the silence of desper-
ate resolve from the stage. After an interrupting chorus, her death-
scene is affectingly told by her nurse.
Remorse, or what fierce fit
Of madness was it,- the fatal thrust
So murderously dealt? How compassed she
Death piled on death,-
Wild work for one weak hand to do?
## p. 13660 (#482) ##########################################
13660
SOPHOCLES
Nurse
Chorus
-
___________
Near as I stand to you, I stood and saw.
Nurse
Chorus-
How was it? The manner? Tell me all.
Nurse Herself, and of herself, she did this thing.
13638
SOCRATES
kill himself, steal or take away his sword, or any other weapon,
under which head must we place that act? " "That, assuredly,
we must place under justice. "-"You say, then," said Socrates,
"that not even towards our friends must we act on all occasions
without deceit ? " "We must not indeed," said he; "for I retract
what I said before, if I may be permitted to do so. " "It is
indeed much better that you should be permitted," said Socrates,
"than that you should not place actions on the right side. But
of those who deceive their friends in order to injure them (that
we may not leave even this point unconsidered), which of the
two is the more unjust,- he who does so intentionally or he
who does so involuntarily? " "Indeed, Socrates," said Euthyde-
mus, "I no longer put confidence in the answers which I give;
for all that I said before appears to me now to be quite different
from what I then thought: however, let me venture to say that
he who deceives intentionally is more unjust than he who deceives
involuntarily? "
"Does it appear to you, then, that there is a way of learning
and knowing what is just, as there is of learning and knowing
how to read and write ? " "I think there is. "-"And which
should you consider the better scholar, him who should purposely
write or read incorrectly, or him who should do so unawares ? »
"Him who should do so purposely; for whenever he pleased,
he would be able to do both correctly. "-"He therefore that
purposely writes incorrectly may be a good scholar, but he who
does so involuntarily is destitute of scholarship? " "How can it
be otherwise? "-"And whether does he who lies and deceives
intentionally know what is just, or he who does so unawares? "
"Doubtless he who does so intentionally. " "You therefore say
that he who knows how to write and read is a better scholar
than he who does not know? " "Yes. " — "And that he who
knows what is just is more just than he who does not know? "
"I seem to say so; but I appear to myself to say this I know
not how. "-"But what would you think of the man who, wish-
ing to tell the truth, should never give the same account of the
same thing, but in speaking of the same road, should say at one
time that it led towards the east, and at another towards the
west, and in stating the result of the same calculation, should
sometimes assert it to be greater and sometimes less,-what, I
say, would you think of such a man? " "It would be quite clear
that he knew nothing of what he thought he knew. "
---
## p. 13639 (#457) ##########################################
SOCRATES
13639
"I do. "
-
"Do you know any persons called slave-like ? »
"Whether for their knowledge or their ignorance ? » "For their
ignorance, certainly. "—"Is it then for their ignorance of working
in brass that they receive this appellation? " "Not at all. " — " Is
it for their ignorance of the art of building? " "Nor for that. ”—
"Or for their ignorance of shoemaking? " "Not on any one of
these accounts; for the contrary is the case, as most of those who
know such trades are servile. "—"Is this, then, an appellation of
those who are ignorant of what is honorable, and good, and
just? " "It appears so to me. " "It therefore becomes us to
exert ourselves in every way to avoid being like slaves. "
by the gods, Socrates," rejoined Euthydemus, "I firmly believed
that I was pursuing that course of study by which I should, as
I expected, be made fully acquainted with all that was proper
to be known by a man striving after honor and virtue; but
now, how dispirited must you think I feel, when I see that with
all my previous labor, I am not even able to answer a question
about what I ought most of all to know, and am acquainted with
no other course which I may pursue to become better! "
"But,
-
DUTY OF POLITICIANS TO QUALIFY THEMSELVES
From Xenophon's 'Memorabilia ›
.
“IT
T IS plain, Glaucon, that if you wish to be honored, you must
benefit the State. " "Certainly," replied Glaucon. "Then,"
. said Socrates,
"inform us with what pro-
ceeding you will begin to benefit the State?
As, if you
wished to aggrandize the family of a friend, you would endeavor
to make it richer, tell me whether you will in like manner also
endeavor to make the State richer? " "Assuredly," said he. -
"Would it then be richer if its revenues were increased? "—" That
is at least probable," said Glaucon. "Tell me then," proceeded
Socrates, "from what the revenues of the State arise, and what
is their amount; for you have doubtless considered, in order that
if any of them fall short, you may make up the deficiency, and
that if any of them fail, you may procure fresh supplies. " "These
matters, by Jupiter," replied Glaucon, "I have not considered. "
"Well then," said Socrates,
"tell me at least the annual
expenditure of the State; for you undoubtedly mean to retrench
whatever is superfluous in it. " "Indeed," replied Glaucon, "I
have not yet had time to turn my attention to that subject. "
•
•
-
## p. 13640 (#458) ##########################################
13640
SOCRATES
"Then," said Socrates, "we will put off making our State richer
for the present; for how is it possible for him who is ignorant
of its expenditure and its income to manage those matters ?
Tell us the strength of the country by land and sea, and next that
of our enemies. " "But, by Jupiter," exclaimed Glaucon, "I should
not be able to tell you on the moment, and at a word. "
« Well
then, if you have it written down," said Socrates, "bring it; for
I should be extremely glad to hear what it is. "
"But to say
the truth," replied Glaucon, "I have not yet written it down. ”
"We will therefore put off considering about war for the pres-
ent," said Socrates.
