X^r r-i ><
 
 Ancient Classics for English Readers 
 
 EDITED BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A.
 
 The Volumes published of this Series contain 
 
 HOMER : THE ILIAD, BY THE EDITOR. 
 HOMER : THE ODYSSEY, BY THE SAME. 
 HERODOTUS, BY GEORGE C. SWAYNE, M.A. 
 CAESAR, BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 VIRGIL, BY THE EDITOR. 
 HORACE, BY THEODORE MARTIN. 
 AESCHYLUS, BY REGINALD S. COPLESTON, M.A. 
 XENOPHON, BY SIR ALEX. GRANT, BART., LL.D. 
 CICERO, BY THE EDITOR. 
 -SOPHOCLES, BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A. 
 PLINY, BY A. CHURCH, M.A., AND W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. 
 EURIPIDES, BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 JUVENAL, BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. 
 ARISTOPHANES, BY THE EDITOR. 
 HESIOD AND THEOGNIS, BY JAMES DAVIES, M.A. 
 PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, BY THE EDITOR. 
 TACITUS, BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 LUCIAN, BY THE EDITOR. 
 PLATO, BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS. 
 THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, BY LORD NEAVES. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY SERIES. 
 
 The Volumes now published contain 
 
 1. LIVY, BY THE REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 2. OVID, BY THE REV. A. CHURCH, M.A. 
 
 3. CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, & PROPERTIUS, BY THE 
 
 REV. JAMES DAVIES, M.A. 
 
 4. DEMOSTHENES, BY THE REV. W. J. BRODRIBB, M.A. 
 
 Other Volumes are in preparation.
 
 ANCIENT CLASSICS 
 
 FOR 
 
 ENGLISH READERS 
 
 EDITED BY THE 
 
 EEV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 AESCHYLUS 
 
 BY REGINALD S. COPLESTON, B.A. 
 
 SOPHOCLES 
 
 BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON
 
 The subjects in this Series may be had separately, in cloth, price 
 as. 6d. ; or two volumes bound in one, in leather back and' marbled 
 sides and edges, arranged as follows : 
 
 THE ILIAD AND 
 ODYSSEY. 
 
 HERODOTUS. 
 XENOPHON. 
 
 EURIPIDES. 
 ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 PLATO. 
 LUCIAN. 
 
 AESCHYLUS. 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 HESIOD AND THEOGNIS. 
 ANTHOLOGY. 
 
 VIRGIL. 
 HORACE. 
 
 JUVENAL. 
 
 PLAUTUS AND TERENCE. 
 
 CESAR. 
 
 TACITUS. 
 
 CICERO. 
 PLINY.
 
 vESCHYLUS 
 
 BY 
 
 REGINALD S. COPLESTON, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW AND LECTURER OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 1870. REPRINT, iSj?
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. I. THE FEAST OF BACCHUS, .... 1 
 
 ii II. THE SOLDIER-POET, 21 
 
 ii III. PKOMETHEUS BOUND, . 33 
 
 ii IV. THE SUPPLIANTS ; OR, THE CHILDREN OF IO, 63 
 
 ii V. THE PERSIANS, ...... 82 
 
 n VI. THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES, . . 104 
 
 n VII. THE STORY OF ORESTES, . . . .128 
 
 1. AGAMEMNON. 
 
 2. CHOEPHORI, OR LIBATION-BEARERS. 
 
 3. EUMENIDES.
 
 NOTE, 
 
 No discussion of the numerous points under dispute 
 as to the structure of the theatre, the arrangement 
 of the plays, and the dresses of the actors, has been 
 admitted into this volume ; but in each case that view 
 which appeared most probable and most intelligible has 
 been adopted without any expression of uncertainty, 
 and occasionally even the writer's own conjectures have 
 ^been introduced. But, in truth, the greatest uncer- 
 tainty prevails on all such points. 
 
 The writer desires here to express his thanks to Miss 
 Swamvick and to Professor Plumptre for the courtesy 
 with which they have granted permission to use their 
 translations. To Professor Plumptre's Introduction, 
 Chapter II. is greatly indebted ; nor is there any part 
 in which his admirable book has not been of service.
 
 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE FEAST OP BACCHUS. 
 
 IN order rightly to understand the drama of the 
 Greeks, and especially their tragedy, we must rid our- 
 selves, as far as possible,, of those associations which 
 now cling in England round the names of " play " and 
 "theatre." For our modern plays are so unlike a 
 Greek tragedy, and the position which they occupy is 
 so entirely different from that of the Athenian theatre, 
 that the few points which both have in common are 
 more likely to impede than assist us. 
 
