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SOPHOCLES (495-406 B.c.)
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See also:SOPHOCLES (495-406 B.c.) , See also:Greek tragic poet, was See also:born
at Colonus in the neighbourhood of See also:Athens. His See also:father's name was Sophillus; and the See also:family See also:burial-See also:place is said to have been about a mile and a See also:half from the See also:city on the Decelean Way. The date assigned for the poet's See also:birth is in accordance with the See also:tale that See also:young Sophocles, then a See also:pupil of the musician Lamprus, was chosen to See also:lead the See also:chorus of boys in the celebration of the victory of See also:Salamis (48o B.c.). The See also:time of his See also:death is fixed by the allusions to it in the Frogs of See also:Aristophanes and in the See also:Muses, a lost See also:play of Phrynichus, the comic poet, which were both produced in 405 B.C., shortly before the See also:capture of Athens. And the See also:legend which implies that See also:Lysander allowed him funeral honours is one of those which, like the See also:story of See also: And the See also:anecdote recalled by Cephalus in See also:Plato's See also:Republic, that Sophocles welcomed the See also:release from the passions which is brought by age, accords with the spirit of his famous See also:Ode to Love in the Antigone. The Sophocles who, according to See also:Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 18), said of the See also:government of the Four See also:Hundred that it was the better of two See also:bad alternatives (probably the same who was one of the probuli), may or may not have been the poet. Other gossiping stories are hardly See also:worth repeating—as that Pericles rebuked his love of See also:pleasure and thought him a bad general, though a See also:good poet; that he humorously boasted of his own " generalship " in affairs of love; or that he said of See also:Aeschylus that he was often right without knowing it, and that See also:Euripides represented men as they are, not as they ought to be. (This last anecdote has the authority of Aristotle.) Such trifles rather reflect contemporary or subsequent impressions of a superficial See also:kind than tell us anything about the See also:man or the dramatist. The gibe.. of Aristophanes (See also:Pax 695 seq.), that Sophocles in his old age as become a very See also:Simonides in his love for gain, may turn on some perversion of fact, without being altogether See also:fair to either poet. It is certainly irreconcilable with the remark (Vit. anon.) that in spite of pressing invitations he refused to leave Athens for See also:kings' courts. And the story of his See also:indictment by his son Iophon for incompetence to See also:manage his affairs—to which See also:Cicero has given some See also:weight by quoting it in the De senectute—appears to be really traceable to Satyrus (fl. c. 200 B.C.), the same author who gave publicity to the most ridiculous of the various absurd accounts of the poet's death—that his breath failed him for want of a pause in See also:reading some passage of the Antigone. Satyrus is at least the See also:sole authority for the See also:defence of the aged poet, who, after reciting passages from the Oed. See also:Col., is supposed to have said to his accusers, " If I am Sophocles I am no dotard, and if I dote I am not Sophocles." On the other See also:hand, we need not the testimony of biographers to assure us that he was devoted to Athens and renowned for piety. He is said to have been See also:priest of the See also:hero Alcon, and himself to have received divine honours after death. That the See also:duty of managing the actors as well as of training the chorus belonged to the author is well known. But did Aeschylus See also:act in his own plays? This certainly is implied in the tradition that Sophocles, because of the weakness of his See also:voice, was the first poet who desisted from doing so. In his Thamyras, however, he is said to have performed on the See also:lyre to admiration, and in his See also:Nausicaa (perhaps as See also:coryphaeus) to have played gracefully the See also:game of See also:ball. Various See also:minor improvements in decoration and See also:stage See also:carpentry are attributed to him—whether truly or not who can tell? It is more interesting, if true, that he wrote his plays having certain actors in his See also:eye; that he formed an association for the promotion of liberal culture; and that he was the first to introduce three actors on the stage. It is asserted on the authority of See also:Aristoxenus that Sophocles was also the first to employ Phrygian melodies. And it is easy to believe that Aj. 693 seq., Track. 205 seq., were sung to Phrygian See also:music, though there are strains in Aeschylus (e.g. Choeph. 