"You propose a vast field for me,"
observed Glaucon, "if it will be necessary for me to attend to
such subjects. " "Nevertheless," proceeded Socrates, "a man can-
not order his house properly, unless he ascertains all that it
requires, and takes care to supply it with everything necessary;
but since the city consists of more than ten thousand houses,
and it is difficult to provide for so many at once, how is it that
you have not tried to aid one first of all? -say that of your
uncle, for it stands in need of help. "
"But I would im-
prove my uncle's house," said Glaucon, "if he would only be per-
suaded by me. " "Then," resumed Socrates, "when you cannot
persuade your uncle, do you expect to make all the Athenians,
together with your uncle, yield to your arguments? . . . Do
you not see how dangerous it is for a person to speak of, or
undertake, what he does not understand? .
If therefore you
desire to gain esteem and reputation in your country, endeavor
to succeed in gaining a knowledge of what you wish to do. "
BEFORE THE TRIAL
From Xenophon's Memorabilia ›
ERMOGENES SON of Hipponicus
H
said that after Meletus
had laid the accusation against him, he heard him speaking
on any subject rather than that of his trial, and remarked
to him that he ought to consider what defense he should make;
but that he said at first, "Do I not appear to you to have passed
my whole life meditating on that subject? " and then, when he
asked him "How so? " he said "he had gone through life doing
nothing but considering what was just and what unjust, doing
the just and abstaining from the unjust; which he conceived
to be the best meditation for his defense. " Hermogenes said
## p. 13641 (#459) ##########################################
SOCRATES
13641
again, "But do you not see, Socrates, that the judges at Athens
have already put to death many innocent persons, on account of
being offended at their language, and have allowed many that
were guilty to escape? " "But, by Jupiter, Hermogenes," replied
he, "when I was proceeding, awhile ago, to study my address to
the judges, the dæmon testified disapprobation. " "You say what
is strange," rejoined Hermogenes. "And do you think it
strange," inquired Socrates, "that it should seem better to the
divinity that I should now close my life? Do you not know that
down to the present time, I would not admit to any man that he
has lived either better or with more pleasure than myself? for I
consider that those live best who study best to become as good.
as possible; and that those live with most pleasure who feel the
most assurance that they are daily growing better and better.
This assurance I have felt, to the present day, to be the case
with respect to myself; and associating with other men, and
comparing myself with others, I have always retained this opinion
respecting myself: and not only I, but my friends also, main-
tain a similar feeling with regard to me; not because they love
me (for those who love others may be thus affected towards
the objects of their love), but because they think that while they
associated with me they became greatly advanced in virtue. If I
shall live a longer period, perhaps I shall be destined to sustain
the evils of old age, to find my sight and hearing weakened, to
feel my intellect impaired, to become less apt to learn and more
forgetful, and in fine, to grow inferior to others in all those
qualities in which I was once superior to them. If I should be
insensible to this deterioration, life would not be worth retaining;
and if I should feel it, how could I live otherwise than with less
profit, and with less comfort? If I am to die unjustly, my death
will be a disgrace to those who unjustly kill me; for if injustice.
is a disgrace, must it not be a disgrace to do anything unjustly?
But what disgrace will it be to me, that others could not decide
or act justly with regard to me? Of the men who have lived
before me, I see that the estimation left among posterity with
regard to such as have done wrong, and such as have suffered
wrong, is by no means similar; and I know that I also, if I now
die, shall obtain from mankind far different consideration from
that which they will pay to those who take my life: for I know
they will always bear witness to me that I have never wronged
any man, or rendered any man less virtuous, but that I have
always endeavored to make those better who conversed with me. "
## p. 13642 (#460) ##########################################
13642
SOLON
(638-559? B. C. )
OETRY is older than prose. Familiar as this assertion is, it yet
rings like a paradox, and is still often received with incre-
dulity. Indeed, it needs exposition, if not qualification. Of
course the rude beginnings of human speech-whatever their origin
were not rhythmical in any high artistic sense. But as soon as
men invoked the aid of "Memory, mother of the Muses," when they
wished to fix firmly, in the mind of the individual or of the clan, some
basic principle of justice, some heroic exploit, some tragic incident,-
then a regular recurrent movement of lan-
guage, effectively accompanied by drum or
foot beat, would almost instinctively be
sought and found. Hence the early and
all-but universal rise of the popular bal-
lad, the "folk-song. "
SOLON
That two great masses of hexameter
verse, and naught else, crossed successfully
the gulf into which the Homeric civiliza-
tion fell, is not perhaps so strange. Simi-
larly a Nibelungenlied, the Sagas, the Lays
of the Troubadours, float to us, bringing
almost the only distinct tidings from phases
of life else utterly sunken and forgotten.
But when the grave practical problems of civic organization and
foreign war were first effectively debated in the Athens of Solon, it
does strike us with surprise, that even the great lawgiver habitually
"recited a poem. " The dominant influence of Homeric epic doubt-
less aided largely here also. There are few loftier or stronger ora-
tions left us, even by the ten orators of the canon, than the speeches
in which Achilles justifies his withdrawal from the war, or Priam
pleads for mercy toward Hector dead. Then too, even this ruder
early Athenian folk can have been no ordinary race of tradesmen
or farmers. Many generations of artistic growth must have preceded
Eschylus and Phidias. Their language itself is sufficient evidence
of a shaping and molding instinct pervading a whole people. Indeed,
that language is already the plastic material waiting for the poet;
just as the melodious Italian speech performs beforehand for the
improvisator more than half his task.
## p. 13643 (#461) ##########################################
SOLON
13643
Moreover, even the prose of Demosthenes and his rivals is itself
no less truly rhythmical. It is subject to euphonic law which it
easily obeys, and of which-like great poetry-it makes a glorious
ornament instead of a fetter.