 The Athenian theatre was a national institution; no 
 private speculation, but the pride and glory of a great 
 people; somewhat like, in this respect, to the cele- 
 brated theatres of some of the small German states, 
 such as those of Dresden or Mannheim. It was also a 
 religious institution; not merely a scene of national 
 amusement, but at the same time a solemn ceremony in 
 honour of the god Bacchus. The performances took 
 place only at rare intervals, when the festivals of that 
 
 A. c. voL vii. A
 
 2 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 divinity came round, and so were invested with a dig- 
 nity which cannot attach to our modern theatres, open 
 as these are every day in the year or in the season. 
 And as a consequence of the rarity of the representa- 
 tions, each play was, as a rule, enacted only once. 
 
 All these facts that the theatre was national, and 
 religious, and rarely open combined to make the 
 audience on each occasion very numerous. It was a 
 point of national pride, of religious duty, and of com- 
 mon prudence on the part of every citizen, not to miss 
 the two great dramatic festivals of the year when their 
 season came. Accordingly, we hear that thirty 
 thousand people used to be present together; and 
 we may infer from this, as well as from other indis- 
 putable evidence, the vast size of the theatre itself. 
 The performance took place in the day-time, and 
 lasted nearly all day, for several plays were pre- 
 sented in succession ; and the theatre was open to 
 the sky and to the fields, so that when a man looked 
 away from the solemn half -mysterious representation 
 of the legendary glories of his country, his eye would 
 fall on the city itself, with its temples and its har- 
 bours, or on the rocky cliffs of Salamis and the sunny 
 islands of the Mgean. Finally, the performance was 
 musical, and so more like an opera than an ordinary 
 play, though we shall see that even this resemblance 
 is little more than superficial. 
 
 From these few facts it will probably be clear that 
 we shall do best if we entirely discard our modern 
 notions of a theatre, and start quite afresh in our at- 
 tempt to understand what a Greek play was like.
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 3 
 
 "We must carry our thoughts back to the boyhood 
 of the world. That expression does not only mean 
 that in years the world once was young and now is 
 older, nor only that once men lived of necessity simple 
 lives, not knowing many sciences, and possessing no 
 steam-engines or telegraphs ; it means much more than 
 these that the tone of mind, the buoyancy, the 
 thoughtlessness, which now are found only in boy- 
 hood, were then common, in a great measure, to all 
 periods of life. This is a matter infinitely more im- 
 portant than any outward simplicity of life and man- 
 ners. Let us see a little more closely what it means. 
 The chief source of seriousness in later times is reli- 
 gion. A series of religions, of speculations about the 
 meaning of life, the future to be expected after death, 
 the system of punishments and rewards, these have 
 gradually sobered the nations of the civilised world. 
 Secondly, the extension of civilisation itself has made 
 each generation more busy than the last, and has 
 deepened the sense of constant responsibility involved 
 in transactions of commerce, in legal and official rela- 
 tions, and so contributed to take away the thoughtless 
 ease and gaiety which existed in the boyhood of the 
 world. To a Greek, in the early days, there were two 
 serious occupations war, and commerce or piracy; 
 but both were rather opportunities for enterprise than 
 subjects for anxiety. Eeligion, to a Greek, consisted 
 in an intense love of all that is beautiful, and a firm 
 belief that every stream and tree and cloud was 
 tenanted by a god. All that for us is mere senseless 
 imagery was for him a reality. In the sound of a
 
 4 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 stream lie really believed that he heard the sighing or 
 the laughter of a nymph how should the stream move 
 and speak if it were not so possessed? The clouds 
 gathered and the lightning flashed, not of themselves, 
 or in obedience to laws of nature of those mysterious 
 powers the Greek had never heard but simply be- 
 cause some person moved the clouds and hurled the 
 lightning ; and this was Zeus, or Jove. 
 
 Living thus with no anxieties ; surrounded by the 
 constant presence of deities who showed themselves 
 to him through every form of natural beauty ; reared 
 on sunny hills amid the olive and the vine, and look- 
 ing out always on bright bays and islands of the 
 eastern sea ; trained in every exercise of health ; beau- 
 tiful in face and person as the gods he believed in, 
 every Greek was in his measure an Apollo, always 
 young in spirit, and cheerful and strong. The epochs 
 of his simple life were the seasons of seed-time and 
 harvest, of pruning and vintage; and they were 
 marked by rustic ceremonies in honour of the gods of 
 fruit and flowers and corn and wine. 
 
