I , z-3. t tf u ,/> /? < ,J^' HELLENICA [c. 47-] HELLENICA & Collection of ON GREEK POETRY PHILOSOPHY HISTORY AND RELIGION EDITED BY EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A. LL.D. FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD RIVINGTONS WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON Word anfc CambciUjje MDCCCLXXX PREFACE. THOUGH each of the Essays in this volume has been written independently of the rest, they are all in a certain sense connected with each other, and I have endeavoured to indicate the link of connection by the common title " Hellenica." We have not done with the Hellenes yet. Jn spite of all the labour spent, and all the books written on them and their literature, we have not yet entered into full possession of the inheritance bequeathed to us. It has, indeed, been said that we know nearly as much about the Greeks and Romans as we shall ever know ; but this can only be true of the mass of facts, to which, without some new dis- coveries, we are not likely to add greatly. It is not in the least true in regard to the significance of Hellenic history and literature. Beyond and above the various interpretations placed by different ages upon the great writers of Greece, lies the meaning which longer experience and more improved methods of criticism and the test of time declare to be the true one. From this point of view much remains and will long remain to be done, whether we look to the work vi PREFACE. of the scholar or to the influence of Hellenic thought on civilisation. We have not yet found all the scattered limbs of Truth ; it may be that we are only commencing the search. It is not- likely that the great authors of Greece will ever become, like the Hebrew Scriptures, a text- book of daily life. The rapt utterance of the prophet is far mightier " to sway the soul of man " than the calmer reasoning of the philosopher, who often loses in intensity what he gains in breadth. But they may do a great deal more for us than they have hitherto done, if we will allow them. The Gorgias of Plato and the Ethics of Aristotle are more valuable than modern books on the same subjects, for the simple reason that they are nearer the beginning. They have a greater freshness, and appeal more directly to the growing mind. No age can neglect them without suffering a definite and appreciable loss, least of all the present age, for the study of the writings and the contemplation of the lives of men who sought after knowledge as after hidden treasure, who found, or seemed to find, the one great Good, which all men, consciously or unconsciously, were everywhere seeking, who observed the facts of the world around them with calm judgment, and built thereon their own lofty theories of what human life might and ought to be " Serene creators of immortal things," become more and more valuable as the course of PREFACE. vii history tends to put things material and practical in the place of things intellectual. In many respects modern civilisation contrasts favourably with ancient ; it is, for instance, a trite thing to point out the care taken in modern times of the criminal and the idiot. On the other hand, it is possible that this gain has not been without some accompanying loss. While we are anxious to hide or relieve the degradation to which human nature can sink, we tend to become less careful of the elevation to which it can rise ; we put feeling in the place of thought, and throw away half our birthright. But if a single generation were able to keep before it an ideal of culture which should blend all the elements of human knowledge " into an immortal feature of perfection," if a whole country could unite in one effort to appropriate in any real manner the best that has been thought and written on the great interests of life, we should indeed make a great stride forward, but we should also find that the brightest hope of the future is not far removed from the truest interpreta- tion of the past. At present such an effort is impossible, partly because much of the best literature of the world is in the exclusive possession of the few. The most direct method of breaking down this exclusiveness, and bring- ing the great writers of Greece within the immediate reach of English readers, is no doubt to translate viii PREFACE. them ; but it is hoped that a volume like the present, while it helps to increase the interest taken in Greek literature, will also show how that literature may be of service in the present day. E. ABBOTT. BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD, December 1879. CONTENTS PAGE AESCHYLUS ERNEST MYERS, M.A., Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford i THE THEOLOGY AND ETHICS OF SOPHOCLES EVELYN ABBOTT, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford 33 THE THEORY OF EDUCATION IN PLATO'S REPUBLIC RICHARD LEWIS NETTLESHIP, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford 67 ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPTION OF THE STATE ANDREW CECIL BRADLEY, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford 181 EPICURUS WILLIAM LEONARD COURTNEY, M.A., Fellow of New College, Oxford 244 THE SPEECHES OF THUCYDIDES RICHARD CLAVERHOUSE JEBB, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow .... 266 XENOPHON HENRY GRAHAM DAKYNS, M.A., Trinity College, Cam- bridge 324 POLYBIUS JAMES LEIGH STRACHAN-DAVIDSON,M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford 387 GREEK ORACLES FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY MYERS, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 425 AESCHYLUS. " voi ch'avete gl' intelletti sani, Mi rate la clottrina che s'asconcle Sotto il velame degli versi strani." DANTE. " High actions and high passions best describing." MILTON. THE three sons of Euphorion the Athenian, Kynegeirus, Aeschy- lus, and Ameinias, all earned the gratitude of their country and of the world, for all fought in the great battles of the Persian war, and helped to save the brightest hopes of the human race, which then stood in jeopardy of death. But to Aeschylus belongs another and a still more conspicuous fame, for he is the Father of Tragedy ; nor have any of his spiritual sons, save* perhaps one, been able to claim a right to the boast of Sthenelus. 1 And since all European drama derives from the Athenian, it is more than mere idle speculation to say that without Aeschylus there might possibly have been no Shakespeare. Aeschylus was born in the year 525 B.C., and died in 456, twenty -five years before the Peloponnesian war began, so that of him, more truly than of Sophocles, it might be said that he departed ovSev vTropeivas /cafcov, taken away from the evil that was to come. When the Persian war was over, during the latter part of his life, he seems, like other poets and artists of the time, to have visited Sicily and Syracuse, once at least, more probably twice, or even thrice. We need not regard the gossip of later times, which attributed his absence from Athens to jealousy of the rising fame of Sophocles, who had become more popular than himself in the Athenian theatre. We may feel sure that the personal relations of Aeschylus and Sophocles find far truer expression in that passage in the Frogs of Aristo- phanes, where Aeacus tells how, when the younger poet came 1 Iliad, iv. 405. A AESCHYLUS. down among the dead, he clasped the hand of the elder and embraced him, and would not suffer that he should yield his throne. Syracuse was at that time a common resort of men of art and letters ; and the sympathy of Aeschylus may well have been aroused, as Pindar's was, for the Hellenic people and prince who had fought so well against the Carthaginian and Etruscan in the West, while the Hellenes of the mother country were beating back the Persian in the East. Whatever were the cause, there is no doubt that Aeschylus did at least once exchange the fair curve of hills that stand about the Athenian plain for Etna's solitary cone, and the rock-fretted ripple of Ilissus for smooth-sliding Anapus and his reedy banks. In honour of a new-founded Sicilian city, he wrote a play called Tlie Women of Aitna, but of this unhappily only four lines remain, so that we cannot know " how fair a fountain of immortal verse he made to flow" 1 for his hosts, among whom he came like Alpheus rising blended in the Arethusan spring, " bearing bridal gifts, Fair leaves and flowers and sacred soil of Hellas." 