Solon's elegies, then, are poetical in form, largely because artistic
prose was not yet invented, and because Solon wished his memora-
ble words to be preserved in the memory of his Athenians. They
are not creative and imaginative poetry at all. Full of sound ethical
teaching, shot through by occasional graces of phrase and fancy,
warming to enthusiasm on the themes of patriotism and piety, they
still remain at best in that borderland where a rhymed satire by Dr.
Johnson or a versified essay of Pope must also abide. Nearly every-
thing they offer us could have been as well and effectively said out-
side the forms of verse. This is the just and final test of the poet's
gold, but how much, even of what we prize, would bear that test
without appreciable loss?
Among creators of constitutions, Solon deservedly holds a very
high-perhaps the highest-place. His first public proposal, indeed,
was one to which he could hope to rally the support of all classes:
the reconquest of the lovely island of Salamis, lying close to the
Attic shores, and destined to give its name to the proudest day in
Athenian annals. With Spartan help it was actually wrested again
from Megara.
This success hastened the selection of Solon as mediator between
the bitterly hostile factions of a people on the verge of civil war.
By the desperate remedy of a depreciated coinage the debtor class
was relieved. Imprisonment or enslavement of innocent debtors was
abolished. Solon's political reforms left the fulcrum of power, at
least temporarily, among the wealthier and landed classes; and tended
at any rate to educate the common people to wield wisely that civic
supremacy which he may have foreseen to be inevitably theirs in
subsequent generations.
The story of Solon's prolonged voluntary exile-in order to cut off
any proposals for further change while his institutions endured the
test of years
may be pure invention. Certainly his famous meet-
ing with Croesus of Lydia, at the height of that monarch's power,
must be given up. Solon died before Croesus can have become lord
of Western Asia. On the other hand, his fearless disapproval of his
young kinsman, the "tyrant" Pisistratus, is at least probable. His
answer when asked what made him thus fearless: -"Old age! ” —
reminds us of Socrates. Solon's larger measures outlived the too
aggressive protectorate of Pisistratus, and remained the permanent
basis of the Athenian constitution. The tolerant, genial, self-forgetful,
and fearless character of the man was a legacy hardly less precious
to his countrymen; and they were nowise ungrateful to his memory.
―
## p. 13644 (#462) ##########################################
13644
SOLON
Solon's poetry comes to us almost wholly in the elegiac couplet.
This variation on the hexameter was the first invented form of
stanza, and appears to have been hit upon in the seventh century
B. C. It had for a time almost as many-sided currency as our own
heroic couplet or rhymed pentameter; but was soon displaced in
great degree by the iambic trimeter, which, like our "blank verse,"
was extremely close to the average movement of a colloquial prose
sentence. This latter rhythm (which is also used by Solon) became
the favorite form, in particular, for the dialogue of Attic drama.
Hence, even in the fifth century, both hexameter proper and the ele-
giac had already come to be somewhat archaic and artificial. This
is still truer of such verse in Latin; though Ovid wears the bonds
of elegiac with consummate ease and grace. In modern speech it is
all-but impossible. Longfellow composed, in his later years, clever
renderings from several of Ovid's 'Tristia'; but the best isolated ex-
amples are Clough's preludes to the 'Amours de Voyage,' especially
the verses on the undying charm of Rome:-
"Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,
Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?
Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,
Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate? »
But he would be a bold adventurer who would attempt to make
our Anglo-Saxon speech dance in this measure, while fast bound to
the practical prosaic ideas of Solon's political harangues!
There is no satisfactory annotation or translation of Solon's frag-
ments. They have been somewhat increased by citations in the
recently discovered Aristotelian Constitution of Athens'; and would
make a fruitful subject for a monograph, in which poetical taste,
knowledge of history, and philological acumen, might all work in
harmony.
[NOTE. The essentially prosaic character of Solon's thought makes him
doubly ineffective in translation. He seems to be hardly represented at all
in English versions. Neither of the experiments here appended satisfies the
translator himself. Solon's iambics are not quite so slow and prose-like as our
"blank verse. >> On the other hand, the Omar-like quatrain into which Mr.
Newcomer has fallen is both swifter and more ornate than the unapproachable
elegiac couplet of the Greeks. ]
DEFENSE OF HIS DICTATORSHIP
Y WITNESS in the court of Time shall be
The mighty mother of Olympian gods,
The dusky Earth,- grateful that I plucked up
The boundary stones that were so thickly set;
M
## p. 13645 (#463) ##########################################
SOLON
13645
So she, enslaved before, is now made free.
To Athens, too, their god-built native town,
Many have I restored that had been sold,
Some justly, some unfairly; some again
Perforce through death in exile. They no more
Could speak our language, wanderers so long.
Others, who shameful slavery here at home
Endured, in terror at their lords' caprice,
I rendered free again.
This in my might
I did, uniting right and violence;
And what I had promised, so I brought to pass.
For base and noble equal laws I made,
Securing justice promptly for them both. -
Another one than I, thus whip in hand,
An avaricious evil-minded man,
Would not have checked the folk, nor left his post
Till he had stolen the rich cream away!
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature› by W. C. Lawton.
SOLON SPEAKS HIS MIND TO THE ATHENIANS
EVER shall this our city fall by fate
Of Zeus and the blest gods from her estate,
So noble a warder, Pallas Athena, stands
NEV
With hands uplifted at the city's gate.
But her own citizens do strip and slay,
Led by the folly of their hearts astray,
And the unjust temper of her demagogues,—
Whose pride will tumble to its fall some day.
For they know not to hold in check their greed,
Nor soberly on the spread feast to feed;
But still by lawless deeds enrich themselves,
And spare not for the gods' or people's need.
They take but a thief's count of thine and mine;
They care no whit for Justice's holy shrine,—
Who sits in silence, knowing what things are done,
Yet in the end brings punishment condign.
See this incurable sore the State consume!