 Of all these seasons, those connected with the grape 
 were naturally the merriest and most famous. When 
 the rich clusters were carried home, all the country-side 
 would gather round a rustic altar of Bacchus, at the 
 foot of the warm hills on which the vines grew so 
 richly, and there they danced, and sang, and played 
 games, simple indeed, but marked by the grace and 
 beauty which seems inseparable from the nature of a 
 Greek. This Bacchus whom they worshipped was not, 
 as he is to us, a statue, or a picture, or a name, but a
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 5 
 
 real merry boy with a crown of ivy-leaves and a strange 
 power of inspiring wild thoughts in the human breast. 
 His laughing eyes had often peeped through the thick 
 coverts of vines at the village maidens, and stories were 
 told how once he had leapt from his tiger-chariot to 
 win the love of Ariadne. When spring came round, 
 and the last year's wine was opened, there was another 
 festival, even more joyous, and merriment became 
 boisterous as the power ef the god made itself felt ; 
 and these spring festivals grew to be the chief ones of 
 the year. Many rude games arose, in which the young 
 men contended for a goat,* the victim sacrificed, or for a 
 cup or tripod. One of the sports was to dance upon 
 the slippery changing surface of a skin of wine, and 
 he who kept his footing best carried off the skin of 
 wine for his prize. Another was to sing extemporised 
 songs in honour of the god ; and when, in any district, 
 a poetical spirit sprang up, this became a leading feat- 
 ure of the contests. Some particular village, we may 
 suppose, would get famous for the hymns sung yearly 
 at its spring festival, and become the centre of a dis- 
 trict : the villagers made themselves a name, and went 
 about to sing at neighbouring feasts ; then matches 
 were made up between different companies of singers, 
 or individual poets contended together ; and the thing 
 grew until there were organised bands of twelve or more, 
 who danced round the altar of Bacchus singing their 
 hymns in his praise, and ballads describing his birth, 
 and his loves, and his exploits. The first systematis- 
 
 * The memory of this custom is probably still preserved in 
 the name of " Tragedy," which means " the goat-song."
 
 6 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 ing of this form of entertainment is connected with, the 
 name of one Arion of Corinth. In his hands the 
 dithyrambic dance and song (such was the name) 
 became an orderly and solemn ceremony, and as such 
 was kept up for many years in different parts of Greece. 
 The number of the chorus was raised to fifty, and set 
 music and words were composed for it. But it was in 
 Attica, the land of the drama, that the first great addi- 
 tion was made to the simplicity of this chorus. Thes- 
 pis, an inhabitant of one of the country districts, in- 
 troduced into the pauses of the choric song a rude 
 dialogue, maintained probably at first by himself on 
 the one hand, and the leader of the singers on the 
 other. This may have been sometimes comic, not 
 much more dignified than the repartees with which our 
 clowns fill up the pauses in a circus \ sometimes it 
 consisted of questions and answers concerning some 
 story or exploit of Bacchus or Hercules at any rate, 
 it soon grew to more. The actor, for so we must now 
 begin to call him, would narrate, not without explana- 
 tory gesture and action, some mythical story, while the 
 chorus would sing from time to time songs in contin- 
 uation of his tale, or in comment upon it ; songs of 
 triumph when a victory was described, of mourning 
 when the action was sad, and at all times of moral 
 and pious reflection upon the dealings of the gods with 
 men. 
 
 Such was the earliest form of the Attic tragedy, and 
 much as it was afterwards developed, it never entirely 
 lost this form. To the one actor of Thespis another 
 was soon added, so that there was now a complete
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS, 7 
 
 dialogue independent of the chorus ; hut to anything 
 like the modern system, of many parts, each supported 
 by a separate actor, the Greek tragedy never attained. 
 Three is the largest number of actors employed in any 
 of the plays of ^Eschylus; so that, although each took 
 more than one part in succession, there could never be 
 more than three speaking characters upon the stage at 
 once, except when, as was often the case, the chorus 
 took part in the action. 
 
 The chorus of Thespis had danced upon a raised 
 platform, in the midst of which stood the altar of the 
 god ; the introduction of a second actor made an in- 
 crease of space and means of entrance and exit neces- 
 sary, and thus the platform grew into the stage. In 
 course of time a separate place was made for the 
 chorus, and called the orchestra, or dancing stage, 
 while the stage proper was left for the actors, and for 
 the chorus when it assumed an actor's part. Further, as 
 there were now two actors exhibiting a story by means 
 of dialogue, each naturally presented a different hero 
 or deity ; to make this assumption of character more 
 effective, masks were introduced, and before long great 
 perfection was arrived at in their construction. 
 