2 In Sicily death overtook him, and his ashes were buried at Gela with the honours of a public funeral. On his tomb was engraved a brief epitaph, attributed to himself; and we may well believe that he wrote it, for it makes no mention of the triumphs of his art, only of his share in the common duties of a citizen when he fought in the ranks at Marathon. His choice of the new and native field of tragic poetry was symbolised in the legend which told how, when as a boy he had fallen asleep in his father's vineyard, Dionysus appeared to him in a vision, and gave command that he should serve him after this sort at his festival when the vines grew green. So amply had he fulfilled before his death the charge enjoined on him by the God, that no less than seventy dramas, of which only seven have descended to us, were even at the lowest reckoning ascribed to his hand. Such external evidence touching the bent and genius of Aeschylus as has been left to us in the shape of contemporary 1 Ka.1 Ke fj.v6riffa.i0 1 owolav 'A/wceo-tXp efy>e vayav a^poffLw eirtuv. PlNDAR, Pytli. iv. 298. J ZSva. tpuv /ca\d y ff Sidup \OLfjLiTpbv fualvuv otiirof)' fvp-fiffeis iror6v. Eum. 694-95. AESCHYLUS. may roughly be called sophistic, was yet undeveloped. The old religion, thanks to the elasticity of Hellenic theology, and its identification with the national cause in the Persian war, still kept a strong hold on the minds even of the most thoughtful. Pallas had fought for Athens, and the Parthenon was her thank- offering. Tradition seemed to be reconciled for the time with reason, as aristocracy with democracy, and artistic with political energy. Thus from the union of a sense of self-reliance and com- pleteness with an eager interest in the spectacle and -the action of life, there arose that state of calm without languor, vivid feel- ing without distracting passion, which provides the best atmo- sphere for artistic development. Thus of all the great literary and artistic epochs of Europe this was the most propitious to literature and art. In the Hellenic prime there was more of life and freshness than in the age of Virgil, not to mention that of Corneille and Moliere, more sanity and serenity than in medieval Italy in Dante's time, or than in either England or Italy at the Eenaissance, or during the religious wars of the Beformatioii ; more also, it need hardly be said, than in any of the European countries which felt the stimulating shock of the French Eevolution. Of this age in Hellas the chief artistic interpreters to us are Pindar, Aeschylus, Pheidias, and Sophocles. Three of these are Athenians. But it must be remembered that, splendid as the achievements of Athens were in poetry, she only appeared late upon that field. The genius to which we owe the poems of Homer, though Ionian, was assuredly not Attic ; and in all the famous roll of lyric and gnomic poets who filled the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century, the only Athenians are the ancient Tyrtaeus, who dwelt among Dorians and made his war-songs for the Spartan host, and the lawgiver Solon. Solon, indeed, was both an Athenian patriot and a true, though not a great, poet, so far as we can judge from a few fragments. In the twenty or thirty iambics of Solon's still extant, we can already detect some prefiguring semblance of the mighty march of the Aeschylean line. But Solon was primarily a statesman and law- giver, engrossed in training the first shoots of that law-abiding freedom which was in the appointed time to bear such rich fruits of art. That time was come when Aeschylus received his first mission from Dionysus. Homer had sung for the warrior- prince, and Hesiod for the toiling husbandman, Sappho for the AESCHYLUS. lover, and Pindar for the glory of youth ; but the word of Aeschylus was for the citizens of an august commonwealth, whose acts and thoughts were destined " To cast the kingdoms old Into another mould." A new form in poetry was demanded, a form which should be congenial to those stirring times of action, and this demand Aeschylus supplied by an unsurpassed effort of original genius. Thespis, Choerilus, Pratinas, and even Phrynichus, are to us mere names, but all testimony agrees in regarding Aeschylus as the virtual creator of the drama. 1 For more than a century before his birth, Hellas had been alive with lyric song, and the fragments of that poetry of the sixth century B.C., the loss of which is one of the heaviest in all literature, show us with what wide range all the chords of personal feeling were swept by it in turn. Moving in a parallel stream with these utter- ances of personal feeling was another kind of lyric poetry of graver ends and more chastened treatment the Dorian odes and hymns, the " solemn music " which accompanied triumphal and religious joy. When toward the beginning of the fifth cen- tury the common Games and the common worship of the greater Gods were at the height of their dignity, when the forces of Hellas were becoming concentrated, and the national life inten- sified, Pindar appeared, and gave the final lyric expression to this side of Hellenic life. Aeschylus also was one of the greatest of lyric poets, but as he grew up he found in the begin- nings of the Athenian drama a new kind of art arising, which was to draw aid from all existing kinds, and combine them into a thing of new beauty and power. When a generation of men is filled with high emotion and interest, as were those who saw Salamis or the wreck of the Spanish Armada, it craves some poetic expression, and has found none happier than the drama, which shares with music the power of uniting an audience by sympathy in a common interest and delight. And in the Hellenic drama music itself was retained in the choric song alternating with iambic dialogue, the form in which it seems to 1 It is truly astonishing to think that a second actor was only first intro- duced by Aeschylus. Phrynichus, his most eminent predecessor, seems till then to have employed in his dramas (if they might so be called) only choric songs and dialogues of one actor with the chorus. io AESCHYLUS. have been combined with acting with less incompatibility than in any other that has been tried. In such expression the vague body of emotion which might have wasted itself in idle or pernicious channels finds relief in the work of a great artist who interprets souls to themselves, and lifts them into a larger air. Different kinds of poetry shade into each other ; one of the greatest of all poems, Dante's Commedia, cannot be classified it is not a drama, for there is no action, yet there is a unity which makes it more than a romance. The lyric is the essence of poetry, its simplest form, and can flourish under much more precarious conditions of mental soil and climate than either the epic or the drama. The epic is between the drama and the romance, and probably the so-called epics of the Cyclic poets might more properly be classed as romances. 1 Hellenic drama sprang from the lyric and the epic both, though primarily from the lyric; while the elegy and the weighty gnomic line lend their forces blended and transformed. The flexible iambics which had expressed the satire of Archilochus or the wisdom of Solon are developed into the poetic rhetoric of the dialogue, and the lyric odes still appear in the Doric songs of the chorus, the original nucleus from which the drama was expanded. Aeschylus, as has been said, is one of the greatest of lyric poets, but he calls his dramas " morsels left from the great banquets of Homer." In the erection of the Athenian theatre there is the same blending of the new and old, of the venerableness of tradition with the vigour of revolution, which is the especial glory of the Athenian people, who, whether as grasshopper-wearing avro^Oove^ or Eupatrid descendants of gods and heroes, were yet ever the first to spread sail in quest of new adventure, whether in the physical or in the intellectual world. The legends of Thebes and Troy, of the acts and passions of Gods and sons of Gods, were an ancient treasure of the race ; but in the hands of the dramatist they yielded new meaning and delight. There is no stiff and formal allegory ; the figures are scarcely less life-like and real than they are in Homer, but a deep and serious meaning breathes through all : they are individuals still, but they are also more than ever types, and through their separate action is 1 See Aristotle's Poetics, c. 23. AESCHYLUS. revealed the action of universal laws. The plot is so implicit in the situation that we are irresistibly led to compare