Oh, rapid are her strides to slavery's doom,
Who stirs up civil strife and sleeping war
That cuts down many a young man in his bloom.
## p. 13646 (#464) ##########################################
13646
SOLON
Such are the evils rife at home; while lo,
To foreign shores in droves the poor-folk go,
Sold, and perforce bound with disfiguring chains,
And knowing all the shame that bondsmen know.
So from the assembly-place to each fireside
The evil spreads; and though the court-doors bide
Its bold assault, over the wall it leaps
And finds them that in inmost chambers hide. -
Thus to the Athenians to speak, constrains
My soul: Il fares the State where License reigns;
But Law brings order and concordant peace,
And fastens on the unjust, speedy chains.
She tames, and checks, and chastens; blasts the bud
Of springing folly; cools the intemperate blood;
Makes straight the crooked; - she draws after her
All right and wisdom like a tide at flood.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature' by
A. G. Newcomer
TWO FRAGMENTS
I
GAVE the people freedom clear
But neither flattery nor fear;
I told the rich and noble race
To crown their state with modest grace:
And placed a shield in either's hand,
Wherewith in safety both might stand.
—
THE people love their rulers best
When neither cringed to nor opprest.
From an article on Greek Elegy' in British Quarterly Review, Vol. xlviii. ,
page 87
## p. 13646 (#465) ##########################################
## p. 13646 (#466) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES.
## p. 13646 (#467) ##########################################
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## p. 13646 (#468) ##########################################
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## p. 13647 (#469) ##########################################
13647
SOPHOCLES
(495-405? B. C. )
BY J. P. MAHAFFY
F THE reader should remark with surprise that I do not intro-
duce this study with an account of the parentage, family
circumstances, and descendants of so great a figure in the
history of art, he will be led to consider a very interesting feature,
- not unique, but very characteristic of Sophocles and his age. I
do not feel bound to give the reader any idle details about him, such
as the record of an obscure father or an equally obscure son,- of no
use except to burden the memory with useless names, unless it
be to remind us that the gift of genius is isolated and not an affair
of heredity. We have not yet extorted from Nature the method, far
less the secret, of its production. But were I disposed to gather
all the gossip about the poet, and write a chronicle of his life such
as the idler and the scandal-monger think so interesting, there are no
materials extant; nor were they extant even in the generations that
followed close upon his death. Living in a brilliant age, the con-
temporary and probably the companion of splendid intellects in
sciences, arts, politics,- he lived a life, like our own Shakespeare,
only surprising us from its utter want of social importance or of
social interest. If he performed public duties, it was done without
exciting any comment; if he was the intimate of great men, it was
as a jovial associate, not as a strong and leading personality. If he
had no enemies, he probably owed it to a want of interest in aught
beyond his art; if he was the favorite of the Attic theatre, he was
certainly not its idol, for some of his finest works were defeated in
competition with those of far inferior poets. If the fable that his
ungrateful children tried to oust him from the management of his
property on the ground of decrepitude have any truth to tell us, it is
that he showed that indolence in practical affairs which has often
kept even the most exalted genius from gaining any importance in
public life.
Thus Sophocles lives for us only in his works, as Shakespeare
does; and very possibly it is for this very reason that both are to us
the most faithful mirrors of all that was greatest and unique in their
splendid epochs.
The life of Sophocles was exactly conterminous
## p. 13648 (#470) ##########################################
13648
SOPHOCLES
with the great Athenian empire; an infant at its dawn with the
battle of Marathon (490 B. C. ), he passed away full of years, in time
to escape the downfall of his country at Ægospotami (405 B. C. ).
His maturity was the maturity of the most brilliant society the world
has yet seen.
In the Athens where he lived all his life, and where
his handsome figure was familiar to every citizen, he was either the
intimate or the acquaintance of Pericles, of Phidias, of Herodotus, of
Thucydides, of Socrates, of Anaxagoras, of Ictinus, of Mnesicles, repre-
senting politics, history, philosophy, architecture. His rivals in the
drama were Æschylus and Euripides. Nor may we doubt that among
the crowd of artists, orators, men of letters of less note in our scanty
annals of that day, there were many not less able and stimulating in
their conversation than those who perhaps talked little because they
were working for posterity. Socrates, the greatest talker of them all,
left no written record behind him. Those that wrote great books or
accomplished great works of art men like Sophocles-left no per-
sonal opinions, no evidence of their private life, to posterity. Of
Pericles we know hardly anything but his public acts; and were it
not for Plutarch's 'Life,' which gathered what could be found of
tradition and of anecdote after four centuries had passed away, we
should know nothing but these acts. Of Phidias and Polycletus the
sculptors, of Ictinus the designer and builder of the Parthenon, of
Eschylus and Euripides the great rival dramatists, we know but
snatches of idle gossip, or the inventions of disappointed anecdotists.
All these personages are, however, the constituents of the Periclean
age; they are absorbed into its splendid life. As every citizen is
exhorted in the Thucydidean paraphrases of Pericles's eloquence, it
is the greatness and the glory of Athens which makes the greatness
and the happiness of all her citizens. Private affairs at such an
epoch sink into utter insignificance. Each man is valued for his con-
tribution to the public life of the city; and therefore each great art-
ist of that day, whatever the species of his art, strives mainly to
express Attic purity, Attic grace, Attic power.
In the case of no member of that matchless company is this so
true as in the case of Sophocles; his whole genius is essentially Attic,
and even Attic of that special generation, both in its perfection and
in its limitation. Never was such perfection attained, nor is it attain-
able, without many limitations. Sophocles, for example, is smaller
than Eschylus, whose colossal conceptions outstrip the Greek horizon,
and combine Hellenic force and beauty with Semitic gloom and grand-
eur. Sophocles is narrower than Euripides, who embraced every
human sympathy in his pictures of life. But this life is often too
poor and mean even as the ideas of Eschylus are too vague, and
his language too pompous-for the perfect bloom of the Attic stage.