 From the very first, as we have seen, these choric 
 songs were produced at annual contests during the 
 spring festival of the god of wine ; and the same custom 
 was continued when the dialogue had been added to the 
 chorus, and the now developed dramas were presented 
 in succession to compete for an annual prize. Having 
 its origin in the country villages of Attica, this form 
 of poetic contest found its centre in Athens, and the
 
 8 ^SCHTLUS. 
 
 two spring festivals there became distinguished among 
 the chief solemnities of Greece. When Athens began 
 to take the lead among Grecian states, as she did after 
 the Persian war, while her art and literature, though 
 still only in embryo, were preparing to rise to that 
 eminence which soon afterwards they attained, all 
 that was most solemn in religion, most enthusiastic in 
 national feeling, most beautiful in art, found its ex- 
 pression in the rival dramas which twice in every 
 spring were presented, one after another, in the great 
 theatre of Bacchus to contend for the tragic prize. 
 Foremost among the poets for many years was ^Eschy- 
 lus ; but there must have been many others who rivalled 
 and sometimes defeated him, and these contributed 
 their share towards the advances which were made in 
 his time by the art. We, to whom a theatre means 
 something so utterly different, can hardly fancy the 
 enthusiasm with which the Athenian citizen, on the 
 great religious day, went into the assembly of his coun- 
 trymen to see the land's most gifted sons, in grand words 
 decked out with every aid of art and dance and music, 
 rival one another in celebrating the great deeds of gods 
 and kings and heroes, the founders and patrons of the 
 Grecian race. Let us endeavour as far as we may to 
 realise the scene. 
 
 At the time of such a festival Athens was crowded. 
 The city always contained a large number of resident 
 foreigners, who lived there for commerce or security, 
 and enjoyed a special legal protection. Then there 
 were a great many passing merchants and sailors, and 
 strangers impelled by one motive or another to visit
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 9 
 
 the state which was fast becoming the leader of Greece, 
 and many no doubt were brought together by the feast 
 itself. There were the country people of Attica, come 
 in, as it were, from the suburbs ; and lastly, there were 
 the regular inhabitants themselves. A busy, energetic 
 people these were, living half their time at sea or 
 in foreign cities; full of all a sailor's vivacity and 
 vigour and enterprise, yet without the sailor's ignor- 
 ance and rudeness their hardihood tempered by the 
 culture which was fast gaining ground, and which this 
 festival did much to foster. We have lively descrip- 
 tions given us of the hurry and the bustle and the 
 clamour in the docks and marts of this most stirring 
 city; and now all was at its height. The city itself 
 was only just beginning to be beautified with the 
 temples and groves and statues which were afterwards 
 its glory ; but at present, while the heroes of Marathon 
 were still in its streets, it needed no better decoration, 
 and the rough walls and narrow roads spoke still of 
 the haste with which they were built up, after the 
 Athenians had so nobly left their homes to destruc- 
 tion to fight at Salamis for the liberty of Greece. 
 Never has there been a city of which its people might 
 be more justly proud, whether they looked to its past 
 or to its future, than Athens in the days of ^schylus. 
 But all are tending, early in the day, to the great 
 theatre of Bacchus, under the Acropolis. This sacred 
 citadel stands high above the rest of the city, crowned 
 even now with temples of the gods, and especially 
 of Minerva, the patron goddess. Its south side is a 
 steep precipice of rock, from which the ground slopes
 
 10 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 gradually down. Here is the theatre.* The part 
 occupied by the audience is semicircular, and consists 
 of seats rising like steps one above the other, and cut 
 in the solid rock. This vast semicircle is filled already 
 with the mass of citizens, men and women, except in 
 the lower ranges of seats, which are reserved for the 
 magistrates and senators. In the centre a small area 
 is left, on which is a raised platform with the altar 
 of Bacchus upon it; across the front, from end to 
 end of the semicircle, runs a high wall which closes 
 the theatre, and in front of this wall is the stage. 
 The stage is long and narrow ; it runs, that is, across 
 nearly the whole front, but is only deep enough for 
 four or five men to walk abreast and steps lead 
 down from it into the central area or orchestra ; 
 while, parallel to the stage, but on the lower level, 
 run long passages to right and left, by which the 
 chorus may enter or leave the theatre. As, then, 
 we take our seat among the noisy crowd, we see 
 before us, down on the floor of the house, as we 
 should call it, the altar on its raised platform in the 
 orchestra, and beyond it, fronting us, a high columned 
 wall, fashioned perhaps like a temple, with great fold- 
 ing doors in the middle, opening upon the stage. "We 
 are going to stay here all day and see piece after piece, 
 and join in approving the verdict of the judges when, 
 