the Aeschylean drama to groups of sculpture of the same age, such as those which filled the pediments of the Parthenon. Not that poetry has here foregone its privileges among the arts ; action there assuredly is, and such as potently effects that " purgation of the terrors and pities of the mind " which Aristotle conceived to be the drama's aim. Yet through the whole the sense of some harmonising unity is never absent ; we never feel that we may be hurried to some inconsequent disappointment by the mere caprice, as it \vere, of the writer or of his characters ; all is under the guardianship of those powers of measure and harmony already spoken of, in the general conception as in the details and the feeling. Intensity without extravagance, dignity without coldness, grace without enervation these qualities are found in Aeschylus, as they are found everywhere in the best Hellenic art, though in degrees and proportions varying with the various artists. In the por- trayal of human passion, the tragedians, like Homer, are strong and terrible, yet human. Their tragic agonies have neither the wild and portentous violence which sometimes in the Eliza- bethan drama kindles the ebullient blood to almost preter- natural outbiirsts, such as seem to remove the stage from the dominion of reason altogether, nor yet have they the languor and the self-consciousness which mix so often with the melan- choly of poets of the present age, 1 ' ove i lament! Non suonan come guai, ma son sospiri." The heroes and heroines of Hellenic story cry aloud in their pain ; the torrent of their anguish is full and strong, yet we feel in it an expression of natures not self-conscious, though sensitive and highly and harmoniously organised, and thus it has something of health in its very disorder, which seems a latent antidote to its bitterness. It is what we feel in Achilles' cry to the vision of his dead friend : " But ah ! come near, let each with each embracing, For one short moment feed our fill of woe. " * dXXti fjiot S.6iTTT>)v KVK\OV i)\tov KaXw' /j.' ola. 7rp6s Oe&v irdcrxw Oe6s. ?>ep'X_QT)ff' oi'au alKiaKnv 8ia.Kvai6fj.fvos rdv fj.vpieTTJ Xp6voi> ddXevffu. Prometheus Sound, 88-96. 14 AESCHYLUS. spiritual. With dreams and visions he deals habitually. In the seven extant plays we find five places where he bodies forth apparitions of the night. There is the dream of Atossa, in which she saw her son Xerxes mount his chariot behind the unequally-yoked pair of woman-steeds, to be hurled to earth by the fierce and fair sister who cast away his yoke from her neck, and turned and rent the harness of his car. There is the dream of Clytemnestra on the eve of her death-day, when she seemed to herself to have brought forth a serpent that sucked from her milk and blood, and a great cry rang at midnight through the palace, where on the morrow her son's sword was to be at her breast. There is the vision of the Furies, when Clytemnestra's phantom rises to upbraid them for their slackness in avenging her blood. There is the vision of Menelaus, born of his yearn- ing desire, the vision that seemed Helen, but when he stretched his arms to it was gone, "with wings that follow down the ways of sleep." Lastly there are the dreams which lo tells, the very reading of which seems to make a midnight awe and ghostly stillness in the air : " For ever to my virgin chambers came Strange visions and soft voices of the night, Importunately pleading : Happy maid, Why tarriest thou so long in maidenhood, Seeing how high espousals are awaiting Thy choice ? for lo, the love of highest Zeus Yearns for thy love, to enfold thee as his own." 1 Aeschylus would seem to have inclined to some such trans- formed survival of a primitive belief as we find referred to in a fragment of Pindar, 2 that in sleep the mind is open to influences 1 dei yap &\f/eis eVvt/^ot TrwXetf/tei'cu ^j irapOevwvas roi)j e/toi>s irapr)y6pow \eloiffifjuj0ois' & fj.ty' ftf5ai/J.ov K6pr), rl irapOfVfuei dapbv, ^6v ffoi yd/j.ov Tvxf.lv [jLeyiarov ; Zei)s yap i/xe/>ou /S^Xei irpbs crov T^daXwrai. Kal waipefj.a /JLV iravruv eVerai Oavdrif TrepurQevei, <>)bv d' epiroiffav ^aXetrCiv re Kpicriv. (Frag. 96.) (And the body indeed is subject to the great power of death, but there remaineth yet alive a shadow of life ; for this only is from the Gods ; and while AESCHYLUS. 15 and capable of intuitions which in waking moments are denied. In one place he says : " For oft in sleep comes light upon the soul, But in the day their fate is hid from men ; " * and in a different but still move memorable passage : ' ' In sleep there doth before man's heart distil A grievous memory of ill, And makes the unwise wise against his will.'" 2 These last words may not unnaturally lead us to another part of the subject, when, descending below the poetic qualities of the plays, we seek to discover the religious and the moral ideas which underlie them. These are by no means identical, or even closely connected ; among the Hellenes morality grew up separate from religion, and then as it were turned round to it to demand its aid. Gods had always been stronger and more beautiful than men ; men now demanded that they should be also better and greater. In the form Xenophanes had given to this demand it shook rudely the whole fabric of theological belief. Now, whatever opinion may be held as to the existence of the supernatural, it can hardly be denied that when a belief in it becomes forbidden to art, art loses one of its most precious means to attaining elevation and impressiveness. To sculp- ture and painting especially to sculpture the possibility of dealing with supernatural beings is of immense importance. No other adequate symbolism has yet been found for expressing visibly that idealisation of itself which must always be the object of humanity's highest and deepest reverence. From the Hellenic Olympus and the Christian Paradise has come all that is noblest in glyptic and pictorial art. Poetry too, though its resources are less exhaustible, must feel it a chilling hour when the ancient shrines have shuddered at the murmured words, Let us depart hence. No theology, indeed, in its popular shape, the limbs stir it sleepeth, but unto sleepers in dreams discovereth oftentimes the judgment that draweth near for sorrow or for joy.) 1 fvSovtra y&p (ppyv 6/j./j.a. Eum. 104-5. 2 (rrd^fi 8' Zv 0' ijwvtp wp6 Kapdias fJLVTf]ffLTrri/J.WI> TT&VOS' K0.1 TTOLp' &- KOVTO.S ?i\0e ffus 68u- ffavra, rbv TraOrj /uuiOos Otv-ra. Kvpiwlx etfr - Agamemnon, 175-77. Accumulation of instances in this sense may be found in Dronke's Religiose und sittliche Vorstellungen des Aeschylos und Sophokles. The author does not seem to feel so strongly aa I do the force of the arguments in a different sense which the Prometheus affords. AESCHYLUS. 19 ing inquiry of the secret which would save his master from ruin, confesses the limits of the wisdom and power, no less than of the goodness, of Zeus. To bring this drama into consistency with the rest, there would seem to be two considerations especially to be taken into account. The first is, that the utterances on the powers and attributes of Gods are, after all, dramatic, even when proceeding from the Chorus. For the Chorus is always in Aeschylus a personage concerned in the drama ; it has ceased to absorb the whole, as in the dithyrambic songs from which the drama arose ; but it never stands quite outside the whole action, as in Euripides, and to some extent in Sophocles. Thus we must remember that when the Danaid or Theban suppliants, or even the chorus of Argive elders in the Aga- memnon, deeply moved as they are for the fate of their king and city, invoke an all-just and all-ruling Power, this is primarily and essentially the expression of that longing for a saviour in the day of trouble which can intensify belief held lightlier in lighter hours, and can even develop what seem intuitions of powers and influences unthought of, because mmeeded, before. The second consideration is, that there are indications, though grievously scanty, of the reconciliation which was effected in the Prometheus Unbound. This much we know, that Prome- theus was delivered by Herakles, son of Zeus and of the mortal Alcmene, the seed of the woman To, who had received recom- pense for her maddened wanderings when she rested by the banks of Nile. On his release Prometheus tells the fateful secret, and the danger is turned away for ever from the Olym- pian throne. In Pindar the revelation is made, not by Pro- metheus, but