152 seq., 423 seq.) which it is hard to distinguish essentially from these. See also:Ancient critics had also noted his familiarity with See also:Homer, especially with the Odyssey, his powerof selection and of extracting an exquisite See also:grace from all he touched (whence he was named the " See also:Attic See also:Bee "), his mingled felicity and boldness, and, above all, his subtle delineation of human nature and feeling. They observed that the balanced proportions and See also:fine See also:articulation of his See also:work are such that in a single half See also:line or phrase he often conveys the impression of an entire See also:character. Nor is this See also:verdict of antiquity likely to be reversed by See also:modern See also:criticism. His minor poems, elegies, paeans, &c., have all perished; and of his hundred and See also:odd dramas only seven remain. These all belong to the See also:period of his maturity (he had no decline); and not only the titles but some scanty fragments of more than ninety others have been preserved. Several of these were, of course, satyric dramas. And this recalls a point of some importance, which has been urged on the authority of Suidas, who says that " Sophocles began the practice of pitting play against play, instead of the tetralogy." If it were meant that Sophocles did not exhibit tetralogies, this statement would have simply to be rejected. For the word of Suidas (A.D. 950) has no weight against quotations from the lists of tragic victories (6i6aoKaXiat), which there is no other See also:reason for discrediting. It is distinctly asserted on the authority of the 3tbaaKahiat that the Bacchae of Euripides, certainly as See also:late as any play of Sophocles, was one of a trilogy or tetralogy. And if the See also:custom was thus maintained for so See also:long it was clearly impossible for any single competitor to break through it. But it seems probable that the trilogy had ceased to be the continuous development of one legend or See also:cycle of legends—" presenting Thebes or See also:Pelops' line "—if, indeed, it ever was so exclusively; and if a Sophoclean tetralogy was still linked together by some subtle See also:bond of tragic thought or feeling, this would not affect the criticism of each play considered as an See also:artistic whole. At the same time it appears that the satyric See also:drama lost its grosser features and became more or less assimilated to the milder See also:form of tragedy. And these changes, or something like them, may have given rise to the statement in Suidas.
The small number of tragic victories attributed to Sophocles, in proportion to the number of his plays, is only intelligible on the supposition that the dramas were presented in See also:groups.
If the diction of Sophocles sometimes reminds his readers of the Odyssey, the subjects of his plays were more frequently chosen from those later epics which subsequently came to be embodied in the epic cycle—such as the Aethiopis, the Little Iliad, the Iliupersis, the Cypria, the Nosti, the Telegonia (all revolving See also:round the tale of See also:Troy), the Thebaica, the OixaAias &Awaes, and others, including probably, though there is no mention of such a thing, some See also:early version of the Argonautic story. In one or other of these heroic poems the legends of all the See also:great cities of Hellas were by this time embodied; and though there must also have been a See also:cloud of oral tradition floating over many a sacred spot, Sophocles does not seem, unless in his See also:Oedipus Coloneus, to have directly drawn from this. He was content to See also:quarry from the epic rhapsodies the materials for his more concentrated See also:art, much as See also:Shakespeare made use of Hollingshed or Plutarch, or as the subjects of See also:Tennyson's Idylls of the See also: All else was subordinated to the dramatic, or, in other words, the purely human, See also:interest of the fable. This central interest is even more dominant and pervading in Sophocles than the otherwise supreme See also:influence of religious and ethical ideas. The See also:idea of destiny, for example, was of course inseparable from Greek tragedy. Its prevalence was one of the conditions which presided over the art from its birth, and, unlike Aeschylus, who wrestles with gods, Sophocles simply accepts it, both as a datum of tradition and a fact of life. But in the See also:free handling of Sophocles even See also:fate and See also:providence are adminicular to tragic art. They are See also:instruments through which sympathetic emotion is awakened, deepened, intensified. And, while the See also:vision of the eternal and unwritten See also:laws was holier yet, for it was not the creation of any former age, but See also:rose and culminated with the