 * Some readers may remember the representation of the 
 "Antigone" of Sophocles in London some years ago. The Greek 
 stage and its accessories were all carefully reproduced, and the 
 result is described in the 'Times' of January 3, 1845. The 
 same performance, as afterwards repeated in Edinburgh, forms 
 the subject of one of De Quincey's most instructive papers.
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 11 
 
 at the end, they award the prize to the play which has 
 been best written, best put on the stage, best acted, 
 sung, and danced, richest in free and patriotic senti- 
 ments or hits at the defeated Persians, and most illus- 
 trative of the glory of the city. 
 
 The sun shines full in the faces of the expectant 
 multitude, but a Greek is not fastidious about 
 weather ; besides, there is a pleasant breeze blowing 
 over us from the sea. And the time is passed in dis- 
 cussion of the probable character of the different plays, 
 and the chances of the competitors. These are not, 
 as we might have expected, the poets whose plays are 
 to be presented, but the rich men who put the several 
 plays upon the stage. A poet is not usually a rich 
 man, and could not of course afford to hire, as he must, 
 a chorus and actors, and get dresses and scenery 
 arranged; left to himself, he could no more bring out 
 his piece than the ordinary composer could bring out 
 an opera. So the plan in Athens was this. The rich 
 men in each tribe were required to contribute out of 
 their wealth to the benefit and amusement of their 
 fellow-citizens. When ships were wanted, the burden 
 of supplying them was laid on the wealthier citizens, to 
 each of whom, or to several clubbed together, the duty 
 of providing a ship was assigned. Similarly, when 
 the festivals were to be supplied with plays, the office 
 of putting a piece on the stage of furnishing a chorus, 
 as it was called devolved upon some one very rich 
 citizen, or upon several of moderate wealth who bore 
 the expense between them. The play to be thus pro- 
 vided for was assigned by the magistrates out of those
 
 12 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 which, the rival poets had sent in. The furnisher of 
 the chorus then collected men who could sing and 
 dance to "be trained for the chorus, chose the two or 
 the three actors among whom the parts should he dis- 
 tributed, had scenes painted and dresses hired, and 
 provided whatever else was needed for the due per- 
 formance of the piece. It was a point of honour to do 
 the whole as liberally and artistically as possible ; and 
 an ambitious man would gain popularity by introduc- 
 ing new stage-machinery, new effects in the music, or 
 new inventions for making the gestures of the actors 
 visible and their voices audible throughout the im- 
 mense building. For it will seem most wonderful, if 
 we consider the case, that any actor could make him- 
 self heard by thirty thousand people in the open air ; 
 still more that his voice, so elevated as to penetrate 
 through all that multitude, should be able to preserve 
 distinct the various tones of grief or joy, of submission 
 or command. To meet this difficulty the Greeks con- 
 trived masks, which enclosed, it seems, the whole head, 
 and were fitted with acoustic arrangements such as are 
 unknown to us, by which the power of the human 
 voice was wonderfully increased. In the same way, 
 in order that the persons of the actors might not 
 appear diminutive from the great distance at which 
 most of the spectators saw them, they were made taller 
 by very thick-soled boots, and broader by the judicious 
 arrangement of their dresses ; while the mask, no 
 doubt, rendered the appearance of the head propor- 
 tionate to this enlarged stature. There were, too, in 
 the building of the wall which formed the back of the
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 13 
 
 stage, acoustic principles observed, by which those who 
 spoke from the interior as from within a house or a 
 room might be heard more distinctly. And improve- 
 ments in these matters were made from time to time 
 by those to whom the equipment of plays was as- 
 signed. So when the names of such and such men 
 are mentioned as probable competitors, it is these 
 furnishers of the chorus who are meant, though the 
 success of any one of them would no doubt be con- 
 sidered the more probable if he had ^Eschylus or 
 Sophocles for his poet. 
 