by his mother Themis, in that majestic passage of the seventh Isthmian ode, which may here be cited to fill the gap in the Aeschylean story, and tell the end of the tale of divine renunciations in obedience to that Moipa, or Allotment, which seems a mysterious universal behind the individualities even of Gods, a personification of the law which constrains all forces, personal and impersonal, in nature to fulfil the law of their being by which the cosmic order is sustained : " Thereof was the Gods' council mindful, what time for the hand of Thetis there was strife between Zeus and glorious 20 AESCHYLUS. Poseidon, each having desire that she should be his fair bride, for love had obtained dominion over them. " Yet did not the wisdom of the immortal Gods fulfil for them such marriage when they had heard a certain oracle. For Themis of wise counsels spake in the midst of them how it was predestined that the sea-Goddess should bear a royal off- spring mightier than his father, whose hand should wield a bolt more terrible than the lightning or the dread trident, if she came ever into the bed of Zeus, or of brethren of Zeus. " ' Cease ye herefrom : let her enter a mortal's couch, and see her son fall in war, who shall be as Ares in the might of his hands, and as the lightning in the swiftness of his feet. My counsel is that ye give her to be the heaven-sent prize of Peleus, son of Aiakos, whom the speech of men showeth to be their most righteous, an offspring of lolkos' plain. Thus straightway let the message go forth to Cheiron's cave divine, neither let the daughter of Nereus put a second time into your hands the ballot-leaves of strife. So on the evening of the mid-month moon shall she unbind for the hero the fair girdle of her virginity.' " Thus spake the Goddess her word to the sons of Kronos, and they bowed their everlasting brows. Nor failed her words of fruit, for they say that to Thetis' bridals came those two kings even with the rest." 1 Renouncement and reconcilement these are the inseparable healing agencies to which the mind of Aeschylus turned, when he contemplated the tumult of passions and ambitions, whether found in the Assembly of Athens, or in the palace of Mykenae, or in the Olympian council-hall of Gods. The conception which would seem most nearly to solve the difficulties of the subject seems to be one which would certainly also be congenial to the genius of Aeschylus ; it is that he recognised a certain progress and education even among Gods, that in the interval between the binding of Prometheus and his release, Zeus and the new Gods, while retaining supremacy, had not been without their share of care and fear, though not of actual misfortune, and had learnt and unlearnt much of the great teacher, Time. 2 1 Pindar, Isthm. vii. 26-47. 2 d\\' fKStddffKei irdvd' 6 y^pdffKUv xpt> v S- (All things are taught by the great teacher, Time.) Prom. 981. AESCHYLUS. 21 Thus, while he dramatised the deliverance of Prometheus, he seems to have adopted also the tradition which spoke of how the dethroned Kronos had been released from his bonds, 1 and had been given, as Pindar tells, an abode in the Islands of the Blest, not unvisited by his son, and ruling among the spirits of the good and great. 2 Both the considerations which have been urged on this subject are expressed by that most striking passage in the Agamemnon, where the Chorus most emphasise their appeal to Zeus : " Zeus, whosoe'er he be, if this name please his ear, By this name I bid him hear ; Nought but Zeus my soul may guess, Seeking far and seeking near, Seeking who shall stay the stress Of its fond and formless fear. For he who long ago was great, Filled with daring and with might, Now is silent, lost in night : And the next who took his state Met his supplanter too, and fell, and sank from sight." 8 Here, while Zeus is made the object of glorification and earnest appeal, the mythic account of the divine dynasties is yet accepted, and the strange vagueness of the opening address symbolises the poet's half-unconscious sense of the insufficiency of the mythology to satisfy his aspiration toward an embodi- ment of the highest good. It is difficult for a modern European, accustomed to a religion with a body of doctrine formulated by Greek metaphysic and Roman law, to realise the fluctuating, though always individual, character of the Hellenic Gods, or how 1 Ewmen. 645. 2 Pindar, 01. ii. 70. 3 Zei)s, Saris TTOT' tffrlv, el r65' av- T(f l\0t> Tovrl> vtv OVK lx ira.vr' Tr\r}v Aids, el rb fidrav dirb (ppovrlSot ovd' 8o-m irdpoiOev fy Ta/j./j.dxv Opdffei fipijwv, ovdtv &v X^fat trplv &v. 8s 5' tTTfir' av, rpiaK- rrjpos outran TWX&V. Ayam. 160-72. 22 AESCHYLUS. a belief in them which cannot be called unreal was yet con- sistent with acquiescence in the saying of Herodotus that Homer and Hesiod first settled their genealogies and attributes. A similar but still greater fluctuation seems to have prevailed, and to prevail still, in India; and even in Catholic Europe something like it appeared, in spite of the lateness of the time, when the central controlling force of the Papacy was shaken and maimed; while another unsettlement of the attitude of worshippers towards objects of their worship seems to have occurred among Mahometans when they separated into Sunnis and Shiahs. The Hellenic Gods, while always regarded as stronger and more beautiful than men, only acquired that special claim to allegiance which a moral interference can support, when specialised, so to speak, in relation to some human duties placed under their guarding care. The in- stinctive idea that God will protect the right finds indeed such utterance as the exclamation of the old Laertes in the Odyssey, when he hears of the slaying of the wooers : " Still then ye live, Zeus and Olympian Gods, If verily vengeance hath the wooers found." 1 But it was only Zet"? Eewo?, 'Epicelos, 'I/cea-ios, the Guardian of Host and Guest, of the Landmark, of the Suppliant, who, to the ordinary believer, was reckoned a present God who would avenge or aid. It was thus that the forces outside humanity, which the Hellenic imagination conceived as Gods, took shape and definite relation to human conduct ; a relation in which both sides had, at least for Aeschylus, their several obligations; for Apollo himself shrinks from the thought of having the blood of Orestes on his head : "For dreadful among Gods and men alike, The suppliant's curse, if uncompelled I yield him." a One very striking proof, among others, of what has been said, occurs also in the Oresteia. 3 It is by the Erinyes, the avengers 1 ZeO vdrep, ?j pa tr' Zffre Oeol Kara (MKpbv "0\v/j,iroi>, el frebv fjLvriffrijpes a.T&ada\ov vppiv UTiffav. Odyssey, xxiv. 351. 2 dfivi) yhp v f}poToi(ri KO.V 6eois TrAet 17 irpocrrpoTraiov fJ.rjvis, et TrpoSui uvfi Trpcxr/SoXas 'Epivvuv. Choephoroe, 283. 2 It must of course be understood too, that even after Homer and Hesiod an immense body of infinitely various local traditions as to supernatural persons remained, which the most curious theologian could not expect to master entirely. Thus for instance we read in Pausanias that the legend of Glaucus was told (plainly for the first time) to both Pindar and Aeschylus when they were at Anthedon, the legend's home, that Pindar made some slight mention of it in his poetry, while Aeschylus took it for the subject of a play. 8 viraros 8' diow % TIS 'Air6\\ut>, 1) H&v, $ Zfvs, olwv60pooi> y6oi> 6!-v(36av rCivde fJ-eroiKuv i>ffTp6iroii>ov Trowel Trapaficiffiv ''Epivtii'. Agam. 55-59. The use of the indefinite rts is of still further significance. 