Sophoclean drama, still to the poet and his Periclean See also:audience this was no abstract notion, but was inseparable from their impassioned contemplation of the life of man—so great and yet so helpless, aiming so high and falling down so far, a plaything of the gods and yet essentially divine. This lofty vision subdued with the serenity of See also:awe the terror and pity of the See also:scene, but from neither could it take a single tremor or a single See also:tear. Emotion was the See also:element in which Greek tragedy lived and moved, albeit an emotion that was curbed to a serene stillness through its very See also:depth and intensity. The final estimate of Sophoclean tragedy must largely depend upon the mode in which his treatment of destiny is conceived. That Aeschylus had risen on the wings of faith to a height of prophetic vision, from whence he saw the See also:triumph of See also:equity and the defeat of wrong as an eternal See also:process moving on toward one divine event—that he realized See also:sin, retribution, responsibility as no other ancient did—may be gladly conceded. But it has been argued that because Sophocles is saddened by glancing down again at actual life—because in the See also:fatalism of the old fables he finds the reflection of a truth—he in so far takes a step backward as a tragic artist. This remark is not altogether just. His value for what is highest in man is none the less because he strips it of earthly rewards, nor is his reverence for eternal See also:law less deep because he knows that its workings are sometimes pitiless. Nor, once more, does he disbelieve in Providence, because experience has shown him that the end towards which the supreme See also:powers lead forth mankind is still unseen. Not only the utter devotion of Antigone, but the lacerated innocence of Oedipus and Deianira, the tempted truth of See also:Neoptolemus, the essential See also:nobility of Ajax, leave an impress on the See also:heart which is ineffaceable, and must elevate and purify while it remains. In one respect, however, it must be admitted that Sophocles is not before his age. There is an element of unrelieved vindictiveness, not merely inherent in the fables, but inseparable from the poet's handling of some themes, which is only too consistent with the temper of the " See also:tyrant city." Aeschylus represents this with equal dramatic vividness, but he associates it not with heroism, but with See also:crime. Sophocles is often praised for skilful construction. But the See also:secret of his skill depends in large measure on the profound way in which the central situation in each of his fables has been conceived and See also:felt. Concentration is the distinguishing See also:note of tragedy, and it is by greater concentration that Sophocles is distinguished from other tragic poets. In the Septem contra Thebas or the See also:Prometheus of Aeschylus there is still somewhat of epic enlargement and breadth; in the See also:Hecuba and other dramas of Euripides See also:separate scenes have an idyllic beauty and tenderness which affect us more than the progress of the See also:action as a whole, a defect which the poet sometimes tries to compensate by some novel denouement or See also:catastrophe. But in following a Sophoclean tragedy we are carried steadily and swiftly onward, looking neither to the right nor to the left; the more elaborately any scene or single speech is wrought the more does it contribute to enhance the main emotion, and if there is a deliberate pause it is felt either as a welcome breathing space or as the See also:calm of brooding expectancy. The result of this method is the See also:union, in the highest degree, of simplicity with complexity, of largeness of See also:design with See also:absolute finish, of grandeur with See also:harmony. Superfluities are thrown off without an effort through the burning of the See also:fire within. Crude elements are fused and made transparent. What look like ornaments are found to be inseparable from the organic whole. Each of the plays is admirable in structure, not because it is cleverly put together, but because it is so completely alive. The seven extant tragedies probably owe their preservation to some selection made for educational purposes in Alexandrian times. A yet smaller " sylloge " of three plays (Ajax, See also:Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus) continued current amongst See also:Byzantine students and many more copies of these exist than is the See also:case with the other four. Of these four the Antigone seems to have been the most popular, while an inner circle of readers were specially attracted by the Oedipus Coloneus. No example of the poet's earliest manner has come down to us. The Antigone certainly belongs to the Periclean See also:epoch, and while See also:Creon's