 On such matters the crowd are now exchanging 
 rumours. Cimon, they say, is rich and liberal, and his 
 play will be put on the stage with every advantage of 
 art and machinery that money can procure, and he has 
 a piece written by a favourite poet ; but then Lysias 
 has secured the best dancers, and the great actor 
 is retained by Xenocles. " But after all," says some 
 one, "not much depends upon the actor; he is 
 little more than a mouthpiece; any one who can 
 strike a good attitude and walk with dignity, and who 
 has good lungs, will make an excellent Agamemnon." 
 Some one has heard that the ghost of Clytemnestra is 
 actually to appear and talk ; another beats that piece 
 of news by the information that the whole band of the 
 Furies is to be brought upon the stage. With such 
 conversation the time is beguiled till the first play be- 
 gins ; conversation for which topics were never want- 
 ing, since the entertainment provided for each festival 
 was quite new, or rather there was always a series of 
 entertainments to be expected, so that the interest of
 
 14 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 many " first nights," as it were, was concentrated in a 
 single morning. 
 
 But now the contest is to begin. The magistrates 
 and generals have arrived and taken their places in 
 the lowest tier, the senators in the benches just above 
 them ; and many have been the remarks made on each 
 as he came in, for in this small city every distinguished 
 man is well known, by sight at least, to all his fellow- 
 citizens. At length the curtain is removed, and the 
 scene in which the action is laid is disclosed to view. 
 Perhaps it is the outside of a temple, whose columned 
 front the wall itself of the theatre may adequately 
 represent ; or often it is the front of a royal palace, 
 with the statues of the three great gods standing be- 
 fore the gates ; or it is a lonely island, where a hero is 
 to suffer, deserted by his fellow-chiefs; or a wild moun- 
 tain scene, on whose craggy cliffs Prometheus is to 
 expiate his unlawful kindness to mankind. At the 
 sides are painted views of the country surrounding 
 each scene of action ; the neighbouring city, if there be 
 one, is seen upon the left, and on the right are fields 
 or open sea. And all this is executed with consum- 
 mate skill, and knowledge of perspective, such as even 
 modern scene-painters hardly, perhaps, surpass. In 
 such a scene the two actors appear. Their dress soon 
 makes it clear what characters they represent,* and the 
 first few sentences explain to us sufficiently the posi- 
 
 * The dress, however, of the actors was in great measure 
 conventional, following closely that of worshippers in the rites 
 of Bacchus. It was generally gay and bright in colour, and 
 admitted but little distinction between men and women.
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 15 
 
 tion of affairs. They use no elaborate gestures, and 
 make no attempt to express feeling by changes of 
 countenance such efforts would be useless in so large 
 a place, even if the face were not hidden by the mask 
 they stand generally still in solemn dignified atti- 
 tudes, so as to look very much like coloured statues or 
 figures in a bas-relief; and they utter the sonorous 
 verse in a kind of recitative, yet so distinctly that the 
 words may be accurately heard by all the audience, 
 who would instantly perceive and notice any slip in 
 accent or pronunciation. After perhaps a quarter of 
 an hour, or generally less, the actors, or one of them, 
 retire to set on foot the main action of the piece : then 
 the chorus, if they have not already entered, appear 
 in solemn procession, and take their station in the 
 orchestra to sing. There are usually twelve of them, 
 all dressed alike as old men, or maidens, or soldiers, 
 or as the case may be, and they enter generally three 
 abreast, and form and wheel with the stately regu- 
 larity of a regiment. They move in time to music, 
 marching or dancing, and sing as they advance a 
 solemn hymn, which dimly prophesies the events that 
 are to come, pointing out their connection with the 
 past, and showing how all the history is ordered by 
 the providence or vengeance of the gods. They are 
 marshalled under a leader who walks in their midst ; 
 and if they engage, as sometimes they do, in dialogue 
 with the actor, this leader is their spokesman. As 
 they group themselves round the altar, they still sing 
 their grand mysterious chant, and there from time to 
 time they execute various complicated dances, illustra-
 
 16 JESCHYLUS. 
 
 tive of the emotions which their words express. And 
 here a word must be said of this expressive dance. 
 
 It seems to be an art entirely lost so entirely that 
 we now cannot well guess what difference of steps or 
 figures would represent even the most marked differ- 
 ence of feelings ; but to the Greeks such variation was 
 most certainly represented. And thus much may be 
 noticed in explanation. The Greeks, in accordance 
 with the general simplicity and natural frankness of 
 their manners, were in the habit of giving much more 
 unreserved expression to their feelings by gesture 
 than is thought among ourselves consistent with dig- 
 nity or culture ; so we may suppose that their eyes be- 
 came more accustomed to such outward indications 
 than ours are, and their taste was not offended by ges- 
 tures which to us would seem forced and ridiculous. 
 Further, we must consider the facility with which a 
 conventional system of expressing passion by the dance 
 might become generally recognised, until movements, 
 which originally were only conventionally significant, 
 might appear spontaneous to an eye habituated to 
 their use. Lastly, the notion, so difficult to get rid of, 
 that in dancing there is something trivial and undig- 
 nified, must be as far as possible discarded; for, to the 
 Athenian, the dances of the chorus were probably 
 among the most impressive, even the most awful, spec- 
 tacles which ever met his eyes ; and if to us dancing 
 seems fit only for merriment and trifling, the cause lies 
 not in our advance in culture, but in our having lost 
 an art or a sensibility. 
 