24 AESCHYLUS. instinct of the Hellene helped to make a capital and constant virtue in his ethical ideal. With this virtue the Pythago- reanism of Aeschylus, 1 like the Catholicism of Dante and the Puritanism of Milton, may have mingled something of asceticism, but with him, as with those other two, it was very far from the morbid asceticism of the fanatic, who thinks that by maiming his own humanity he shall gratify a fiend dis- guised as God ; it was an asceticism based on a recognition of a supreme and harmonious order, by conforming whereto, and so only, human nature entered through discipline into the pos- session of its full privileges and capacities. The other quality is more peculiarly emphasised in Aeschylus than in other Hellenic poets, partly owing to his individual character, partly to the time when he lived, and the mighty acts in which he had borne a part: this was the virtue of indomitable resistance to unjust oppression, and of valour in a righteous cause. The issue of the Persian war seemed to the Hellenes the most signal judg- ment more signal even than any overthrow of their own city- despots and oligarchies which had ever descended on that sin which was the opposite of the virtue of measured self-control, the sin of vftpis, of insolence, ready to trample in violence over law and liberty to gratify selfish lust and pride. The feelings of the religious Hellene who had fought at Salamis and Plataea were in this like those of the English Puritan who had fought at Marston Moor and Naseby ; so clearly did a righteous God seem to have triumphed through their arms. Nowhere could this feeling be so strong as in Athens, where the ruins of her temples in the Acropolis, profaned and burnt by the invader, had looked down a few months after on the Persian wrecks round Psyttaleia. And when Aeschylus wrote the Persians, Athens as yet bore her exceeding weight of glory with majesty and self- control. Perhaps even a more peculiar triumph for her than 1 It is impossible that anything definite should be known of the relation of Aeschylus either to the Pythagoreanism or to the religious mysticisms of his day. As to the latter, the results of such interesting and valuable researches and speculations as those of Kreuzer and Guigniaut, and the like, seem to point to the conclusion that this period of Hellenic civilisation was less inclined to mysticism than either the earlier time in which the worship of "pre-Dorian" divinities was more prominent, or a later time which inclined to ascetic or sensual rites and mysteries of the East. AESCHYLUS. 25 Salamis itself was when the allied fleet turned away from the corrupted Pausanias, affecting with his Persian dress, with his Egyptian and Median bodyguards, the bearing and habits of a despot, to Aristeides, simple and open, strong and self -controlled, the perfection of an Athenian gentleman, a trusted leader among soldiers, an equal citizen among citizens, dwelling ever with high thoughts and working for great and patriotic ends, and chose him with one accord to be their chief. And Aristeides was the object of Aeschylus' warmest devotion, the man to whom he did felicitous and noble homage in the lines in which the Theban messenger describes Amphiaraiis, " Who bare no blazon on his shield, Who only cares to be, not seem, the best, Gathering the harvest of a soul profound, Wherefrom grow forth his counsels pure and high." 1 But it was the companionship of that other virtue of indo- mitable valour in a good cause which made so bright the gentle moderation of Aristeides and of Athens, the spirit in which the city of Pallas had arisen to face the invader alone, when in the other states of Hellas " there were great searchings of heart," when some of the mightiest quailed, and shrank more from danger than from the coward's curse the curse pronounced by the Hebrew Deborah against the men of Meroz, " because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." No Athenian could ever forget the day when a second storm of invasion threatened his devastated land, and there came into his Agora the Peloponnesian envoy, who prayed Athens to forget the desertion of her allies and stand forward once more as the bulwark of Hellas ; and over against him the Macedonian prince, who in the name of the Persian king offered her safety for herself and dominion over her fellow- Hellenic states, on that one easy-seeming condition, " if thou wilt fall down and worship me ;" nor how each had his answer from the Athenian people : how they told the Spartans that they thanked them for their offer of shelter and supplies, but that ffij(i.a 5' otiK tirTJv KVK\(f' ov yap 5oKeii> Hpiaros, d\\' elvai 8^\ei, v &\oKa dia <(>pfvbs KO.piroviJ.evos, TO. KeSfii p\affTdvet ftov\fvfj.ara. The Seven against Thebes, 591-94. 26 AESCHYLUS. was not what they desired ; let Sparta send men to fight beside them against the barbarian : how they bade the Mace- donian go back to those who sent him, and say that so long as the sun should hold his course in heaven they would be the irreconcilable enemies of the invaders who had desolated their homes and burnt with fire the temples of their Gods. One worthy poetic monument of the great war has been left to us by Aeschylus in unmistakable form in the drama of the Persians. It is the counterpart of that colossal statue of Nemesis which stood eloquent upon the plain of Marathon. But the spirit of the struggle can be discerned also in the Seven against Thebes ; that drama, as Aristophanes called it, " full of the War-God," 1 and more profoundly still, even if less obviously, in the Prometheus Bound. It may be permitted to dwell briefly on the consummate art with which, under the simplest and severest forms, Aeschylus has made the mighty central figure stand out, how admirably its qualities are relieved and accentuated by the successive surrounding personages, even in the one play which is left to us. It would indeed have been of the deepest interest to have known from his treatment of the story how the Deliverer's Deliverer, Herakles, was in turn portrayed in the Prometheus Unbound; how these great souls greeted one another in the wilderness, when in the year of redemption the process of the ages had brought them face to face. In the Prometheus who remains to us, the time-serving good-nature of his would-be counsellor Oceanus, the sight and foresight of the sufferings of his fellow-victim lo, the remorse of Hephaestus under constraint of his hateful office, the taunts and threats of Hermes, or of the giant Power, all call forth the bitter- ness of just resentment, and intensify the grim and scornful endurance which he has summoned to meet his torment. One softer element there is to relieve the sombre stern- ness of the whole, the bright and tender personality of the daughters of Ocean, who come to visit Prometheus in his woe, and form the chorus of the play. Aeschylus was reproached by the partisans of Euripides for making small account of female character in his works, but whether this was due to real indifference or to a reserve which will bear another interpreta- AESCHYLUS. 27 tion, may at least be questioned. A Beatrice was impossible to Hellenic art; this was the one thing lacking to it; but within Hellenic limits, and they were not narrow, Aeschylus was less deficient on this point than has been supposed. He is more careful to preserve the feminine attributes of Electra under her dire mission of vengeance than is either of the other great tragedians. His judgment of Helen is sterner than Homer's, but the vision he evokes of her is not less magi- cally fair. For pity and beauty nothing in poetry can surpass his contrast of the hour when Iphigeneia's pleading eyes " as in a picture " struck her sacrificers to the heart, with the happy times when her pure voice sang free and joyously in her home, to gladden the same father whom fate now made her murderer. But no character is more truly womanly, more winning in its weakness and in its strength, the weakness of inexperienced timidity, the strength of self-forgetful devotion, than is the fair collective personality of these sisters of the sea. Their first approach is perceived before they are arrived ; Prometheus breaks off the " large utterance " of the iambics of his first soliloquy, he feels another presence than he had known of late : " Ah, ah, but what fragrance Is wafted anear ? What murmur comes stealing Untraced to my ear, Of God, or man, or blended of the twain I" 1 Tears are in their eyes, and words of compassion on their lips, while yet at first a half-timid glee at their own daring in visiting the victim of the wrath of the new king of heaven, an eager curiosity as to his eventful story, give a touch of child- like nature to their speech. Their traditional sympathies are with the old order of things which Zeus has supplanted, but they cannot see how it can be of profit to resist the supreme power once established as supreme ; they are little conversant with ideas, and when Prometheus imfolds the history of his championship of the human race, and enumerates the benefits he gave it, they are but slightly moved to sympathy with the 1 a, a, e , ea ris ax&j r ^ <55yU& irpoatirTO. fj.' d^e-yxrjs, debffvros, -fj /3/36reios, -f) KeKpa^vrj ; Prom. 114-16. 