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Sophocles, (Sophokles). The second of the three great Greek
tragedians, son of Sophilus or Sophillus, the wealthy owner of a manufactory of
arms. He was born about B.C. 495 in the deme Colonus near Athens. He received
a careful education in music, gymnastics, and dancing, and as a boy of fifteen
was chosen to lead the paean sung by the chorus of boys after the victory of Salamis.
He afterwards showed his musical skill in public, when he represented the blind
singer Thamyris in his drama of the same name, and played the cithara with such
success that he was painted as Thamyris with the cithara in the Stoa Poicile.
Again, in the play called the Nausicaa, he won for himself general admiration
in acting the part of the Phaeacian princess, by the dexterity and grace with
which he struck the ball. In all things his external appearance and demeanour
were the reflex of a lofty mind. At his very first appearance as a tragic poet
in 468, when twenty-seven years old, at the Great Dionysia, he gained a victory
over Aeschylus, who was thirty years older, and from that time to extreme old
age he kept the first place in tragedy. Unlike Aeschylus and Euripides, he never
accepted the invitations of foreign princes. Though possessing no special inclination
or fitness for political affairs, as his friend, the poet Ion of Chios, declares,
he yet took his place in public life. Thus, in B.C. 440, he was one of the ten
generals who, with Pericles, were in command of the fleet sent against Samos.
Owing to his practical skill he was also employed in negotiations with the allies
of Chios and Samos. During the Peloponnesian War he was again one of the generals,
together with Nicias. In 435, as Hellenotamias, he was at the head of the management
of the treasure of the allies, which was kept on the Acropolis; and, when the
question arose in 413, of giving to the State an oligarchical constitution, he
was on the commission of preliminary investigation.
The charm and refinement of his character seem to have won
him many friends. Among them was the historian Herodotus, who much resembled him
in taste and temperament. He was also deemed by the ancients a man specially beloved
by the gods, especially by Asclepius, whose priest he probably was, and who was
said to have granted him health and vigour of mind to extreme old age. By the
Athenian Nicostrate he had a son, Iophon, who won some repute as a tragic poet,
and by Theoris of Sicyon another son, Ariston, father of the Sophocles who gained
fame for himself by tragedies of his own, and afterwards by the production of
his grandfather's dramas. There was a story that a quarrel arose between Sophocles
and his son Iophon, on account of his preference for this grandson, and that,
when summoned by Iophon before the court as weak in mind and unable to manage
his affairs, he obtained his own absolute acquittal by reading the parodos on
his native place in the Oedipus Coloneus, just written, but not yet produced (Plutarch,
Moral. p. 775 B). But this appears to be a legend founded on a misunderstood pleasantry
of a comic poet. The tales of his death, which happened in B.C. 405, are also
mythical. According to one account, he was choked by a grape; according to others,
he died either when publicly reciting the Antigone, or from excessive joy at some
dramatic victory. The only fact unanimonsly attested by his contemporaries is,
that his death was as dignified as his life. A singular story is connected even
with his funeral. We are told that Dionysus, by repeated apparitions in dreams,
prompted the general of the Spartans, who were then investing Athens, to grant
a truce for the burial of the poet in the family grave outside the city. On his
tomb stood a Siren as a symbol of the charm of poetry. After his death the Athenians
worshipped him as a hero and offered an annual sacrifice in his memory. In later
times, on the proposal of the orator Lycurgus, a bronze statue was erected to
him, together with Aeschylus and Euripides, in the theatre; and of his dramas,
as of theirs, an authorized and standard copy was made, in order to protect them
against arbitrary alterations.
Sophocles was a very prolific poet. The number of his plays
is given as between 123 and 130, of which above 100 are known to us by their titles
and by fragments; but only seven have been preserved complete: the Trachiniae
(so named from the chorus, and treating of the death of Heracles), the Ajax, the
Philoctetes, the Electra, the Oedipus Tyrannus, the Oedipus at Colonus, and the
Antigone. The last-mentioned play was produced in the spring of 440; the Philoctetes
in 410; the Oedipus at Colonus was not put on the stage until 401, after his death,
by his grandson Sophocles. Besides tragedies, Sophocles composed paeans, elegies,
epigrams, and a work in prose on the chorus. With his tragedies he gained the
first prize more than twenty times, and still more often the second, but never
the third. Even in his lifetime, and indeed through the whole of antiquity, he
was held to be the most perfect of tragedians; one of the ancient writers calls
him the "pupil of Homer."
If Aeschylus is the creator of Greek tragedy, it was Sophocles
who brought it to perfection. He extended the dramatic action (1) by the introduction
of a third actor, while in his last pieces he even added a fourth; and (2) by
a due subordination of the chorus, to which, however, he gave a more artistic
development, while he increased its numbers from twelve to fifteen persons. He
also perfected the costumes and decoration. Rejecting the plan of Aeschylus, by
which one story was carried through three successive plays, he made every tragedy
into a complete work of art, with a sepa [p. 1480] rate and complete action, the
motives for every detail being most skilfully devised. His art was especially
shown in the way in which the action is developed from the character of the dramatis
personae. Sophocles' great mastery of his art appears, above all, in the clearness
with which he portrays his characters, which are developed with a scrupulous attention
to details, and in which he does not content himself, like Aeschylus, with mere
outlines, nor, as Euripides often did, with copies from common life. His heroes,
too, are ideal figures, like those of Aeschylus (Aristot. Poet. 25). While they
lack the superhuman loftiness of the earlier poet's creations, they have a certain
ideal truth of their own. Sophocles succeeded in doing what was impossible for
Aeschylus and Euripides with their peculiar temperaments, in expressing the nobility
of the female character, in its gentleness as well as in its heroic courage. In
contrast to Euripides, Sophocles, like Aeschylus, is profoundly religious; and
the attitude which he adopts towards the popular religion is marked by an instinctive
reverence. The grace peculiar to Sophocles' nature makes itself felt even in his
language, the charm of which was universally praised by the ancients. With his
noble simplicity he takes in this respect also a middle place between the weightiness
and boldness of the language of Aeschylus and the smoothness and rhetorical embellishment
which distinguish that of Euripides.
The seven existing plays of Sophocles are all found in the
same Codex Laurentianus in Florence that contains the plays of Aeschylus. Cobet
regards all the other extant MSS. of the plays as derived from this. Few of them
have the whole seven. Of these, two (a Codex Parisinus of the thirteenth century
and a Codex Venetus of the fourteenth) are the best.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Sophocles. Colonus, a village near Athens, was the place of Sophocles' birth,
and the date, 495 B.C., thus making him thirty years younger than Aeschylus and
fifteen years older than Euripides. His father, Sophilus, a man of wealth and
excellent repute, gave him the benefit of all the literary accomplishment of the
age. His powers were developed and refined by a careful instruction in the arts
of music and poetry, and to the natural graces of his person further attractions
were added through the exercises of the palaestra. That he was a comely and agile
youth is shown by his selection, at the age of sixteen, to lead with dance and
lyre the chorus which celebrated his country's triumph at Salamis.