large professions (lines 175–190) have been supposed to reflect the policy of the Athenian statesman, the heroine's See also:grand See also:appeal to the unwritten laws may have been suggested by words which an Attic orator afterwards quoted as having been spoken by Pericles himself: " They say that Pericles once exhorted you that in the case of persons guilty of impiety you should observe not only the written laws, but also those unwritten, which are followed by the Eumolpidae in their instructions—laws which no man ever yet had See also:power to abrogate, or dared to contradict, nor do the Eumolpidae themselves know who enacted them, for they believe that whoso violates them must pay the See also:penalty not only to man, but to the gods" ([See also:Lysias] contra Andocidem, § x. p. 104). Modern readers have thought it See also:strange that Creon when convinced goes to See also:bury Polynices before attempting to release Antigone. It is obvious how this was necessary to the catastrophe, but it is also true to character, for Creon is not moved by compunction for the See also:maiden nor by anxiety on Haemon's See also:account, but by the fear of retribution coming on himself and the See also:state, because of the sacred law of sepulture which he has defied. Antigone is the See also:martyr of natural See also:affection and of the See also:religion of the family. But, as Kaibel pointed out, she is also the high-born Cadmean maiden, whose See also:defiance of the oppressor is accentuated by the pride of See also:race. She despises Creon as an upstart, who has done See also:outrage not only to eternal See also:ordinance, but to the rights of the royal house. The Ajax, that tragedy of wounded See also:honour, still bears some traces of Aeschylean influence, and may be even earlier than the Antigone. But it strikes the peculiarly Sophoclean note, that the great and See also:noble spirit, although through its own or others' errors it may be overclouded for a time and rejected by See also:con-temporaries amongst mankind, is notwithstanding accepted by the gods and shall be held in lasting veneration. The construction of the Ajax has been adversely criticized, but without sufficient reason. If it has not the concentration of the See also:Anti-gone, or of the Oedipus Tyrannus, it has a continuous See also:movement which culminates in the hero's See also:suicide, and develops a fine depth of sympathetic emotion in the sequel. In the King Oedipus the poet attains to the supreme height of dramatic concentration and tragic intensity. The drama seems to have been produced soon after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, but certainly not in the See also:year of the See also:plague—else Sophocles, like his predecessor Phrynichus, might be said to have reminded his countrymen too poignantly of their See also:home troubles. " The unwritten laws " are now a theme for the chorus. The See also:worship of the Delphic See also:Apollo is associated with a profound sense of the value and sacredness of domestic purity, and in the command to drive out pollution there is possibly an implied reference to the See also:expulsion of the See also:Alcmaeonidae. The Electra, a less powerful drama, is shown by the metrical indications to be somewhat later than the Oedipus Rex. The harshness of the See also:vendetta is not relieved as in Aeschylus by long-drawn invocations of the dead, nor, as in Euripides, is it made a subject of See also:casuistry. Electra's heroic impulse, the offsprh g of filial love, through long endurance hardened into a " fixed idea," is irrepressible, and See also:Orestes, supported by Pylades, goes directly to his aim in obedience to Apollo. But nothing can exceed the tenderness of the recognition scene—lines 1098-1321, and the description of the falsely reported See also:chariot race (681–763) is full of spirit. In the Trachinian Maidens there is a transition towards that milder pathos which Sophocles is said to have finally approved (i)Ou a,rarov Kai 407rov). The fate of Deianira is tragic indeed. But in her treatment of her See also:rival, Iole, there are modern touches reminding one of Shakespeare. The play may have been produced at a time not far removed from the See also:peace of See also:Nicias; and if this were so Deianira's See also:prayer that her descendants may never undergo captivity—lines 303-305—might remind Athenian matrons of the See also:captive Heracleids from See also:Pylos, descendants through Hyllus of Deianira herself. The " modern " note is even more conspicuous in the See also:Philoctetes, where the inward conflict in the mind of Neoptolemus, between ambition and friendship, is delineated with equal subtlety and force, and the contrast of the ingenuous youth with the aged solitary, in whom just resentment has become a dominant idea, shows great depth of