 The relation of the chorus to the rest of a Greek
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 17 
 
 play may be well learned from Milton's imitation of 
 an Attic tragedy in the " Samson Agonistes ;" and as 
 corresponding in many respects to the choral ode, we 
 might instance Gray's " Bard." In a tragedy whose 
 subject was the death of Edward II., that impassioned 
 and mysterious ode in which the punishment of the 
 royal line is dimly prophesied would form a good 
 opening chorus. 
 
 The ode comes to an end, and then, with successive 
 periods of dialogue interspersed with more choric odes, 
 the play goes on, till the catastrophe, generally a 
 mournful one, has been effected. Then follow com- 
 ments upon it from actor and from chorus, and all 
 ends, it may be, with a grand procession, during which 
 the chorus sums up the moral of the whole. In all 
 this there is not much acting, not much that is really 
 what we call dramatic : we have rather a series of 
 tableaux, majestic, colossal, statuesque ; dialogues or 
 soliloquies intentionally stilted, in order that a certain 
 distance and mystery may attach to them ; while, giv- 
 ing tone to it all, and relieving the monotony of the 
 long quiet speeches by comments such as a sensible 
 spectator might be supposed to make, we have the 
 stately dance and chant of the chorus. 
 
 One play would probably seldom occupy more than 
 an hour and a half; but often three plays were con- 
 nected together in one grand whole called a trilogy, 
 somewhat as the several parts of Shakespeare's his- 
 torical plays are connected ; and these were followed by 
 a comic piece by the same poet, which might relieve 
 the seriousness of so much tragedy. Each competitor, 
 
 A. c. voL vii. B
 
 18 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 therefore, produced in these cases not one play, but a 
 series of four, and several competitors followed one 
 another throughout the day. "Wearisome, dry, un- 
 impassioned, all this may seem to us ; but we must 
 remember that to the Greek it meant religious service, 
 literary culture, and the celebration of the national 
 greatness. As he sat in the theatre, the gods of his 
 country looked down approvingly from the Acropolis 
 above, and his fellow-citizens, whom he loved with 
 intense patriotism, were all about him. He might 
 say of the assembly, what an old poet had said of the 
 lonians gathered for festival at Delos, that you would 
 think them blessed with endless youth, so glorious 
 they were and so blooming ; and as the rocks under 
 which he sat re-echoed to the applause of that great 
 assembly, he must indeed have felt the thrill of sym- 
 pathetic enthusiasm which Plato describes as pro- 
 duced by such occasions. 
 
 One word about the mental condition of a people 
 whose masses could take pleasure in such an entertain- 
 ment. That their culture must in some degree have 
 exceeded our own is evident from a comparison of the 
 plays in which we and they respectively delight. The 
 majority of Englishmen, even among the so-called 
 educated, do not care to see Shakespeare's tragedies ; 
 the effort of attention is too great, the beauties too 
 subtle, the plot too simple. Now Shakespeare's plays 
 stand to the Greek drama much as a picture does to a 
 statue. And a picture most men can enjoy, but very 
 few can really appreciate a statue. Shakespeare, then, 
 is too severe for us, and ^Eschylus is much more
 
 THE FEAST OF BACCHUS. 19 
 
 severe than Shakespeare ; yet the ordinary Athenian 
 citizen could enjoy ^Eschylus at the first hearing, and 
 those of the next generation knew his plays almost by 
 heart, and could appreciate the most distant allusion 
 to them. In what lies the reason of their superiority ? 
 For that it is in some sense a superiority we cannot 
 but feel. To have lost any power of enjoyment is in 
 some sense a fall ; and to have lost the power of en- 
 joying what is simple, to want more piquancy, more 
 excitement, is a fall somewhat like losing the innocence 
 of childhood. The multiplication of our interests has 
 made the ordinary course of life so exciting, that we 
 want something still more violent for our amusements. 
 This is one cause. The other lies in the leisure which 
 the ordinary Athenian possessed, and the literature 
 with which he was imbued. There were so many 
 slaves in Attica, that the free population was but a 
 small minority, and it is with the freemen only that 
 we have to deal. These formed, therefore, virtually 
 an aristocracy, freed, to a great extent, from servile 
 work, so that they were provided with abundant lei- 
 sure. But from their word for leisure our word 
 " school" is derived, for their unoccupied time was all 
 a time of learning. The great sculptors were already 
 beginning to adorn Athens with the masterpieces 
 which have not since been equalled, and in every 
 man's mouth, as the national literature, were the noble 
 poems of Homer. Against such means of forming a 
 simple and natural taste there were no newspapers, 
 or novels, or waxworks to be set ; happily for the 
 Athenians, their books and models were few and good.
 