28 AESCHYLUS. " creatures of a day," whom they have never known ; they are still absorbed by the sight and prospect of the Titan's pain, and press him to end it, even if it must be by submission. But when Hermes, baffled and scorned by Prometheus, bids them flee from the wrath to come, which is to hurl the rock they stand on into hell, then at last their reply makes it plain that it was from no selfish indifference to the hero's honour, but only from an over- anxious care for his wellbeing, that they counselled him before : ' ' Other bidding bear if thou wouldst bend us ; Tak'st thou us for traitors to our friend ? Nay, with him, with him, unbowed to baseness, Be it ours to suffer to the end." 1 On their heads then be the consequences of their folly such are Hermes' last words : and he is scarcely gone when the wrath of Zeus descends upon the rock, and Prometheus' last cry of indignant defiance is heard amid the tempest and the fire: " Lo in deed, no more in word, the earthquake ! Hark, the thunder ! lo, the lightnings leap ! Dark with dust and torn with warring whirlwinds Crash the skies, confounded with the deep. Zeus himself amid the awful onset Hurls me hellward to Tartarean gloom : Earth, my mother ! Heaven, thou light of all things ! Hear ye, see ye, my unrighteous doom I" 3 1 fiXXo TI falivfi Kal impa/jivOov fj.' 6 TI Kal irelaeis' ov yap 77 irov Tovr6 ye r\i]Tbv iraptcrvpas ZTTOS. TTWS /J.e K\eveis K /j.era rovS 1 8 ri x TOVS irpoS&ras yap fj.iffe?v Z/j.a0ov, KOVK tffTl v6 KOVK^Tl /J.v6<{) la 5' lyxw irapa/jLVKarai jSpovrrjs, XiKes 5' fK\dfj.irovffi ffTepoirfjs fdrrupoi, ffTp&/j.j3oi St Kbvw dXiffffovffi, aKtprq. 5' avt/j.uv Trvev/j-ara iravrtav AESCHYLUS. 29 The Prometheus Bound, as is the case with a few of the highest works of genius, is laden with mighty meanings which wait on Time to be unrolled. Prometheus himself may be called a type at once of the Past and of the Future ; he belongs to the primeval race of deities, but he suffers for having anticipated the process of the ages, for having helped the new- born race of man, for having acted on his own vision of things to come which others could not see. Zeus represents the Present, with its exigencies, its imperiousness, and its force ; for the time he forgets the traditions and benefits of the Past, and ignores and would stifle the Future ; his only concern is to keep in being the order and administration with which he is identified, and to which it is not unnatural, it is almost neces- sary, though it is still unjust, that he should be resolved to make all claims bow. There have been situations in modern revolutions which might well remind us of this contrast. It could hardly be that the august and beautiful conception of a champion and saviour of men, enduring for their sake the extremity of agony, yet not suffered to remain in Hell, should fail to strike the Greek-speaking Christian Fathers as a prefigure- ment of the great tide of human yearning which found its most impressive manifestation when the western world swore alle- giance to the Son of Man crucified on Calvary, foreshadowed by the Son of Earth crucified on Caucasus, and claiming the supremacy of Godhead by virtue of his oppressors' taunt, He saved others, himself he cannot save. The only work of Aeschylus later than the Prometheus which we possess is the trilogy in which he tells the fortunes of the house of Agamemnon. If it is the passion for freedom which finds pre-eminent expression in such Aeschylean treatment of the story of Prometheus as remains to us, it is the equally vital desire for Order and Harmony which is satisfied in the last play which came from the poet's hand, the Eumenides. From this j-WTerdpaKTai d' aldrip irbvrtf. Totd5' fir' /j.ol pnri] Ai6dev revxovffa Prom. 1080-93. 30 AESCHYLUS. we may indeed divine somewhat of how the Prometheus Unbound must have ended. Here the half-blind worship of half-blind forces, though arrayed in its full pomp of terror, yields to a more excellent revelation. In so doing it yields in fact to what is best in itself. Blood for Uood, the old law had said : this was enough for it. The new law is awful as the old, but juster, and will distinguish between degrees of homicide. Vengeance for Iphigeneia may be the plea of Clytemnestra, as vengeance for Agamemnon is the plea of Orestes. But the new tribunal shall discover beneath the plea of Clytemnestra the selfish motives of lust and guilty fear. The plea of Orestes shall be allowed to save the slayer, though after an agony such as must needs follow a deed of so wild justice. For, as has been said, the old law yields to what was its own best part. The Eumenides are not deprived of their office, but resume it in allegiance to the new dispensation. All through the Oresteia the moral judgment is appealed to by revenges and recrimina- tions of varying justice. And thus the stories of Orestes and of Hamlet, while they have much of likeness, have much more of difference. The interest in Hamlet is primarily in the persons and in the situation : the interest in the Oresteia is primarily in the disentangling of the laws which govern the moral development of the race. It is significant that the last arbitrament which lays finally the demon of the house of Tantalus rests not with the Zeus of either the upper or the under world, 1 but with a council of just men, as though to show that to the conscience of humanity the ultimate appeal must lie. It is only when the votes of the Areopagites are equally divided that Athene adds hers, and turns the balance for acquittal. Then the whole tumult of conflicting passions, rights, and duties is resolved in an august harmony, and passes upward into a stormless air. If we are thrilled and awed by merely reading this majestic drama, what must it have been to see and hear as it was pre- 1 See the Suppliants, 230-31 : Kd/cet ducdfei ra/j.Tr\aK^fj.ad', us \6yos, Zei)s $\Xoj tv Kafj.ovvr) Oeuiv v olj Kepctw6s tanv to'tfipa.yi.o'ij.ti'os. Eum. 827-28. 3 otiroi Ka/jLov/j.a.1 i\i) iroXepol Tf /taxa* re. II. v. 890. ETHICS OF SOPHOCLES. 35 is the pestilence which desolates Thebes (0. T. 190) ; he is the god whom the gods put far from honour (ib. 215). Ares lifts the cloud of misery from the eyes of the Salaminian mariners (Aj. 706), i.e. it is Ares who has placed it there. Artemis is implored to come to the aid of plague-stricken Thebes, in which city she has a temple (0. T. 160 ff.) ; she is also the goddess whose torches flash along the Lycian hills, the sister, that is, of the Lycian god of light, whom the Greeks identified with their own Apollo. In the Electro,, 1. 563, Artemis is said to have caused the many winds to blow at Aulis in consequence of an outrage inadvertently committed in her precincts by Agamemnon, and thus she brought about the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. Of Hera, the queen of heaven, there is no men- tion in the extant plays of Sophocles, except in one passage, Electra, 1. 8, where she is mentioned incidentally in connection with her temple at Argos. Demeter and Persephone are spoken of in reference to the holy mysteries at Eleusis (0. C. 1049 ff.), "the torch-lit shore, where the queenly goddesses cherish their rites for men on whose tongue rests the golden key of the ministrant Eumolpids." Persephone is also the goddess of the dead, the unseen goddess (0. C. 1556), to whom Antigone goes down, the last of a sad company. In Philoctetes, 1. 391, the chorus invoke Cybele, the all-nurturing mountain-goddess, by whose bounty Pactolus flows with gold, whose chariot the lions draw. Aidoneus, " the king of the benighted," is entreated to suffer Oedipus to pass easily into his realm (0. C. 1557). Hades, the god of night and death, is of course frequently mentioned; in Ajax, 1. 