In his younger days he appears to have been somewhat over fond of
women and wine, and this he himself admits in one of his sayings recorded by Plato:
"I thank old age for delivering me from the tyranny of my appetites." Yet, even
in his later years, the charms of the gentler sex were at times too strong for
the great dramatist. Aristophanes accused him of avarice, though there is nothing
in what is known of Sophocles to substantiate the charge, and this is further
disproved by the utter neglect of his affairs, which brought on him the imputation
of lunacy, refuted by reading to his judges a passage from a newly-written play.
The occasional excesses referred to appear to have been the only blemish on an
otherwise blameless and contented life.
Dramatic Career
The commencement of his dramatic career was marked by a victory in
competition with Aeschylus, under exceptional circumstances. The remains of the
hero Theseus were being removed by Cimon from the isle of Scyros
to Athens, at the time of
a tragic contest which had excited unusual interest on account of the fame of
the older and the popularity of the younger candidate. Instead of choosing judges
by lot, as was the custom, the archon administered the oath to Cimon and his colleagues,
asking them to decide between the rival tragedians. The first prize was awarded
to Sophocles, greatly to the disgust of the veteran dramatist, who soon afterward
departed for Sicily. Yet
the decision does not imply want of appreciation for the plays which Aeschylus
presented. The rivalry was not between two works, but between two styles of tragic
art, and the subject chosen by the young poet, together with the desire to encourage
his first attempt, was sufficient to outbalance the reputation of the great antagonist,
whose verses lacked the air of freshness and youth that hung around the poetry
of Sophocles.
For more than sixty years after this event Sophocles continued to
compose and exhibit tragedies and satyric dramas. Of the one hundred and eighty
plays ascribed to him, probably seventeen were spurious, and the number of his
first prizes is variously stated at from eighteen to twenty-four, with many second
prizes, so that in this respect he left both Aeschylus and Euripides far behind.
So far from being dulled with age and toil, his powers seem only to have assumed
a mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweeter and gentler mode of thought
and expression.
To the improvements which Aeschylus made in tragic exhibition he added
others, some of which the former adopted in his later works, before taking leave
of the stage. He introduced a third actor, further curtailed the choral parts
and gave the dialogue its full development. He caused the scenery to be carefully
painted and properly arranged, thus greatly increasing the spectacular effect.
His odes were distinguished by their close connection with the business of the
play, the correctness of their sentiments, and the beauty of their lines. His
language, though sometimes harsh and involved, was for the most part grand and
majestic, avoiding the massive phraseology of Aeschylus and the commonplace diction
of Euripides. In the management of his subjects he was unrivaled, no one understanding
so well the artistic development of incident, the secret of working on the feelings,
the gradual culmination of the interest when leading up to the final crisis, and
the crushing blow of the catastrophe, overwhelming the spectators with terror
or compassion.
"Sophocles," says one of his admirers, "is the summit of Greek art;
but we must have scaled many a steep before we can appreciate his loftiness, for
little of his beauty is perceptible to one who is not thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of antiquity." The ancients fully appreciated him, but it is hard for the
modern reader to divest himself completely of his associations and set a just
value on productions so essentially Greek as were the Sophoclean tragedies. It
must also be remembered that, as the successor of Aeschylus, he endeavored rather
to follow and improve upon his works than to create a new species for himself.
Qualities as a Dramatist
Aeschylus felt what a Greek tragedy ought to be as a religious union
of the two elements of the national poetry. Sophocles, with his just perception
of the beautiful in art, effected an outward realization of the conceptions of
the great master, exhibiting in perfect form before the eyes of Athens what the
other had hewn out in rude masses from the mines of thought. His tragedy was not
essentially different from that of Aeschylus, and when he chose subjects which
the latter had treated, his completed drama bore the same relation to its forerunner
that a finished statue bears to an unfinished group. It was, as he thought, his
mission to improve on the tragic art, as Phidias had improved the work of his
predecessors. None did he deem worthy of the cothurnus save those who had figured
in the ancient legends or in the poems of the epic cycle, and if an inferior character
appears, it is only as the instrument of irony, introduced like a streak of bright
color into the picture in contrast with its tragic gloom. Moreover, notwithstanding
his sensualism, he was of a strongly religious temperament, filled with reverence
for his country's gods, by whom, it would seem, he believed himself inspired.
In the words which Landor aptly puts into his mouth, he declares himself to be
"only the interpreter of the heroes and divinities who are looking down upon him."
An associate of Pericles, though not one of his political disciples,
Sophocles, in his full maturity stood, like the mighty ruler of the Greeks, amid
a community to which both imparted the lustre of their genius on the sunny heights
of noble and brilliant achievement, his perfect art typifying, as it were, the
watchful and creative calm of his city's imperial epoch. Of a profoundly religious
temperament, but without any vulgar superstition, he treats the sacred myths of
his country in the spirit of a conscientious artist, contrasting, with many touches
of irony, the struggles of humanity with the irresistible march of fate. After
the retirement of Aeschylus, he was recognized as beyond dispute the greatest
master of tragedy, and, as we have seen, during the lifetime of the former, wrested
from him the tragic prize.
The days of Sophocles were not altogether devoted to the muses. At
the age of fifty-six he was appointed one of ten generals for the conduct of the
war against Samos, but
does not appear to have distinguished himself. Later he became a priest, and in
extreme old age was elected one of a committee ordered, during the revolution
brought about by Pisander, to investigate the condition of affairs and report
thereon to the people. In the easy, good-natured way that was natural to him he
assented to the establishment of an oligarchy under the council of four hundred
as "a bad thing, but the least pernicious measure which circumstances allowed."
In his last years the reverses of the Peloponnesian war, with their attendant
civil dissensions, fell heavily on one whose chief delight was in domestic tranquility,
and who still remembered the part which he bore in the glorious triumph of Salamis.
Yet he was spared the misery of witnessing the final overthrow of his country,
dying, full of years and honors, a few months before the defeat of Aegospotami
wrought the downfall of Athens.