-
-
## p. 13649 (#471) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13649
Critics ancient and modern are agreed that the intermediate attitude
of Sophocles - not only in his person, but in his art-attained that
highest perfection, which lasts but a moment and is marred by the
smallest change. They will not allow any imperfection in the poet,
the most modest right of criticism in his exponent. We have nothing
but a chorus of praise. But this is no intelligent appreciation. Let
us rather seek to question him as men, than to run after him like
wondering children.
We have only seven plays extant from the large number that he
wrote. In those days a tragic poet, himself an actor, devoted his life
to the drama; and apparently competed at least every second year in
the trial of new tragedies. So far as we know, only three poets were
admitted to each contest; but as each of them then put a group of
three plays and an afterpiece upon the stage, the labor of so doing
at frequent intervals must have been very arduous. (We have only
one specimen of a whole group of three preserved, and that is by
Eschylus. In all the rest the leading favorite play of a group has
been preserved by the reading public. We are told that Sophocles so.
loosened the connection in his group that each play could stand by
itself. ) It is well, however, to observe in limitation of our estimate
that each play was shorter than the average of our five-act dramas:
the extant trilogy of Æschylus is not as long as the single play of
'Hamlet. ' But if the alleged number of his tragedies-seventy, with
eighteen satiric afterpieces — be correct, no great poet ever bequeathed
a larger heritage to posterity. Yet perhaps the small remnant which
has escaped the shipwreck of time has maintained his reputation
as well as if the whole treasure had come down to us. In our own
literature, Gray and Coleridge take their high rank in spite of the
scantiness of their works; among the Greeks, we even recognize
the greatness of Sappho in the few quotations from her lyrics that
have survived. It cannot, therefore, be maintained that we have no
sufficient means of judging Sophocles; very possibly a larger bequest
might have disclosed to us works weaker and less characteristic than
those now before us, of which several were noted in antiquity as
among his noblest efforts. The first and last in order, both of which
obtained the first prize,- the 'Antigone' and the 'Philoctetes,' — are
not superior to the rest. But even the former, brought out in 440
B. C. , and numbered by the critics as his Opus 32, was the play of
no youngster; for he had defeated the older master Æschylus twenty-
eight years before. This was the celebrated occasion when Cimon
and his victorious colleagues, just returned from their campaigns,
were appointed judges by the acclamation of the people, instead of
holding the usual selection by lot. The production of thirty-two plays
in twenty-eight years gives us indeed cause to wonder at the poet's
XXIII-854
-
## p. 13650 (#472) ##########################################
13650
SOPHOCLES
fertility. But as it was the common remark of those who admired
the matchless Parthenon and Propylæa, that their everlasting perfec-
tion was in no way impaired by the extraordinary rapidity of their
construction, so the poets working during the very same epoch seemed
to rival the architects not only in grace and strength, but in the rapid
strides of their work. Nor is this quickness of production uncommon
in other great moments of art. Molière could write a play in a fort-
night. Händel wrote the 'Messiah' in twenty-one days.
Let us now turn to the plays in order, and learn from them the
causes of the poet's great and permanent success in the world of let-
ters. For even in modern times, the admiration and the imitation of
him have not ceased. The 'Antigone' was not one of a trilogy or
connected group of three plays; nor has the poet's treatment of his
heroine anything to say to his treatment of the same personage in
his subsequent plays (on dipus) in which she appears. As soon as
Sophocles adopted the practice of competing with isolated plays, he
assumed the further liberty of handling the same personage quite
differently in different plays. This apparent inconsistency was due
to the fact that the ancients, unlike the moderns, had no unlimited
field of subjects; but were restricted by the conditions of their art to
a small number of legends, wherein the same heroes and heroines
constantly reappeared. They therefore avoided the consequent mo-
notony by varying the character to suit the circumstances of each
play. The Antigone of the play before us is not the Antigone of the
Edipus at Colonus. '
The plot is very simple, and was not in any sense novel. It is
completely sketched in the last seventy lines of the Seven Against
Thebes' of Eschylus. Polynices, slain in his unnatural invasion of
his fatherland, -and what was worse, in single combat with his
own brother, is refused burial by the new head of the State, Creon.
Eschylus represents a herald as announcing this decision, at which
Antigone at once rebels, while her weaker sister submits. The cho-
rus, dividing, take sides with both; and show the conflict between the
sacred claims of family affection and the social claims of the State,
demanding obedience to a decree not unreasonable and issued by
recognized authority. But Eschylus gives us no solution. This is
the problem taken up by Sophocles, and treated with special refer-
ence to the character of Antigone. He greatly simplifies his problem;
for he allows but little force to the arguments for punishing with
posthumous disgrace the criminal Polynices, - the parricide, as the
Greeks would call him, of his fatherland.
The tyrant Creon, indeed, talks well of obedience as the first con-
dition of public safety:-
-
## p. 13651 (#473) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13651
Creon-
But praise from me that man shall never have
Who either boldly thrusts aside the law,
Or takes upon him to instruct his rulers,—
Whom, by the State empowered, he should obey
In little and in much, in right and wrong.
The worst of evils is to disobey.
Cities by this are ruined, homes of men
Made desolate by this; this in the battle
Breaks into headlong rout the wavering line;
The steadfast ranks, the many lives unhurt,
Are to obedience due. We must defend
The government and order of the State,
And not be governed by a willful girl.
We'll yield our place up, if we must, to men:
To women that we stooped, shall not be said.
(I quote uniformly throughout this essay from the version of Mr.