psychological insight. The tragic catastrophe of the Oedipus Tyrannus and the Trachiniae is absent here. The contending interests are reconciled by the intervention of the deified Heracles. But even more clearly than in the Ajax the heroic sufferer, rejected by men, is accepted by the gods and destined to triumph in the end. The Philoctetes is known to have been produced in the year 408 B.C., when Sophocles was 87 years old. The Oedipus Coloneus is said to have been brought out after the death of Sophocles by his See also:grandson in the archonship of See also:Micon, 402 B.C. The question naturally arises, why a work of such surpassing merit should not have appeared in the lifetime of the poet. The See also:answer is conjectural, but acquires some See also:probability when several facts are taken into one view. It is surely remarkable that in a drama which obviously appeals to Athenian patriotism, local sanctities should obtain prominence to the exclusion of the corresponding national shrines on the See also:Acropolis. It has been thought that the aged poet felt a See also:peculiar See also:satisfaction in celebrating the beauty and sacredness of his native See also:district. This may well have been so, but could hardly See also:supply a sufficient See also:motive for a work destined to be presented to the assembled Athenians in the Dionysiac See also:theatre. But there was a crisis in Athenian politics when "Colonus of the Knights " acquired a national significance. Those who organized the constitution of the Four Hundred made the See also:precinct of See also:Poseidon at Colonus the place of See also:meeting, and probably sacrificed at the very See also:altar which is consecrated by See also:Theseus in this play. There must have been some reason for this. May it not have been that the occupants of the whole region, including the See also:Academy, belonged mostly to the oligarchic See also:faction? May not those who honoured Colonus by frequenting it—lines 62 and 63—have belonged to the See also:order of See also:knighthood? The name Colonus Hippius (or TCJV iaa&wv) would then have an appropriate meaning, and the equestrian statue of the See also:eponymous hero (line 59) would be symbolical. In times of political agitation Colonus would then be regarded like St Germain, as the aristocratic See also:quarter, while the See also:Peiraeus was that of the extreme See also:democracy, a sort of See also:Faubourg St See also:Antoine. It was there that the See also:counter-movement reached its See also:culmination. If so much be granted, is it not possible that this play, so deeply tinged with oligarchic influence, may have been thought too dangerous, and consequently withheld from See also:production until after the See also:amnesty, when the name of Sophocles was universally beloved, and this work of his old age could be prudently made public by his descendant? The knights in Aristophanes (424 B.C.) make their See also:special appeal to Poseidon of the chariot race and to the Athene of victory. The Coloniates celebrate the sons of Theseus as worshippers of Athene Hippia, and of Poseidon. Theseus in Euripides (Supplices) is the first See also:citizen of a republic. In this drama he is the king whose word is law, and he is warned by Oedipus to avoid the madness of revolutionarychange (lines 15361–538). The tragic story of Oedipus is resumed, but in a later and deeper See also:strain of thoughtful emotion. Once more the noble spirit, rejected by man, is accepted by the gods. The eternal laws have been vindicated. Their decrees are irreversible, but the involuntary unconscious criminal is not finally condemned. He has no more See also:hope in this See also:world, but is in mysterious communion with unseen powers. The sufferer is now a See also:holy See also:person and an author of blessing. An approach is even made to the New Testament See also:doctrine of the sacredness of sorrow. Whatever may have been the nature of a Sophoclean tetra-logy, the practice which at one time prevailed of describing the Oedipus Rex, Oedipus Coloneus and Antigone as " the Theban trilogy " was manifestly erroneous and misleading. The three plays belong to different periods in the life-work of the poet, and the Antigone is the earliest of the three. The spectator of a Sophoclean tragedy was invited to See also:witness the supreme crisis of an individual destiny, and was possessed at the outset with the circumstances of the decisive moment. Except in the Trachiniae, where the retrospective soliloquy of Deianira is intended to emphasize her lonely position, this exposition is effected through a brief See also:dialogue, in which the protagonist may or may not take See also:part. In the Oedipus Tyrannus the king's entrance and his colloquy with the aged priest intro-duce the audience at once to the action and to the