Seven only of the dramas of Sophocles have come down to us, but these
were, with one exception, composed in the full maturity of his tragic power, and
each resplendent with its own peculiar excellencies. In the Antigone heroism is
exhibited in a purely feminine character; in the Ajax, the manly sense of honor
in all its strength. In the Trachiniae, or Women of Trachis, are described the
sufferings of Hercules and the levity of Deianeira, atoned for by her death; the
Electra is distinguished by energy and pathos, and in the Oedipus at Colonus are
a mildness and gracefulness suggestive of the character of the author. While we
cannot divide the plays of Sophocles into distinct groups indicating certain periods
in his dramatic art, he himself recognized three epochs in his own style--first,
the tumid grandeur borrowed from Aeschylus; second, a harshness of expression
due to his own mannerism; third, the style that seemed to him best fitted for
the portrayal of human character.
Alfred Bates, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the TheatreHistory URL below.
Sophocles (Sophokles). The celebrated tragic poet.
The ancient authorities for the life of Sophocles are very scanty. Duris of Samos
wrote a work Peri Euripidou kai Sophokleous (Ath. iv.); Ister, Aristoxenus, Neanthes,
Satyrus, and others are quoted as authorities for his life; and it cannot be doubted
that, amidst the vast mass of Alexandrian literature, there were many treatises
respecting him, besides those on the general subject of tragedy; but of these
stores of information, the only remnants we possess are the respectable anonymous
compilation, Bios Sophokleous, which is prefixed to the chief editions of the
poet's works, and is also contained in Westermann's Vitarum Scriptores Graeci
Minores, the very brief article of Suidas, and the incidental notices scattered
through the works of Plutarch, Athenaeus, and other ancient writers. Of the numerous
modern writers who have treated of the life, character, and works of Sophocles,
the chief are ...
i. The Life of Sophocles.
Sophocles was a native of the Attic village of Colonus, which lay a little more
than a mile to the north-west of Athens, and the scenery and religious associations
of which have been described by the poet, in his last and greatest work, in a
manner which shows how powerful an influence his birth-place exercised on the
whole current of his genius. The date of his birth, according to his anonymous
biographer, was in Ol. 71. 2, B. C. 495; but the Parian Marble places it one year
higher, B. C. 496. Most modern writers prefer the former date, on the ground of
its more exact agreement with the other passages in which the poet's age is referred
to. But those passages, when closely examined, will be found hardly sufficient
to determine so nice a point as the difference of a few months. With this remark
by way of caution, we place the birth of Sophocles at B. C. 495, five years before
the battle of Marathon, so that he was about thirty years younger than Aeschylus,
and fifteen years older than Euripides. (The anonymous biographer also mentions
these differences, but his numbers are obviously corrupt.)
His father's name was Sophilus, or Sophillus, respecting whose condition
in life it is clear from the anonymous biography that the grammarians knew nothing
for certain. According to Aristoxenus, he was a carpenter or smith; according
to Ister, a swordmaker; while the biographer refuses to admit either of these
statements, except in the sense that Sophilus had slaves who practised one or
other of those handicrafts, because, he argues, it is improbable that the son
of a common artificer should have been associated in military command with the
first men of the state, such as Pericles and Thucydides, and also because, if
he had been lowborn, the comic poets would not have failed to attack him on that
ground. There is some force in the latter argument.
At all events it is clear that Sophocles received an education not
inferior to that of the sons of the most distinguished citizens of Athens. To
both of the two leading branches of Greek education, music and gymnastics, he
was carefully trained, in company with the boys of his own age, and in both he
gained the prize of a garland. He was taught music by the celebrated Lamprus (Vit.
Anon.). Of the skill which he had attained in music and dancing in his sixteenth
year, and of the perfection of his bodily form, we have conclusive evidence in
the fact that, when the Athenians were assembled in solemn festival around the
trophy which they had set up in Salamis to celebrate their victory over the fleet
of Xerxes, Sophocles was chosen to lead, naked and with lyre in hand, the chorus
which danced about the trophy, and sang the songs of triumph, B. C. 480 (Ath.
i.; Vit. Anon.).
The statement of the anonymous biographer, that Sophocles learnt tragedy
from Aeschylus, has been objected to on grounds which are perfectly conclusive,
if it be understood as meaning any direct and formal instruction; but, from the
connection in which the words stand, they appear to express nothing more than
the simple and obvious fact, that Sophocles, having received the art in the form
to which it had been advanced by Aeschylus, made in it other improvements of his
own.
His first appearance as a dramatist took place in the year B. C. 468,
under peculiarly interesting circumstances; not only from the fact that Sophocles,
at the age of twenty-seven, came forward as the rival of the veteran Aeschylus,
whose supremacy had been maintained during an entire generation, but also from
the character of the judges. It was, in short, a contest between the new and the
old styles of tragic poetry, in which the competitors were the greatest dramatists,
with ONE exception, who ever lived, and the umpires were the first men, in position
and education, of a state in which almost every citizen had a nice perception
of the beauties of poetry and art. The solemnities of the Great Dionysia were
rendered more imposing by the occasion of the return of Cimon from his expedition
to Scyros, bringing with him the bones of Theseus. Public expectation was so excited
respecting the approaching dramatic contest, and party feeling ran so high, that
Apsephion, the Archon Eponymus, whose duty it was to appoint the judges, had not
yet ventured to proceed to the final act of drawing the lots for their election,
when Cimon, with his nine colleagues in the command, having entered the theatre,
and made the customary libations to Dionysus, the Archon detained them at the
altar, and administered to them the oath appointed for the judges in the dramatic
contests. Their decision was in favour of Sophocles, who received the first prize;
the second only being awarded to Aeschylus, who was so mortified at his defeat
that he left Athens and retired to Sicily. The drama which Sophocles exhibited
on this occasion is supposed, from a chronological computation in Pliny (H. N.
xviii. 7. s. 12), to have been the Triptolemus, respecting the nature of which
there has been much disputation: Welcker, who has discussed the question very
fully, supposes that the main subject of the drama was the institution of the
Eleusinian mysteries, and the establishment of the worship of Demeter at Athens
by Triptolemus.
From this epoch there can be no doubt that Sophocles held the supremacy
of the Athenian stage (except in so far as it was shared by Aeschylus during the
short period between his return to Athens and his final retirement to Sicily),
until a formidable rival arose in the person of Euripides, who gained the first
prize for the first time in the year B. C. 441. We possess, however, no particulars
of the poet's life during this period of twentyeight years.