Whitelaw, London, 1883,— which upon careful examination appears
to me very much the best attempt yet made at the well-nigh hope-
less problem of rendering the beauties of Sophocles in English. )
But Creon's rigid ordinance carries no weight with it; and obedi-
ence is only a matter of acquiescence in the minds of the vulgar and
the mean, as the chorus is represented. Antigone is accordingly
sustained throughout by a clear consciousness that she is absolutely
right: the whole sympathy of the spectator is with her, and the
play is only of interest in bringing out her character in strong relief.
This is splendidly expressed in her answer to Creon, when she is
brought in prisoner by a craven guard, who has surprised her in per-
forming the funeral rites over her brother: —
Creon-
Speak thou, who bendest on the earth thy gaze,-
Are these things which are witnessed true or false?
Antigone-Not false, but true: that which he saw, he speaks.
Creon [to the guard]-
So, sirrah, thou art free: go where thou wilt,
Loosed from the burden of this heavy charge.
But tell me thou,- and let thy speech be brief,—
The edict hadst thou heard which this forbade ?
Antigone-I could not choose but hear what all men heard.
Creon- And didst thou dare to disobey the law?
Antigone-Nowise from Zeus, methought, this edict came,
Nor Justice, that abides among the gods
In Hades, who ordained these laws for men.
Nor did I deem thine edicts of such force
That they, a mortal's bidding, should o'erride
## p. 13652 (#474) ##########################################
13652
SOPHOCLES
Unwritten laws, eternal in the heavens.
Not of to-day or yesterday are these;
But live from everlasting, and from whence
They sprang none knoweth. I would not, for the breach
Of these, through fear of any human pride,
To Heaven atone. I knew that I must die:
How else? without thine edict that were so;
And if before my time,-why, this were gain,
Compassed about with ills; - who lives as I,
Death to such life as his must needs be gain.
So is it to me to undergo this doom
No grief at all: but had I left my brother,
My mother's child, unburied where he lay,
Then I had grieved; but now this grieves me not.
Senseless I seem to thee, so doing? Belike
A senseless judgment finds me void of sense.
But as she consciously faces death for an idea, she may rather
be enrolled in the noble army of martyrs who suffer in the broad
daylight of clear conviction, than among the more deeply tried, like
Orestes and Hamlet, who in doubt and darkness have striven to feel
out a great mystery, and in their very failure have "purified the ter-
ror and the pity," as Aristotle puts it, of awe-struck humanity. A
martyr for a great and recognized truth, for the laws of God against
the laws of man, is not the most perfect central figure for a tragedy
in the highest Greek sense. Hence I regard myself justified in call-
ing this famous play rather an exquisite dramatic poem than a very
great tragedy. With consummate art, the poet makes Antigone a
somewhat harsh character. She stands up before Creon; she answers
his threats with bold contumacy.
"How in the child the sternness of the sire
Shows stern, before the storm untaught to bend! "
She even despises and casts aside her more feminine sister Ismene,—
who at first counseled submission, but who stands nobly by Antigone
when her trial before Creon comes, and is ready to go to death for a
breach of the law which she had not committed; but Antigone will
have neither her companionship nor her sympathy. The fatal effects
of the ancestral curse on the house of Edipus are indeed often men-
tioned, and would be, to a Greek audience, a quite sufficient cause
for the misfortunes of Antigone; but her character, together with
that of the weak and misguided figures around her, make the plot
quite independent of this deeper mystery,- the hereditary nature not
only of sin and crime, but of suffering.
## p. 13653 (#475) ##########################################
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The very
Thus she stands alone, amid the weak and selfish.
watchman who comes with the news of her capture as she was tend-
ing the outcast corpse is so cowardly in his views and so homely in
his language as to afford a contrast to the high tragic vein such as
we meet in Shakespeare, but what the more ceremonious tragedy of
the French would avoid as unseemly.
The intention of the poet to isolate Antigone in her conflict with
the ruler of the State is most strongly marked in his treatment of
Hæmon, Creon's son, who is betrothed to the princess. How can a
heroine be isolated when she has the support of her lover? This is
indeed the point in which the tragedy of Sophocles is most to be
contrasted with any conceivable modern treatment of the subject;
even, so far as we can tell from scanty allusions, contrasted with
its treatment by his younger rival Euripides. Hæmon does indeed
come upon the stage to plead for Antigone, but wholly upon public
grounds: that her violation of Creon's edict has the sympathy of the
public, and will bring the tyrant into disrepute and danger. But
though his father taunts him with having personal interests behind
his arguments, and though the chorus, when he rushes away to his
suicide, indicate very plainly that love is the exciting cause of his
interference, not one word of personal pleading for his betrothed
as such escapes from his lips.
The brief choral ode just mentioned is so famous that we quote
it here entire:-
-
STROPHE
Chorus O Love, our conqueror, matchless in might,
Thou prevailest, O Love, thou dividest the prey;
In damask cheeks of a maiden
Thy watch through the night is set.
Thou roamest over the sea;
On the hills, in the shepherds' huts, thou art;
Nor of deathless gods, nor of short-lived men,
From thy madness any escapeth.
ANTISTROPHE
Unjust, through thee, are the thoughts of the just;
Thou dost bend them, O Love, to thy will, to thy spite.
Unkindly strife thou hast kindled,
This wrangling of son with sire.
For great laws, throned in the heart,
To the sway of a rival power give place,
To the love-light flashed from a fair bride's eyes.
Antigone, when she sings her long musical threnody or lament,
as she goes to her death, does not call upon her lover to mourn her
## p. 13654 (#476) ##########################################
13654
SOPHOCLES
personal loss, but rather bewails her loss of the joys and dignities of
the married state,- exactly what a modern heroine would have kept
in the background. She quails however at the presence of death,
which she had faced with contemptuous boldness at the opening of
the piece; thus showing a human inconsistency very unlike that of
Euripides's great heroines, Iphigenia in Aulis, for example, who first
wails bitterly and pleads passionately for life, and then rises above
all her weakness and faces her actual doom with glorious courage.