See also:chief person. In the Ajax and Philoctetes the entrance or See also:discovery of the hero is made more impressive by being delayed. Immediately after the prologos the chorus enter, numbering fifteen, either chanting in procession as in the Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus, or dispersedly as in the Oedipus Coloneus and Philoctetes, or, thirdly, as in the Electra, where, after entering silently during the monody of the heroine, and taking up their position in the See also:orchestra, they address her one by one. With a remarkable exception, to be noted presently, the chorus, having once entered, remain to the end. They always stand in some carefully adjusted relation to the See also:principal figure. The elders of Thebes, whose age and coldness throw into See also:relief the fervour and the desolation of Antigone, are the very men to realize the calamity of Oedipus, and, while horror-stricken, to lament his fall. The See also:rude Salaminian mariners are loyal to Ajax, but can-not enter into his grief. The Trachinian maidens would gladly support Deianira, who has won their See also:hearts, but they are too young and inexperienced for the task. The noble Argive See also:women can sympathize with the sorrows of Electra, but no sympathy can soothe her See also:distress. The parodos of the chorus is followed by the first scene or epeisodion, with which the action may be said to begin. For in the course of this the spectator's interest is strongly roused by some new circumstance involving an unforeseen complication—the awakening of Ajax (Aj.), the burial of Polynices (See also:Ant.) , the See also:dream of Clytaemnestra (El.), the dark utterance of See also:Teiresias (Oed. See also:Tyr. ), the arrival of Lichas with Iole (Trach.), the See also:report of Ismene announcing Creon's coming (Oed. Col.), the sudden entreaty of Philoctetes crossed by the entrance of the pretended mariner (Phil.). The action from this point onwards is like a steadily flowing stream into which a See also:swift and turbulent tributary has suddenly fallen, and the interest advances with rapid and continuous See also:climax until the culmination is reached and the catastrophe is certain. The manner in which this is done, through the interweaving of dialogue and narration with the various lyrical portions, is very different in different dramas, one of the principal charms of Sophocles being his power of ingenious variation in the employment of his resources. Not less admirable is the strength with which he sustains the interest after the peripeteia,l whether, as in the Antigone, by heaping sorrow upon sorrow, or, as in the first Oedipus, by passing from horror to tenderness and unlocking the See also:fountain of tears. The extreme point of boldness in arrangement is reached in the Ajax, where the chorus and Tecmessa, having been warned of the impending 1 A tragic action has five stages, whence the five acts of the modern drama: the start, the rise, the height, the See also:change, the See also:close.
danger, depart severally in quest of the vanished hero, and thus leave not only the stage but the orchestra vacant for the soliloquy that precedes his suicide.
No such general description as has been here attempted can give even a remote impression of the See also: What has See also:Phoebus said? Another moment of suspense is interposed. Then the See also:oracle is repeated—so thrilling to the spectator who understands the story, so full of doubt and hope and dread to all the persons of the drama: " It is for the See also:blood of Laiiis—his murderers are harboured in the See also:land of Thebes. The See also:country must be purged." That is the culminating point of the little tragedy. While Oedipus asks for information, while in gaiety of heart he undertakes the See also:search, While he bids the folk of See also:Cadmus to be summoned thither, the spectators have just time to take in the full significance of what has passed, which every word that is uttered sends further home. All this in 15o lines! Or, once more, consider the employment of narrative by this great poet. The Tyrannus might be again adduced, but let us turn instead to the Antigone and the Trachiniae. The speech of the messenger in the Antigone, the speeches of Hyllus and the See also:Nurse in the Trachiniae, occur at the supreme crisis of the two dramas. Yet there is no sense of any retardation in the action by the report of what has been happening else-where. Much rather the audience are carried breathlessly along, while each See also:speaker brings before their See also:mental vision the scene of which he had himself been part. It is a drama within the drama, an action rising from its starting-point in rapid climax, swift, full, concentrated, until that See also:wave subsides, and is followed by a moment of expectation. Nor