The year B. C. 440 (Ol. 84, 4) is a most important era in the poet's
life. In the spring of that year, most probably, he brought out the earliest and
one of the best of his extant dramas, the Antigone, a play which gave the Athenians
such satisfaction, especially on account of the political wisdom it displayed,
that they appointed him one of the ten strategi, of whom Pericles was the chief,
in the war against the aristocratical faction of Samos, which lasted from the
summer of B. C. 440 to the spring of B. C. 439. The anonymous biographer states
that this expedition took place seven years before the Peloponnesian War, and
that Sophocles was 55 years old at the time. A full account of this war will be
found in Thirlwall's History of Greece, vol. iii. pp. 48, foll. From an anecdote
preserved by Athenaeus from the Travels of the poet Ion, it appears that Sophocles
was engaged in bringing up the reinforcements from Chios, and that, amidst the
occupations of his military command, he preserved his wonted tranquillity of mind,
and found leisure to gratify his voluptuous tastes and to delight his comrades
with his calm and pleasant conversation at their banquets. From the same narrative
it would seem that Sophocles neither obtained nor sought for any military reputation
: he is represented as good-humouredly repeating the judgment of Pericles concerning
him, that he understood the making of poetry, but not the commanding of an army.On
another occasion, if we may believe Plutarch (Nic. 15), Sophocles was not ashamed
to confess that he had no claim to military distinction ; for when he was serving
with Nicias, upon being asked by that general his opinion first, in a council
of war, as being the eldest of the strategi, he replied " I indeed am the eldest
in years. but you in counsel." (Elo, phanai, palaiotatos eimi, su de presbutatos).
Mr. Donaldson, in his... edition of the Antigone, has put forward
the view, that, at this period of his life, Sophocles was a personal and political
friend of Pericles; that the political sentiments expressed in the Antigone were
intended as a recommendation of the policy of that statesman, just as Aeschylus,
in the Eumeules, had put forth all his powers in support of the opposite system
of the old conservative party of Aristeides; that Pericles himself is circumstantially,
though indirectly, referred to in various passages of the play; and that the poet's
political connection with Pericles was one chief cause of his being associated
with him in the Samian War.
A still more interesting subject connected with this period of the
poet's life, is his supposed intimacy with Herodotus, which is also touched upon
by Mr. Donaldson, who has discussed the matter at greater length in the Transactions
of the Philological Society. We learn from Plutarch that Sophocles composed a
poem for Herodotus, commencing with the following inscription:
Oiden Herodotoi teuxen Sophokles eteon on
pent epi pentekonta:
where the poet's age, 55 years, carries us to about the period of the Samian War.
Upon this foundation Mr. Donaldson constructs the theory that Herodotus was still
residing at Samos at the period when Sophocles was engaged in the war, and that
a familiar intercourse subsisted between the great poet and historian, for the
maintenance of which at other times the frequent visits of Herodotus to Athens
would give ample opportunity. The chronological part of the question, though important
in its bearing upon the history of Herodotus, is of little consequence with regard
to Sophocles : the main fact, that such an intercourse existed between the poet
and the historian, is sufficiently established by the passage of Plutarch; and
the influence of that intimacy may still be traced in those striking parallelisms
in their works, which have generally been referred to an imitation of Herodotus
by Sophocles, but which Mr. Donaldson has brought forward strong arguments to
account for in the opposite way.
The epoch, which has now been briefly dwelt upon, may be regarded
as dividing the public life of Sophocles into two almost equal portions, each
extending over the period of about one generation, but the latter rather the longer
of the two; namely B. C. 468-439, and B. C. 439-405. The second of these periods,
extending from the 56th year of his age to his death, was that of his greatest
poetical activity, and to it belong all his extant dramas. Respecting his personal
history, however, during this period of forty-four years, we have scarcely any
details. The excitement of the Peloponnesian War seems to have had no other influence
upon him than to stimulate his literary efforts by the new impulse which it gave
to the intellectual activity of the age; until that disastrous period after the
Sicilian expedition, when the reaction of unsuccessful war led to anarchy at home.
Then we find him, like others of the chief literary men of Athens, joining in
the desperate attempt to stay the ruin of their country by means of an aristocratic
revolution; although, according to the accounts which have come down to us of
the part which Sophocles took in this movement, he only assented. to it as a measure
of public safety, and not from any love of oligarchy. When the Athenians, on the
news of the utter destruction of their Sicilian army (B. C. 413), appointed ten
of the elders of the city, as a sort of committee of public salvation, under the
title of probouloi (Thuc. viii. 1), Sophocles was among the ten thus chosen. As
he was then in his eighty-third year, it is not likely that he took any active
part in their proceedings, or that he was chosen for any other reason than to
obtain the authority of his name. All that we are told of his conduct in this
office is that he contented to the establishment of the oligarchical Council of
Four Hundred, B. C. 411, though he acknowledged the measure to be an evil one,
because, he said, there was no better course. The change of government thus effected
released him, no doubt, from all further concern with public affairs.
One thing at least is clear as to his political principles, that he
was an ardent lover of his country. The patriotic sentiments, which we still admire
in his poems, were illustrated by his own conduct; for, unlike Simonides and Pindar,
Aeschylus, Euripides, and Plato, and others of the greatest poets and philosophers
of Greece, Sophocles would never condescend to accept the patronage of monarchs,
or to leave his country in compliance with their repeated invitations. (Vit. Anon.)
His affections were fixed upon the land which had produced the heroes of Marathon
and Salamis, whose triumphs were associated with his earliest recollections; and
his eminently religious spirit loved to dwell upon the sacred city of Athena,
and the hallowed groves of his native Colonus. In his later days he filled the
office of priest to a native hero, Halon, and the gods were said to have rewarded
his devotion by granting him supernatural revelations. (gegone de kai theophiles
ho Sophokles hos ouk allos, &c. Vit. Anon.)
The family dissensions, which troubled his last years, are connected
with a well-known and beautiful story, which bears strong marks of authenticity,
and which, if true, not only proves that he preserved his mental powers and his
wonted calmness to the last, but also leaves us with the satisfactory conviction
that his domestic peace was restored before he died. His family consisted of two
sons, lophon, the offspring of Nicostrate, who was a free Athenian woman, and
Ariston, his son by Theoris of Sicyon; and Ariston had a son named Sophocles,
for whom his grandfather showed the greatest affection. Iophon, who was by the
laws of Athens his father's rightful heir, jealous of his love for the young Sophocles,
and apprehending that Sophocles purposed to bestow upon his grandson a large proportion
of his property, is said to have summoned his father before the (phratores, who
seem to have had a sort of jurisdiction in family affairs, on the charge that
his mind was affected by old age. As his only reply, Sophocles exclaimed, "If
I am Sophocles, I am not beside myself; and if I am beside myself, I am not Sophocles
;" and then he read from his Oedipus at Colonus, which was lately written, but
not yet brought out, the magnificent parodos, beginning:
Euippou, xene, tasde choras,
whereupon the judges at once dismissed the case, and rebuked Iophon for his undutiful
conduct. That Sophocles forgave his son might almost be assumed from his known
character; and the ancient grammarians supposed that the reconciliation was referred
to in the lines of the Oedipus at Colonus, where Antigone pleads with her father
to forgive Polyneices, as other fathers had been induced to forgive their bad
children
Whether Sophocles died in, or after the completion of, his ninetieth
year, cannot be said with absolute certainty. It is clear, from the allusions
to him in the Frogs of Aristophanes and the Musae of Phrynichus, that he was dead
before the representation of those dramas at the Lenaea, in February, B. C. 405,
and hence several writers, ancient as well as modern, have placed his death in
the beginning of that year. But, if we make allowance for the time required for
the composition and preparation of those dramas, of which the Frogs, at least,
not only refers to his death, but presupposes that event in the very conception
of the comedy, we can hardly place it later than the spring of B. C. 406, and
this date is confirmed by the statement of the anonymous biographer, that his
death happened at the feast of the Choes, which must have been in 406, and not
in 405, for the Choes took place a month later than the Lenaea. Lucian (Macrob.