But these are the independent standpoints of two great poets; both
are human: and though I personally prefer the latter type, others
may prefer the former.
――
The whole play is but one instance of the subject Sophocles seems
to have preferred to any other: the exhibition of a strong human
will, based upon a moral conviction, dashing itself against the obsta-
cles of fate, of human ordinance, of physical weakness, and showing
its ineradicable dignity-
"Though heated hot with burning fears,
And dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And battered with the shocks of doom. ”
Let us next consider the very kindred 'Electra. ' Here we have
the rare opportunity of comparing the handling of the same subject
by the three great tragedians; the extant Choephori' of Eschylus
and the 'Electra' of Euripides all dealing with the vengeance of
Orestes upon his mother Clytemnestra, who had treacherously mur-
dered his father Agamemnon, and was living with her paramour
Ægisthus. The outline of the tragedy is therefore strikingly similar
to the play of 'Hamlet,' in which the conflict of dread duties seems
to unhinge the mind of the prince upon whom the action devolves.
Eschylus alone, however, feels the gravity of the crime of matricide
to be such that no guilt on the queen mother's part can justify it;
while the other two Greek poets regard it as mere lawful vengeance.
These profound questions, however, are rather to be discussed in
connection with Eschylus than with Sophocles; and for my part, I
cannot but award the older poet the palm in this splendid competi-
tion. The Greek legend had a feature quite strange to Shakespeare:
a sister of the exiled prince living in the palace, watching daily
her mother's disgrace, suffering persecution from her, and hoping
against hope for the return of her brother, while at open and angry
variance with the reigning king and queen. This is the character
that Sophocles has chosen for his principal study. She is, like Antig-
one, harsh and uncompromising: rude to her weaker sister, who will
not protest enough against the crimes of the house; bursting into a
paroxysm of grief when she thinks her hopes annulled; and setting
## p. 13655 (#477) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13655
on her brother, when she recognizes him, to do the bloody vengeance,
without the smallest compunction. In the course of the play the
pretended urn of Orestes's ashes is brought in: but this device, well
conceived to lull the suspicions of the guilty pair, is made the occas-
ion not only of a brilliant fabrication of the circumstances of his
death, but also of a pathetic lament over the empty urn by Electra;
splendid passages no doubt, but of no effect upon the spectator, who
knows that both are the produce of a fraud.
Electra [holding the supposed urn of Orestes's ashes] -
O poor last relic of Orestes's life,—
Dearest of men to me,- with hopes how other
Than forth I sent do I receive thee back!
Now in these hands I take thee, and thou art naught;
But beautiful and bright I sent thee forth,
Child, from thy home. Oh, would that I had died
Or ever to a strange land I sent thee hence,
And stole thee in my arms and saved from death,
When on that day thou mightest have lain dead,
And of thy father's tomb have earned a share.
Now, far from home, in a strange land exiled,
A woeful end was thine, no sister near;
And woe is me, I neither laved thy limbs
And decked with loving hands, nor, as was meet,
Snatched this sad burthen from the scorching fire:
By hands of strangers tended thou art come,
A little handful in this little urn.
Alas for me my nursing long ago,-
Unprofitable care, that with sweet pain
I ofttimes spent for thee: for thou wast never
Thy mother's darling,- rather mine; nor they
O' the house, but I it was, whom all were wont
Sister at once to call and nurse of thee.
Now thou art dead, and all in a day these things
Have ceased to be; all with thy passing swept
As by a whirlwind hence. Thy father is gone,
And I am dead, thy sister; and thine own life
Has past from earth. Our foes ugh us to scorn,
Our mother-nay, no mother-is mad with joy:
Of whom so often thou didst send secret word
Thou'dst come to be avenged on her; but now
Hard fortune, thine and mine, robs me of this,
Sending me hither, in thy dear body's stead,
Mere dust and shadow of thee, and good for naught.
Ah me, alas!
-
## p. 13656 (#478) ##########################################
13656
SOPHOCLES
Oh, piteous ashes! alas and woe is me!
Oh, sadly, strangely –
Alas, my brother! —
Thus journeying hither, how me thou hast undone!
Undone undone indeed, O brother mine!
Therefore to thy dark chamber take me in;
Me, dust to dust, receive: that I may dwell
Henceforth i' the dark with thee. For, living, I shared
With thee and shared alike; and now in death
Not to be sundered from thy tomb I crave,
For in the grave I see that grief is not.
--
This composing of splendid poetry for a fictitious situation seems to
me the point of dramatic weakness in the piece.
pass to the much more interesting, though less appreciated,
'Trachiniæ. ' It was named by the poet not after the principal char-
acter, but as was the habit of Eschylus, after the chorus; and not
because that chorus occupied, as it did in Æschylus, the leading part
in the play, but that the poet must have felt a difficulty in selecting
his title rôle. To the ancients, as to Euripides, the death of Hera-
cles was the real core of the story; and the conclusion of Sophocles's
play, in which this event occurs, was accordingly to them the princi-
pal moment in the action: whereas Sophocles makes the interest
centre in Dejanira,—perhaps an early attempt to make a heroine
more important than the men of the play. Yet the character of
Dejanira can only be compared with the second-rate Tecmessa in the
'Ajax,' and differs completely from the first-class heroines we have
just considered. Nevertheless there is the deepest pathos in his draw-
ing of a loving, patient wife, widowed afresh for weary months while
the roving Heracles seeks new adventures, and now distracted by the
want of all news for a full year. His enforced absence (to atone for
a homicide), his careful disposition of his affairs at his departure, and
the voice of vague oracles, fill her soul with dark foreboding. Her
son Hyllus is sent out for news; and the chorus of the maidens of
Trachis come in to cheer and encourage the anxious wife, who envies
their virgin days of security, and reflects on the troubles of married
life.