1035, he is the cruel workman who wrought the baldrick by which Hector was torn to death. Prometheus, the fire-god, is one of the deities of Colonus (0. C. 56). But of none of these can it be said that they are brought before us in an aspect peculiarly Sophoclean, or that they enter in any great degree, if at all, into the action of the drama, and influence the plot. They hold here the place allotted to them in the ordinary Greek mind, which connected certain places with tutelary gods, and looked to particular deities for protection under particular circumstances. More important than any of the deities hitherto mentioned 36 THE THEOLOGY AND are the Eumenides, the deities which occupy so prominent a place in the theology of Aeschylus. Yet even they, as we find them in Sophocles, must be brought under this head. They cannot be said to exercise any influence on the actions of any of the extant dramas. They are, it is true, the cause of a scene in the Oedipus at Colonus, but only in so far as they are the local representatives of higher and more universal powers, Local customs are needed to propitiate them as local goddesses ; as universal deities Oedipus claims to be reconciled to them by his long-suffering and humiliation. Nor is it the Eumenides who have brought him to ruin, but Apollo (0. T. 1329), and from Apollo and Zeus comes his restoration. In many cases where we might expect to find the operation of these goddesses, we do not find it in Sophocles. In the case of Oedipus and Polynices it is Zeus and Apollo who undertake the work of vengeance, and demand expiation. There is no trace of the Eumenides in the Sophoclean Orestes ; and though Electra invokes them to come to her aid in avenging her father, the deed of vengeance is really accomplished under the guidance of Apollo and the auspices of Zeus. In any delineation of human life and action there will necessarily be a place for those deities which are the personi- fications of human passions. Such are Eros and Aphrodite, or Cypris, the deities of passionate love. Tradition tells us that Sophocles knew their power too well. In his poems Eros is invincible in strife; his power none can escape, whether mortal or immortal ; and he who is wise will not contend with him. Eros puts madness in the heart, and leads astray the soul of the righteous ; he stirs up strife between kindred blood, and desire sways a sceptre no less powerful than justice. Without the intervention of Eros the Antigone would have no denouement. The love of Haemon for Antigone leads to the altercation of father and son, and to the suicide of the latter on finding his betrothed dead. The death of Haemon is the direct cause of the death of his mother Eurydice. Thus it is through the operation of Eros that the vengeance of the gods overtakes Creon, and a natural passion becomes the instrument of divine justice. In another passage the personification is less complete. E THICS OF SOPHO CLES. 3 7 The passion is more than the deity. Love, we are told in Frag. 162 (Dindorf), is a pleasant plague, which may be figured thus : When the air is frosty, and children take the dry ice in their hands, at first the experience is something strange and sweet ; but soon the ice is frozen to the hand, and the pleasure passes into a pain, of which the child would fain be rid, and even such is the impulse which sways the lover. 1 Here Eros is spoken of in a figure, but not personified. Indeed, the Greeks, however acutely sensible of the power of Eros, had not made up their minds whether he was a god or not. He is at once a human passion and a " great spirit." Equally important is the action of Aphrodite in the Trachiniae. Cypris is triumphant ever ; she beguiled the son of Cronos, Hades, and Poseidon; from her came the famous strife of Achelous and Heracles for the hand of Dejanira ; and now she has ensnared Heracles in a new passion for lole. The fear of a rival in her husband's affections induces Dejanira to send the fatal robe ; and thus Cypris brings about the death of Heracles, and takes part in the accomplishment of the will of heaven. In a beautiful and well-known fragment (678) we are told that Cypris is not Cypris only, but a goddess named of many names. Death and Immortality, Frenzy, Passion, and Grief, these are her titles. Eagerness, gentleness, violence, are blended and united in her. She enters into all living things and consumes them : hers are the fish that swim in the sea, the four-footed kind that tread the earth; her pinion waves among the birds, in creatures of the field, in men, and heavenly gods. Even in the heart of Zeus for the truth is blameless, though we speak it of the gods Cypris is queen; without sword or spear she cuts down the counsels of men and gods. In Aphrodite or Cypris the personification is more complete than in Eros. But personifications of this kind are of course no invention of Sophocles. What we can perhaps claim for him is, that he was the first to make them of importance in the progress of the dramatic action, and to point out the manner in which they assist in the development of divine purposes. The motive of love is well known to Homer: it is present in rods tpuvras avr&s t/iepos 6pai> Kal rb JJ.T] Spav roXXcim irpoffleTat. 38 THE THEOLOGY AND both the Iliad and Odyssey, but it can hardly be said to govern the events and assist in the catastrophe of either poem, though it is true that the love of Helen and Penelope forms the basis on which the poems are built. "None can blame the Trojans and Achaeans that their strife for such a woman is long and sore." " I too know well that Penelope is not beauti- ful as thou art : she is mortal, and thee nor age nor death can touch : still, even so, I yearn to visit my home and behold the day of return." These passages remind us of touching scenes, in which the charm of beauty is deeply felt, and brought into contrast with the love of home and country. But Sophocles has gone much further than Homer. He has distinctly recog- nised these passions as elements in a dramatic action, binding individuals together so that wrong cannot be done to one with- out affecting another, or as forming the weak and assailable point in some otherwise superhuman character. Zeus, Apollo, and Athena are deities far more exalted and sublime than any hitherto mentioned. Yet even they are not always, or at least the first and greatest of them, Zeus, is not always represented by Sophocles in the same light. Zeus is at times the god of the old Olympus, at others the god of the Athenians of the age of Sophocles, while, in other passages, the poet seems to be speaking his own thoughts, and to elevate Zeus, with Apollo and Athena as his ministers, into a supreme deity of justice and truth. How such various con- ceptions of one and the same deity which was also the great national god became possible, the history of Greek religion will explain. The interval between the earliest conception and the latest was a long one, but the Greeks did not allow the mythology which stood to them in the place of doctrine to restrain them from the endeavour to bring their conception of the Supreme Being into harmony with their conceptions of justice and law. Their religious conceptions became ethical at an early period, and continued to be so to the last, ever grow- ing higher and higher as the conception of life and duty became more elevated. To this development and progress Sophocles contributed his part, without breaking away from what was traditional in religion or imposed upon him by the limits of poetry. ETHICS OF SOPHOCLES. 39 As a god of the old mythology, Zeus is the son of Cronos (Tr. 127, etc.); Earth is his mother (Phil. 391), Hades his brother (Tr. 1041), Apollo his son (0. C. 623). By Semele he is the father of Bacchus (Ant. 1116); by Alcmene, of Heracles (Tr. 1148, etc.). His daughters are Athena (Aj. 91) and Artemis (Aj. 172). He is the progenitor of Ajax (Aj. 389); he slays Capaneus (Ant. 134 if.), descends in a shower of gold upon Danae (Ant. 950), and punishes Ixion (Phil. 680). Here we find Zeus mentioned as the lover of Semele, Alcmene, and Danae. These connections, so far from being regarded as out of harmony with his nature as a god and the first of gods, are rather brought into prominence as connecting certain cities or families more directly with the deity, and mak- ing them, as it were, his elect. The inconsistency of connect- ing immoral actions with a moral being is hardly felt. In the same way, Aeschylus in his Supplices speaks of Zeus as efycnrrop 'lou? i.e. the sensual story is adopted to bring the daughters of Danaus under his immediate protection, but this does not prevent the same chorus in the same ode from appealing to Zeus as the highest and most perfect of the gods. 1 In the Prometheus Vinctus, on the other hand, the conduct of Zeus towards lo is spoken of as tyrannical in the extreme. In other passages of Sophocles Zeus is addressed by epithets which express the popular contemporary feeling from a moral or religious point of view. Such are ar/atvux; (Tr. 26), atetfirop (0. C. 143), apato? (Ph. 1182), e/weetb? (Ant. 487), e^eoTto? (Aj. 492), t/eeoYo? (Ph. 484), Trarpwos (Tr. 753), rpo- 7raio[\ov 8 Cf. Bergk, Litteratur-Gesch. p. 330. The idea that the highest laws have their birth in the " heavenly ether " is perhaps, as Bergk suggests, an intimation that the highest law is realised in the movements of the heavenly bodies. Cf. Heraclitus, Fr. 29 : "HXioj OVK lurep/STjcrercu n^rpa- ei 5 /}, 'Epii>ves Hiv SiKrjs tirlKovpoi tevp-fi, '' Airo\\ot>, ayviar', d.w6\\uv tfj.6s. d.7rwXe aOtvei Ant. 1043. 