24) certainly exaggerates, when he says that Sophocles lived to the age of 95.
All the various accounts of his death and funeral are of a fictitious
and poetical complexion; as are so many of the stories which have come down to
us respecting the deaths of the other Greek poets: nay, we often find the very
same marvel attending the decease of different individuals, as in the cases of
Sophocles and Philemon. According to Ister and Neanthes, he was choked by a grape
(Vit. Anon.); Satyrus related that in a public recitation of the Antigone he sustained
his voice so long without a pause that, through the weakness of extreme age, he
lost his breath and his life together (ibid.); while others ascribed his death
to excessive joy at obtaining a victory. These legends are of course the offspring
of a poetical feeling which loved to connect the last moments of the great tragedian
with his patron god. In the same spirit it is related that Dionysus twice appeared
in vision to Lysander, and commanded him to allow the interment of the poet's
remains in the family tomb on the road to Deceleia. According to Ister, the Athenians
honoured his memory with a yearly sacrifice (Vit. Anon.).
No doubt the ancient writers were quite right in thinking that, in
the absence of details respecting the matter of fact, the death of Sophocles was
a fair subject for a poetical description; but, instead of resorting to trifling
and contradictory legends, they might have found descriptions of his decease.
at once poetical and true, in the verses of contemporary poets, who laid aside
the bitter satire of the Old Comedy to do honour to his memory. Thus Phrynichus,
in his Mousai, which was acted with the Frogs of Aristophanes, in which also the
memory of Sophocles is treated with profound respect, referred to the poet's death
in these beautiful lines:
Makar Sophoklees, hos polun chronon bious
apethanen, eudaimon aner kai dexios,
pollas poiesas kai kalas tragoidias:
kalos d eteleutes oioen hupomeinas kakon.
And if the last line is not specific enough for those who are curious to know
the details of the death of such a man, we venture to say that the want may be
supplied by those exquisite verses in which the poet himself relates the decease
of Oedipus, when restored by a long expiation to that religious calm in which
he himself had always lived -- a description so exactly satisfying our idea of
what the death of Sophocles must and ought to have been, that we at once perceive,
by a sort of instinct, that it was either written in the direct anticipation of
his own departure, or perhaps even thrown into its present form by the younger
Sophocles, to make it an exact picture of his grandfather's death -- where Oedipus,
having been summoned by a divine voice from the solemn recesses of the grove of
the Eumenides, in terms which might well be used to the poet of ninety years of
age (Oed. Col. 1627, 1628):
o houtos, houtos, Oidipous, ti mellomen
chorein; palai de tapo sou bradunetai,
having taken leave of his children and retired from the world, and having offered
his last prayers to the gods of earth and heaven, departs in peace, by an unknown
fate, without disease or pain:
Ou gar tis auton oute purphoros theou
keraunos exepraxen, oute pontia
thuella kinetheisa toi tot en chronoi,
all e tis ek theon pompos, e to nerteron
eunoun diastan ges alampeton bathron.
Haner gar ou stenaktos oude sun nosois
algeinos exepempet, all ei tis broton
thaumastos. Ei de me doko phronon legein
ouk an pareimen hosi me doko phronein.
If any reader thinks that the application of these lines to the death of Sophocles himself is too fanciful, let him take the last words of the quotation as our answer; and let us be left still further to indulge the same fancy by imagining, not the applause, but the burst of suppressed feeling, with which an Athenian audience first listened to that description, applying it, as we feel sure they did, to the poet they had lost.
The inscription placed upon his tomb, according to some authorities,
celebrated at once the perfection of his art and the graces of his person (Vit.
Anon.):
kruptoi toide taphoi Sophoklen proteia labonta
tei tragikei technei, schema to semnotaton.
Among the epigrams upon him in the Greek Anthology, there is one ascribed to Simmias
of Thebes, which is perhaps one of the most exquisite gems in the whole collection
for the beauty and truthfulness of its imagery:
Erem huper tumboio Sophokleos, erema, kisse,
herpuzois, chloerous ekprokeon plokamous,
kai petalon pante thalloi rhodou, he te philorrhhox
hampelos, hugra perix klemata cheuamene,
heineken eumathies pinutophronos, hen ho melichros
eskesen Mouson ammiga kai Chariton.
Among the remains of ancient art, we possess several portraits of Sophocles, which,
however, like the other works of the same class, are probably ideal representations,
rather than actual likenesses. Philostratus describes several such portraits by
different artists, and an account of those which now exist will be found in Muller's
Archaologie der Kunst..
The following chronological summary exhibits the few leading events,
of which the date can be fixed, in the life of Sophocles:
Ol. B. C.
71. 2. 495. Birth of Sophocles.
73. 4. 484. Aeschylus gains the first prize. Birth of Herodotus.
75. 1. 480. Battle of Salamis. Sophocles (aet. 15--16) leads the chorus round the trophy. Birth of Euripides.
77. 4. 468. First tragic victory of Sophocles. Defeat and retirement of Aeschylus. Birth of Socrates.
78. 1. 469. Death of Simonides.
80. 2. 458. The Oresteia of Aeschylus.
81. 1. 456. Death of Aeschylus
81. 1. 455. Euripides begins to exhibit.
84. 3. 441. Euripides gains the first prize.
84. 4. 440. Sophocles gains the first prize with his Antigone, and is made strategus with Pericles in the Samian war.
85. 1. 439. Probable return of Sophocles to Athens. Death of Pindar?
91. 4. 413. Sophocles one of the Probuli.
92. 1. 411. Government of the Four Hundred.
92. 3. 409. The Philoctetes of Sophocles. First prize.
93. 2. 406. Death of Euripides. Death of Sophocles.
94. 3. 401. The Oedipus at Colonus brought out by the younger Sophocles.
ii. The Personal Character of Sophocles.