Hyllus-Nay, mother, I will go; and had I known
What was foretold, I had been there long since.
Only his constant fortune suffered me not
To fear for him, nor overmuch to doubt.
Now that I know, trust me, I shall not spare
Pains in the quest until I find the truth.
## p. 13657 (#479) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13657
Dejanira-Go then, my son.
Chorus -
Good news, though it come late,
So it might come at last is fraught with gain.
STROPHE I
Thee whom the starry night,
Beneath the spoiler's hand
Breathing her last, brings forth,
Whom then she lays to sleep,-
Thee, Sun-god, thee bright-burning I implore,-
O tell me of Alcmena's son,
O thou, whose rays are as the lightnings bright:
Where, where he dwelleth,—
Defiles of the Egean threading,
Or from mid-strait beholding either continent,—
O tell me, god of keenest sight!
ANTISTROPHE I
For with an ever-hungry heart, they say,
Fair Dejanira, she for whom the suitors strove,
Like some unhappy bird,
Lulls never into tearless sleep
That hunger of her eyes;
But unforgetful fear
For him, her absent lord,
She entertaining, pines
Upon her widowed couch of care,-
Ill-starred, foreboding all distressful chance.
STROPHE II
For, as before the untiring blast of south or north,
Across the boundless sea
We watch the march of waves
That come, and ever come,-
Even so upon this son of Cadmus's house attends
His hard life's toilsomeness,
Increasing more and more;
Of troubles a Cretan sea.
But from the halls of death
Some god restrains his feet,
Suffering them not to stray.
ANTISTROPHE II
-
Therefore I chide thee, and this word
Of contradiction, not ungrateful, I will speak:
## p. 13658 (#480) ##########################################
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SOPHOCLES
I say thou dost not well
To kill the better hope.
For think, a lot exempt from pain
The son of Cronos, king who governs all,
Ordainèd not for men.
To all men sorrow and joy alternate come,
Revolving, as in heaven
The twisting courses of the Bear.
EPODE
For neither starry night
Abides with men, nor death, nor wealth-
But quickly it is gone;
And now another learns
The changeful tale of joy and loss.
Therefore I counsel thee, the queen,
To keep this ever in thy hopes:
For when was Zeus so careless for his sons?
Dejanira-Ye come, I must conjecture, having heard.
My trouble; but how the trouble eats my heart,
Ye know not,-may ye not by suffering learn.
In such a well-fenced place, in native soil,
The tender plant grows, where no sun may scorch,
Nor rain nor any wind is rough with it;
Upward a painless pleasant life it lifts.
Until such time the maiden is called a wife:
And in a night her share of trouble comes,-
By husband or by children made afraid.
Suddenly comes the news of her husband's return; and the spoils
are brought in, among whom a fair captive (lole) excites Dejanira's
interest, especially as she can learn nothing concerning her, from
the herald Lichas who has escorted her, or from the girl herself
who maintains an obstinate silence. Of course it very soon comes
out that this is the new flame for whom the truant hero has sacked
Echalia, and that she has come no ordinary captive to the house.
Dejanira's speech charging the herald Lichas to tell her the whole
truth, is full of pathos.
Dejanira-
Mad indeed were I myself
To blame this maiden, cause with him of that
Which causes me no shame, does me no wrong.
I cannot blame. But now, if taught of him
You lie, no noble lesson have you learned;
## p. 13659 (#481) ##########################################
SOPHOCLES
13659
Chorus
Or if you school yourself, take heed lest then
You be found cruel when you would be kind.
Nay, tell me all the truth: to be called false
Is for free men no honorable lot.
That you should 'scape discovery cannot be :
Many are they who heard you, and will speak.
And if you are afraid, you fear amiss:
For not to know - this would afflict me; but
Fear not my knowing: hath not Heracles
Loved many another-most of all men he?
And never any of them bore from me
Harsh word or gibe: nor shall, howe'er she be
Consumed with love, this maiden; nay, for her
Most of them all I pity, having seen
That 'twas her beauty that made waste her life,-
Poor soul, who sacked, unwitting, and enslaved,
The city of her home. But now I charge thee,
Heed not what winds blow whither: but be false
To others if thou wilt; to me speak truth.
When considering this largeness of heart regarding her husband's
new passion, we must remember we are reading of Greek heroic
times and manners, when such license, though censured as bringing
discord into a household, was in no way regarded as the violation of
a moral law. The chorus in a very fine ode recalls the desperate
struggle of Heracles for the possession of this very Dejanira, whom
he has now slighted and forgotten. But her charms are fading, while
Iole is in the first flush of youth. Then comes her hasty resolve to
send him as a present, which she had been preparing for his return,
the "shirt of Nessus» anointed with the deadly poison of the Cen-
taur's wound. She has been unaware of its fatal power; but the wool
she had used to anoint the present takes fire when heated by the
sun, and before the news comes back she has anticipated the whole
catastrophe. Then follows the terrible narrative of Hyllus, and his
fierce accusation of his mother, who rushes in the silence of desper-
ate resolve from the stage. After an interrupting chorus, her death-
scene is affectingly told by her nurse.
Remorse, or what fierce fit
Of madness was it,- the fatal thrust
So murderously dealt? How compassed she
Death piled on death,-
Wild work for one weak hand to do?
## p. 13660 (#482) ##########################################
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SOPHOCLES
Nurse
Chorus
-
___________
Near as I stand to you, I stood and saw.
Nurse
Chorus-
How was it? The manner? Tell me all.
Nurse Herself, and of herself, she did this thing.