3 6eol yap e5 ptv, 6\l/ d' dcrop&ff' , Srav ra 6eV dfais TIS 4s rt> jaaivecrflcu rpairfj. 0. C. 1536. ffvvr^fjo'ovffi yap Oe&v TroSw/ceis rovs KaK6l\ov t rax' &" TI fjii)vlovffu> els ytvos ird\ai. 0. G. 964. 6 0. T. 883 ff. ' TOI)J 8 ffd>(f>povas 0eol i\ovffi Kol ffrvyovffi rovs Kaicovs. Aj. 132, and Ant. 288. a\\a Trpoffd^K-rj deov \yei vofdfret 6' i)fd.v bpOGxrai fiiov. 0. T. 38. On this point the relations of Athena and Odysseus as described in the open- ing scene of the Ajax are abundant evidence. ' ffoav\ov K&V fipaxft StSda/caXoc. Ibid. 707. ETHICS OF SOPHOCLES. 47 cleverness, 1 and even the capacity for sound judgment is derived from the gods. 2 Lastly, the gods have power to remove misery. 3 Such is what may be called the optimist relation of man to God : we find in it that which is the " central light of all re- ligion," the justice and truth of God ; but we miss from it many ideas with which Christianity has made us so familiar that they seem to us a part of the necessary relation of the human and the divine. There is little trace of the paternal relation so prominent in modern conceptions of the same subject. No doubt, in Greek religion Zeus is the father of men and gods, but not much is meant by the title. There is nothing said of the love of God for his creatures, or of their love for him. The picture is severe, even in this the most favourable light. What then is the darker side of this relation of man and God ? The poet does not hesitate to speak of the gods as heartless. 4 They are the fathers of human children, whom they leave to perish miserably, even as Heracles was consumed by fire. They are also jealous of the power of man. In the Ajax the divinely-inspired bard Calchas says of Ajax, and those like him " Men over mighty in stature are plunged by the gods into dire misfortune." 5 They also injure men, so that the evil may outstrip the good, such at least is the utter- ance of Ajax in his despair. 6 It is the gods who, for purposes 1 i/vXT) yap ffivovs /col povovurrov iravrds karw evperis. Frag. 88. a Ant. 603. 3 vvv yip Oeol 6ffaVTS KO.I K\ri'6/J.tVOl irartpes roiaur' cri irdOrj.Tr. 1266 ff. 6 TO. yap irepiffffa Kav6vr)ra crd/j jriiTTfiv /Sapet'cus irpbs 0fu>v dvffTrpa%tais tfatffx' 6 in6.vri.s, 6'povy. Aj. 758 ff. et 54 rtj 0ftav /SXdirrot, (jtvyoi r&v x Ka/cds rbv Kpeiffffova. Aj. 455. 48 THE THEOLOGY AND of their own, have sent on Philoctetes his pain and loneliness, 1 while the chorus in their dismay at the frenzy of Ajax can only say, " I fear that some heaven-sent evil may have over- taken him." 2 When God so determines, the change from evil to good is easily brought about, and no one can escape the " stroke of God." 3 Not only are the gods the authors of misery, but they even lead men into calamity, and deceive them to their ruin. " It was wisely uttered of old," so we are told in the Antigone, " that evil often seems good to the man whom God is leading to his ruin" (Ant. 623). In a fragment, Phaedra excuses her fault by saying that no one can escape the evils sent by Zeus. 4 It is the gods who have placed strife between the two sons of Oedipus the gods assisted by an evil mind. 5 Thus the religious feeling which runs through the plays of Sophocles does not scruple to attribute to the gods the evil which falls upon men. And the power of the gods is supreme ; man is absolutely helpless before them. The gods are indeed just and holy, and regard the good before the evil : but this justice is consistent with the suffering even of the good. Hence we cannot expect to find in Sophocles a cheerful view of life, or a high value placed upon existence. And in truth, if there is one point on which the poet insists more than another, it is the " Nichtigkeit " of human life. However light-hearted and happy we may picture the inhabitant of Athens to have 1 $e?ct yap, el Kal Kayib TI ippovu, Kal ra ira.6-fifj.a.TO. Keiva 7rp6s avrbv rrjs w/dxppovos X/JI/CTTJS eirefl-ri. Phil. 192 ff. 8 Aj. 278. 3 tv yap Ppaxe? KaOfi\e jrd/j.ir\ovTov 8\j3ov dalftovos KUK Srav fjLerdffTji Kal Oeois doKy rd5e. Frag. 572. Geov Se ir\TjyT)i> o&x virepirrjdi} fiporfa. Frag. 656. 4 atcrxn f^ v > & yvvalices, o$8' av eh opiJi-f)ari /ca/cd, vbaovs d' avayicr) ras 6(rj\dTovs . frag. 611. 5 vvv 8' IK Oedjv rov Ka dXeiTtjpov pevbs elafjXOe roiv rpiffadXioiv />is /ca/c^. 0. C. 371. ETHICS OF SOPHOCLES. 49 been, his reflections on life were melancholy and sombre. Life is an evil : it were better not to be born at all ; and next best to die in infancy. Life is only good so long as youth continues, and the joys of youth are idle follies (Kov$ai atypo- crvvat, 0. C. 1225 ff.). Mortals in the prime of life are but as nothing. ISTo one gains more than a mere phantom of happi- ness, and even this he loses in the gaining (0. T. 1186 ff.). We are as shadows, and wander to and fro, a superfluous burden on the earth (Fr. 682). " I know," says Theseus in his glory to the outcast Oedipus, " that I too am a man, and that in the morrow I have no greater share than thou hast" (0. C. 567). Odysseus, gazing on the ruin of his enemy, is saddened with the thought that " all of us who live are no more than phantoms, than fleeting shadows" (Aj. 125, 6). The misery of age is intolerable ; age is the home of every evil ; the hand of the aged is feeble, his mind fails, his thoughts are nothing worth. 1 Even when life is most prosperous a change may quickly come, and no man's happiness can be estimated till the day of his death. 2 Against this melancholy picture we have little to set on the other side. There is a chorus of the Antigone in which the inventive genius of man is celebrated. By the help of his art he has made himself master of sea and land, of beast and bird and fish. By this he has found out the secret of language and reason and civic life ; the comforts of house and home and remedies from disease. Yet these victories only remain to him so long as he cherishes a righteous and pious mind; they are lost to the daring and the impious. In the Trachiniae, the women of Trachis comfort their mistress with the thought that " heaviness endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morn- 1 0. C. 1235 ff. TT&VT t/J.wt s, 1. 90 ; foovs, 1. 99. ETHICS OF SOPHOCLES. 53 rash deed of youth, prompted by folly and infatuation. 1 It is an offence against justice; the work of defiant passion. 2 Bockh is also of opinion that unless it be assumed that Antigone, no less than Creon, is guilty of rashness and re- bellion, the play is deficient in unity. This view has been examined elsewhere. It is enough to say here that the words of Ismene and the chorus cannot be taken to be the judgment of the poet, and that an action which involves a double cata- strophe is not necessarily wanting in unity ; it may be the manifestation of a single central idea. The leading idea of the Antigone, is not merely that rebellion is a crime ; rebellion against injustice, and such is Antigone's rebellion, can never be placed on the same footing as the outrage of natural rights consecrated by religion, in which lies the guilt of Creon. It is rather that the laws of nature are not to be overridden by the law of the State. That the assertion of this law involves both Antigone and Creon in destruction does not in the least destroy the unity of the drama. But we may perhaps, from another point of view, ask : If Antigone is in no way guilty, is not her death, in the language of Aristotle, fiiapov, or shocking ? Does not the play decline in this respect from the standard of the Poetics, 3 where we learn that a character, to be tragic, must be good, but not perfect ? The explanation is, that men fall by their good qualities as well as by their bad qualities ; and it is possible to be daring and incautious in the cause of right no less than in the cause of wrong. The afiapTia rt9, which Aristotle regards as a neces- sary part of the tragic character, is not to be limited to moral imperfection. It implies any flaw, however slight, of temper or prudence. Such a flaw we may allow in Antigone without detracting from her heroic character. She is hasty with her 1 ev d0po7 /ca0eX6i>res, 1. 383 ; \6yov T' &.VOLO. KOJ. pfvwv 'Epicfa, 1. 603. z Trpoj33.ff' fir' Hffxarov Opdffovs v\f/vi\bv ^s At'/cas ftdOpov Trpoffe'irtcres, & TKVOV, iro\v.