In that elaborate piece of dramatic criticism, the purpose of which is undoubtedly
serious, though the form is that of the broad mirth and bitter satire of the Old
Comedy, we mean the Frogs, it is extremely interesting to notice both the respectful
reserve with which Sophocles is treated, as if he were almost above criticism,
and the particular force of the few passages in which Aristophanes more expressly
refers to him. Eukolos men enthad, eukolos d ekei -"Even tempered alike in life
and death, in the world above and in the world below"- is the brief but expressive
phrase in which his personal character is summed up.
Sophocles appears, indeed, to have had every element which, in the
judgment of a Greek, would go to make up a perfect character : the greatest beauty
and symmetry of form; the highest skill in those arts which were prized above
all others, music and gymnastics, of which the latter developed that bodily perfection,
which always adorns if it does not actually contribute to intellectual greatness,
while the former was not only essential to his art as a dramatist, but was also
justly esteemed by the Greeks as one of the chiefest instruments in moulding the
character of a man; a constitutional calmness and contentment, which seems hardly
ever to have been disturbed, and which was probably the secret of that perfect
mastery over the passions of others, which his tragedies exhibit; a cheerful and
amiable demeanour, and a ready wit, which won for him the affectionate admiration
of those with whom he associated; a spirit of tranquil and meditative piety, in
harmony with his natural temperament, and fostered by the scenes in which he spent
his childhood, and the subjects to which he devoted his life; a power of intellect,
and a spontaneity of genius, of which his extant tragedies are the splendid, though
mutilated monument : such are the leading features of a character, which the very
harmony of its parts makes it difficult to pourtray with any vividness. The slight
physical defect, weakness of voice, which is said to have disqualified him from
appearing as an actor, could not have been of great consequence, considering the
perfection to which the technical portion of the art had been brought by his own
rules, improving upon those of Aeschylus, and the sufficiency of good actors,
whom we could easily show to have flourished at Athens in his time. His moral
defects, if we may believe the insinuations of the comic poets and the gossip
of the scandal-mongering grammarians, are such as he would naturally be exposed
to fall into through the perfection of his bodily senses and the easiness of his
temper. Aristophanes, who treated him with such respect, as we have seen, after
his death, during his life associated him with Simonides in the charge of love
of gain (Pax, 695-699); and it is too probable that, when advanced in age, and
with his taste for luxury confirmed, he might have yielded to that habit of making
a gain of genius, which, since the time of Simonides, had been a besetting sin
of literary men. The charge of his addiction to sensual pleasures, the vice of
his age and country, seems well-founded, but in later life he appears to have
overcome such propensities.
iii. The Poetical Character of Sophocles.
By the universal consent of the best critics, both of ancient and of modern times,
the tragedies of Sophocles are not only the perfection of the Greek drama; but
they approach as nearly as is conceivable to the perfect ideal model of that species
of poetry. Such a point of perfection, in any art, is always the result of a combination
of causes, of which the internal impulse of the man's creative genius is but one.
The external influences, which determine the direction of that genius, and give
the opportunity for its manifestation, must be most carefully considered. Among
these influences, none is more powerful than the political and intellectual character
of the age. That point in the history of states, -- in which the minds of men,
newly set free from traditional dogmatic systems, have not yet been given up to
the vagaries of unbridled speculation, -- in which religious objects and ideas
are still looked upon with reverence, but no longer worshipped at a distance,
as too solemn and mysterious for a free and rational contemplation, -- in which
a newly recovered freedom is valued in proportion to the order which forms its
rule and sanction, and license has not yet overpowered law, -- in which man firmly,
but modestly, puts forward his claim to be his own ruler and his own priest, to
think and work for himself and for his country, controuled only by those laws
which are needful to hold society together, and to subject individual energy to
the public welfare, -- in which successful war has roused the spirit, quickened
the energies, and increased the resources of a people, but prosperity and faction
have not yet corrupted the heart, and dissolved the bonds of society, -- when
the taste, the leisure, and the wealth, which demand and encourage the means of
refined pleasure, have not yet been indulged to that degree of exhaustion which
requires more exciting and unwholesome stimulants, -- such is the period which
brings forth the most perfect productions in literature and art; such was the
period which gave birth to Sophocles and Pheidias. The poetry of Aeschylus, --
revelling in the ancient traditions and in the most unyielding fatalism, exhibiting
the gods and heroes of the mythic period in their own exalted and unapproachable
sphere, investing itself with an imposing but sometimes unmeaning pomp, and finding
utterance in language sublime, but not always comprehensible, -- was the true
expression of the imperfectly regulated energy, the undefined aspirations, and
the simple faith, of the men of Marathon and Salamis : while that of Euripides,
-- in its seductive beauty, its uncontrouled passion, its sophistical declamation,
its familiar scenes and allusions - reflected but too truly the character of the
degenerate race, which had been unsettled by the great intestine conflict of the
Peloponnesian War, corrupted by the exercise of license at home and of despotism
over their allies, perverted by the teaching of the sophists, and enervated by
the rapid depravation of their morals. The genius of Aeschylus is religious and
superhuman; that of Sophocles, without ceasing to be religious, but presenting
religion in quite another aspect, is ethical and, in the best sense, human; that
of Euripides is irreligious, unethical, and human in the lowest sense, working
upon the passions, and gratifying the weaknesses, of a corrupt generation of mankind.
To these external influences, which affected the spirit of the drama
as it appears in Sophocles, must be added the changes in its form and mechanism,
which enlarged its sphere and modified its character. Of these changes, the most
important was the addition of the tritagonistes, or third actor, by which three
persons were allowed to appear on the stage at once, instead of only two. This
change vastly enlarged the scope of the dramatic action, and indeed, as Muller
justly observes, "it appeared to accomplish all that was necessary to the variety
and mobility of action in tragedy, without sacrificing that simplicity and clearness
which, in the good ages of antiquity, were always held to be the most essential
qualities." By the addition of this third actor, the chief person of the drama
was brought under two conflicting influences, by the force of which both sides
of his character are at once displayed ; as in the scene where Antigone has to
contend at the same time with the weakness of Ismene and the tyranny of Creon.