is this all. The narrative of the messenger is overheard by See also:Eurydice, that of Hyllus is heard by Deianira, that of Nurse by the chorus of Maidens. And in each case a poignancy of tragic significance is added by this circumstance, while the speech of the Messenger in the Antigone, and that of Hyllus in a yet higher degree, bind together in one the twofold interest of an action which might otherwise seem in danger of distracting the spectator's sympathies. So profound is the contrivance, or, to speak more accurately, such is the strength of central feeling and conception, which secures the grace of unity in complexity to the Sophoclean drama. The proportion of the lyrics to the level dialogue is consider-ably less on the See also:average in Sophocles than in Aeschylus, as might be expected from the development of the purely dramatic element, and the consequent subordination of the chorus to the protagonist. In the seven extant plays the lyrical portion ranges from one-fifth to nearly one-third, being highest in the Antigone and lowest in the Oedipus Tyrannus. The See also:distribution of the lyrical parts is still more widely diversified. In the Electra, for instance, the chorus has less to do than in the Oedipus Tyrannus, although in the former the lyrics constituteone-See also:fourth, and in the latter only one-fifth of the whole. But then the part of Electra is favourable to lyrical outbursts, whereas it is only after the tragic change that Oedipus can appropriately pass from the stately senarius to the broken See also:language of the See also:dochmiac and the " lamenting " See also:anapaest. The protagonists of the Ajax and the Philoctetes had also large opportunities for vocal display. The union of strict symmetry with freedom and variety, which is throughout characteristic of the work of Sophocles, is especially noticeable in his handling of the tragic metres. In the iambics of his dialogue, as compared with those of Aeschylus, there is an advance which may be compared with the transition from " See also:Marlowe's mighty line " to the subtler harmonies of Shakespeare. Felicitous pauses, the linking on of line to line, trisyllabic feet introduced for special effects, See also:alliteration both hard and soft, length of speeches artfully suited to character and situation, See also:adaptation of the See also:caesura to the feeling expressed, are some of the points which occur most readily in thinking of his senarii. A See also:minute speciality may be noted as illustrative of his manner in this respect. Where a line is broken by a pause towards the end and the latter phrase runs on into the following lines, elision sometimes takes place between the lines, e.g. (Oed. Tyr., 332-333) : 'Eyes our' $µavrov are o' lxXyvvl at See also:rain.' 8XX ,s EMyxcis; This is called synaphea, and is peculiar to Sophocles. He differentiates more than Aeschylus does between the metres to be employed in the Kopµo[ (including the KoM/ 1TLK&) and in the choral odes. The dochmius, cretic, and free anapaest are employed chiefly in the Koµµoi. In the stasima he has greatly See also:developed the use of logaoedic and particularly of See also:glyconic rhythms, and far less frequently than his predecessor indulges in long continuous runs of dactyls or trochees. The See also:light See also:trochaic line -See also:Las— ts -L s.i —, so frequent in Aeschylus, is comparatively rare in Sophocles. If, from the very severity with which the choral element is subordinated to the purely dramatic, his lyrics have neither the magnificent sweep of Aeschylus nor the " linked sweetness " of Euripides, they have a concinnity and point, a directness of aim, and a truth of dramatic keeping, more perfect than is to be found in either. And even in grandeur it would be hard to find many passages to See also:bear comparison with the second stasimon, or central ode, either of the Antigone (eilalµoves din KaKwv) or the first Oedipus (el ,uos Evvein 4Epovrt). Nor does anything in Euripides equal in grace and sweetness the famous eulogy on Colonus (the poet's birthplace) in the Oedipus Coloneus..L since See also:Hermann's have been those of See also:Schneidewin, G. See also:Wolff and Wecklein. L. See also: C. Jebb. The chief See also:German translations are those of Solger (1824), Donner (1839), Hartung (1853) and Thudichum. The See also:French prose See also:translation by Leconte de See also:Lisle, and the See also:Italian in verse by Bellotti deserve special mention. The Antigone was produced at See also:Berlin with Mendelssohn's music in 1841 and the Oedipus Coloneus in 1845. They have been reproduced in See also:English several times—the Antigone notably with See also:Helen See also:Faucit (See also:Lady See also: (L. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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