Even those scenes in which only two actors appear are made more significant by
their relation to the parts of the drama in which the action combines all three,
and conversely ; thus, the scene of the Antigone just referred to derives its
force in a great measure from the preceding separate conflicts between Antigone
and Ismene, and Antigone and Creon; while the meaning of those two scenes is only
brought out fully when they are viewed in their relation to the third. Aeschylus
adopted the third actor in his later plays; and indeed it may be laid down, as
a general rule, and one which must have contributed greatly to the rapid progress
of the art, that every improvement, made by either of the great rival dramatists
of the age, was of necessity adopted by the others. In the time of Sophocles and
Euripides, the number of three actors was hardly ever exceeded. "It was an object
to turn the talents of the few eminent actors to the greatest possible account,
and to prevent that injury to the general effect which the interposition of inferior
actors, even in subordinate parts, must ever produce; and, in fact, so often nowadays
does produce." In only one play of Sophocles, and that not acted during his life,
does the interposition of a fourth actor appear necessary, namely, in the Oedipus
at Colonus; "unless we assume that the part of Theseus in this play was partly
acted by the person who represented Antigone, and partly by the person who represented
Ismene : it is, however, far more difficult for two actors to represent one part
in the same tone and spirit, than for one actor to represent several parts with
the appropriate modifications." It would be travelling rather beyond the bounds
of this article to describe the manner in which the persons of a Greek drama were
distributed among the three actors, who, by changes of dresses and masks, sustained
all the speaking characters of the play. This subject, though essential to a full
comprehension of the works of Sophocles, belongs rather to the general history
of the Greek drama : it is discussed very well by Muller, who gives a scheme of
the distribution of the parts in the Oresteian trilogy of Aeschylus, sand in the
Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles. Mr. Donaldson also discusses at some
length the distribution of the parts in the Antigone.
Sophocles also introduced some very important modifications in the
choral parts of the drama. According to Suidas he raised the number of the choreutae
from twelve to fifteen; and, although there are some difficulties in the matter,
the general fact is undoubted, that Sophocles fixed the number of choreutae at
fifteen, the establishment of which, as a rule, would necessarily be accompanied
with more definite arrangements than had previously been made respecting the evolutions
of the Chorus. At the same time the choral odes, which in Aeschylus occupied a
large space in the tragedy, and formed a sort of lyric exhibition of the subject
interwoven with the dramatic representation, were very considerably curtailed,
and their burden was less closely connected with the subject of the play ; while
the number of the epeisodia, or acts, into which they divided the drama, was increased,
and the continuity of the action was made closer by the rareness of the absence
of all the actors from the stage, whereas in the earlier tragedies the stage was
often left vacant, while the Chorus was singing long lyric odes. The mode in which
the Chorus is connected with the general subject and progress of the drama is
also different. In Aeschylus the Chorus is a deeply interested party, often taking
a decided and even vehement share in the action, and generally involved in the
catastrophe; but the Chorus of Sophocles has more of the character of a spectator,
moderator, and judge, comparatively impartial, but sympathising generally with
the chief character of the play, while it explains and harmonizes, as far as possible,
the feelings of all the actors. It is less mixed up with the general action than
in Aeschylus, but its connexion with each particular part is closer. The Chorus
of Sophocles is cited by Aristotle as an example of his definition of the part
to be taken by the Chorus:-- kai ton choron de hena dei hupolabein ton hupokritou
kai morion einai tou holou kai sunagonizesthai, me hosper Euripides all hosper
Sophokles; where, however, the value of the passage, as a description of the choruses
of Sophocles is somewhat diminished by the fact that he is comparing them, not
with those of Aeschylus, but with those of Euripides, whose choral odes have generally
very little to do with the business of the play.
By these changes Sophocles made the tragedy a drama in the proper
sense of the word. The interest and progress of the piece centred almost entirely
in the actions and speeches of the persons on the stage. A necessary consequence
of this alteration, combined with the addition of the third actor, was a much
more careful elaboration of the dialogue; and the care bestowed upon this part
of the composition is one of the most striking features of the art of Sophocles,
whether we regard the energy and point of the conversations which take place upon
the stage, or the vivid pictures of actions occurring elsewhere, which are drawn
in the speeches of the messengers.
It must not, however, be imagined for a moment that, in bestowing
so much care upon the dialogue, and confining the choral parts within their proper
limits, Sophocles was careless as to the mode in which he executed the latter.
On the contrary, he appears as if determined to use his utmost efforts to compensate
in the beauty of his odes for what he had taken away from their length. His early
attainments in music, -- the period in which his lot was cast, when the great
cycle of lyric poetry had been completed, and he could take Simonides and Pindar
as the starting points of his efforts, -- the majestic choral poetry of his great
predecessor and rival, Aeschylus, which he regarded rather as a standard to be
surpassed than as a pattern to be imitated, - combined with his own genius and
exquisite taste to give birth to those brief but perfect effusions of lyric poetry,
the undisturbed enjoyment of which was reckoned by Aristophanes as among the choicest
fruits of peace (Pax, 523). Another alteration of the greatest consequence, which,
though it was perhaps not originated by Sophocles, he was the first to convert
into a general practice, was the abandonment of the trilogistic form, in so far
at least as the continuity of subject was concerned. In obedience to the established
custom at the Dionysiac festivals, Sophocles appears generally to have brought
forward three tragedies and a satyric drama together; but the subjects of these
four plays were entirely distinct, and each was complete in itself.
Among the merely mechanical improvements introduced by Sophocles,
the most important is that of scene-painting, the invention of which is ascribed
to him. (See Agatharchus)
All these external and formal arrangements had necessarily the most
important influence on the whole spirit and character of the tragedies of Sophocles
; as, in the works of every-first rate artist, the form is a part of the substance.
But it remains to notice the most essential features of the art of the great tragedian,
namely, his choice of subjects, and the spirit in which he treated them.
The subjects and style of Aeschylus are essentially heroic; those
of Sophocles are human. The former excite terror, pity, and admiration, as we
view them at a distance; the latter bring those same feelings home to the heart,
with the addition of sympathy and self-application. No individual human being
can imagine himself in the position of Prometheus, or derive a personal warning
from the crimes and fate of Clytemnestra; but every one can, in feeling, share
the self-devotion of Antigone in giving up her life at the call of fraternal piety,
and the calmness which comes over the spirit of Oedipus when he is reconciled
to the gods. In Aeschylus, the sufferers are the victims of an inexorable destiny;
but Sophocles brings more prominently into view those faults of their own, which
form one element of the ate of which they are the victims, and is more intent
upon inculcating, as the lesson taught by their woes, that wise calmness and moderation,
in desires and actions, in prosperity and adversity, which the Greek poets and
philosophers celebrate under the name of sophrosune. On the other hand, he never
descends to that level to which Euripides brought down the art, the exhibition
of human passion and suffering for the mere purpose of exciting emotion in the
spectators, apart from a moral end. The great distinction between the two poets
is defined by Aristotle, in that passage of the Poetic which may be called the
great text of aesthetic philosophy, and in which, though the names of Sophocles
and Euripides are not mentioned, there can be no doubt that the statement that
" the tragedies of most of the more recent poets are unethical" is meant to apply
to Euripides, and that the contrast, which he proceeds to illustrate by a comparison
of Polygnotus and Zeuxis in the art of painting, is intended to describe the difference
between the two poets, for in another passage of the Poetic he quotes with approbation
the saying of Sophocles, that "he himself represented men as they ought to be,
but Euripides exhibited them as they are;" a remark, by the bye, which as coming
from the mouth of Sophocles himself, exposes the absurdity of those opponents
of aesthetic science, who sneer at it as if it ascribed to the great poets of
antiquity moral and artistic purposes of which they themselves never dreamt. It
is quite true that the earliest and some of the mightiest efforts of genius are
to a great extent (though never, we believe, entirely) unconscious; and even such
productions are governed by laws, written in the human mind and instinctively
followed by the poet, laws which it is the task and glory of aesthetic science
to trace out in the works of those writers who followed them unconsciously; but
such productions, however magnificent they may be, are never so perfect, in every
respect, as the works of the poet who, possessing equal genius, consciously and
laboriously works out the great principles of his art. It is in this respect that
Sophocles surpasses Aeschylus; his works are perhaps not greater, nay, in native
sublimity and spontaneous genius they are perhaps inferior, but they are more
perfect; and that for the very reason now stated, and which Sophocles himself
explained, when he said, "Aeschylus does what is right, but without knowing it."
The faults in Aeschylus, which Sophocles perceived and endeavoured to avoid, are
pointed out in a valuable passage preserved by Plutarch (de Prof. Virt.. The limits
of this article will not permit us to enlarge any further on the ethical character
of Sophocles, which is discussed and illustrated at great length in some of the
works referred to above, and also in Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Criticism,
where the reader will find an elaborate comparison between the three great tragic
poets. We will only add, in conclusion, that if asked for the most perfect illustration
of Aristotle's definition of the end of tragedy as di eleou kai phobou perainousa
ten ton toiouton pathematon katharsin, we would point to the Oedipus at Colonus
of Sophocles, and we would recommend, as one of the most useful exercises in the
study of aesthetic criticism, the comparison of that tragedy with the Eumenides
of Aeschylus and the Lear of our own Shakspere.
iv. The Works of Sophocles.
The number of plays ascribed to Sophocles was 130, of which, however, according
to Aristophanes of Byzantium, seventeen were spurious. He contended not only with
Aeschylus and Euripides, but also Choerilus Aristias, Agathon, and other poets,
amongst whom was his own son Iophon; and he carried off the first prize twenty
or twenty-four times frequently the second, and never the third. It is remarkable,
as proving his growing activity and success, that, of his 113 dramas, eighty-one
were brought out in the second of the two periods into which his career is divided
by the exhibition of the Antigone, which was his thirty-second play (Aristoph.
Byz. Argum. ad Antig.); and also that all his extant dramas, which of course in
the judgment of the grammariaus were his best, belong to the latter of these two
periods. By comparing the number of his plays with the sixty-two years over which
his career extended, and also the number belonging to each of the two periods,
Muller obtains the result that he at first brought out a tetralogy every three
or four years, but afterwards every two years at least; and also that in several
of the tetralogies the satyric drama must have been lost, or never existed, laid
that, among those 113 plays there could only have been, at the most, 23 satyric
dramas to 90 tragedies. The attempt has been made to divide the extant plays and
titles of Sophocles into trilogies; but, as might have been expected from what
has been said above respecting the nature of his trilogies, it has signally failed.
A much more important arrangement has been very elaborately attempted by Welcker,
namely, the classification of the extant plays and fragments according to the
poems of the Epic Cycle on which they were founded.
The following is most probably the chronological order in which the
seven extant tragedies of Sophocles were brought out: Antigone, Electra, Trachiniae,
Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. It is unnecessary to
attempt an analysis of these plays, partly because every scholar has read or will
read them for himself, and partly because they are admirably analysed in works
so generally read as Muller's History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, and
Schlegel's Lectures. Neither will our space permit us to yield to the temptation
of entering fully into the much disputed question of the object and meaning of
the Antigone ; respecting which the reader may consult the editions of the Antigone
by Bockh, Wex, Hermann, and Donaldson; articles by Mr. Dyer, and articles by G.
Wolff. It must suffice here to remark that we believe both the extreme views to
be equally remote from the truth; that the play is not intended to support exclusively
the rights of law in the person of Creon or those of liberty in the person of
Antigone, but to exhibit the claims of both, to show them brought into collision
when each is forced beyond the bounds of moderation; or, to speak more properly,
the collision is not between law and liberty, but between the two laws of the
family and the state, of religious duty and civil obedience. Neither party is
entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong. The fault of Creon is in the issuing
of a harsh and impious decree, that of Antigone in rashly and obstinately refusing
to submit to it ; and therefore each falls a victim to a conflict of the two laws
for and against which they strive; while both, as well as Haemon, are involved
by their individual acts in the more general and antecedent ate which rests upon
the royal family of Thebes. At the same time, this does not appear to be all that
is contained in the drama. The greater fault is on the side of Creon. Antigone
would have been perfectly in the right to disobey his edict, if all means of obtaining
its repeal had been exhausted, although even then strict law might perhaps have
required her martyrdom as the price of her fraternal piety; and perhaps, on the
other hand, the poet meant to teach that there are cases in which law must give
way, to avert the fearful consequences arising from its strict enforcement. At
all events, it is clear that the sympathy of the poet and of the spectators is
with Antigone, though they are constrained to confess that she is not entirely
guiltless, nor Creon altogether guilty. But still we think that this sympathy
with Antigone is only secondary to the lesson taught by the faults and ruin of
both, a lesson which the poet has himself distinctly pointed out in the final
words of the chorus,--to phronein, as opposed to the megaloi logoi of self-will,
an indulgence in which, even in the cause of piety towards the gods, brings down
megalas plegas as a retribution.
The titles and fragments of the lost plays of Sophocles will be found
collected in the chief editions, and in Welcker's Griechischen Tragodien.
In addition to his tragedies, Sophocles is said to have written an
elegy, paeans, and other poems, and a prose work on the Chorus, in opposition
to Thespis and Choerilus.
v. Ancient Commentators on Sophocles.
In the Scholia, the commentators are quoted by the general title of hoi hupomnematistai,
or hoi hupomnematisamenoi. Among those cited by name, or to whom commentaries
on Sophocles are ascribed by other authorities, are Aristarchus, Praxiphanes,
Didymus, Herodian, Horapollon, Androtion, and Aristophanes of Byzantium.
vi. Editions of the Plays of Sophocles....
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited July 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Trilogia. A set of three tragedies which, together with a satyric drama, formed a tetralogy. The several tragedies were generally, but not always, connected with each other in subject. The only surviving example is the Oresteia of Aeschylus, consisting of the Agamemnon, Choephoroe, and Eumenides.
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