 20 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Our taste has been spoilt by the multiplication of bad 
 books, bad pictures, and bad statues. To recover the 
 correctness of taste which is natural to a healthy and 
 happy man, we must study from the Greek models, 
 and imbibe insensibly the harmony and grace by 
 which they are distinguished. ^Eschylus, it is true, 
 does not present the most finished example of tragic 
 art; his works are rather sublime than polished; but 
 they possess a very high degree of beauty and modera- 
 tion, and are executed on so large a scale that they 
 may bear to dispense with finish. If all Greek art is 
 typified by the statue, those statues which correspond 
 to the plays of ^Eschylus are colossal. And to gain 
 even a slight knowledge of his poetry is to enrich the 
 mind with a store of beauty which cannot fail to be a 
 joy for ever.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SOLDIER-POET. 
 
 To us ^Eschylus is a poet, and a poet he has been to 
 all ages since his own ; "but to himself he was a soldier, 
 so that when he was to write an epitaph for himself, 
 the one fact which he wished inscribed upon his tomb 
 was this that the long-haired Persians knew how he 
 could fight. To the men of his own age he was both 
 soldier and poet, and from their stand-point we must 
 try to regard him. 
 
 ^Eschylus was born about the year 525 B. c. at 
 Eleusis, near Athens, a village celebrated for the 
 secret rites of Demeter there performed, those Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries which are among the most remarkable 
 institutions that the world has seen. The great 
 goddess of Eleusis, Demeter, or Mother Earth, was 
 one of the most august of the divinities of Greece. 
 She represented the earth in its power and its kind- 
 liness; in the conception formed of her, the earth's 
 venerable age and greatness, and the mysterious in- 
 fluence by which she quickens seed and nourishes life, 
 were combined with the genial fertility and rich
 
 22 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 healthy fruitfulness of the soil ; and so was made up 
 the notion of a goddess, awful from her power, but a 
 kind mother still to men. Eleusis was one of the 
 chief seats of her worship, and thence originated a sort 
 of sacred freemasonry, which was widely spread 
 among the different tribes of Greece. For there were 
 certain secret doctrines which only the initiated might 
 learn, and rites at which only the initiated might 
 assist ; and these rites and doctrines, whatever they 
 were, were no formal or trifling thing, but furnished a 
 creed and an interest which raised the initiated, in some 
 degree, to a higher level than his fellow-men. We 
 have no means of guessing what it was that was taught 
 in them. It has been supposed that some vestiges of 
 the true faith, ideas of the unity of God and the im- 
 mortality of the soul, were kept alive and handed 
 down by these mysteries : however that may be, they 
 were regarded as peculiarly holy, and the place on 
 which the shadow of their solemnity fell could not 
 fail to suggest grand thoughts to a powerful and imagin- 
 ative mind. It can hardly be merely fanciful to ascribe, 
 in some degree at least, to this influence the delight 
 which ^Eschylus shows, throughout his extant works, 
 in all that is mysterious and awful, as well as his pre- 
 ference for the more dimly known and ancient of the 
 gods. A boyhood passed in longing to know the 
 meaning of the crowds that constantly were coming to 
 his native village, and of the long processions which 
 sometimes passed through its fields ; in wondering at 
 the awestruck look of the men who came out from the 
 sacred place, or in guessing the import of the dim
 
 THE SOLDIER-POET. 23 
 
 allusions which he heard from time to time ; a "boy- 
 hood so passed must surely give a solemnity and 
 earnestness to the whole nature of the man. And 
 certainly ^Eschylus, if we may believe his biographers, 
 was from an early age haunted by solemn imaginations, 
 and by a consciousness of the presence of the gods. 
 It is said that he told this story of himself. Once, 
 when quite a child, he was left in a vineyard to guard 
 or watch the grapes, and, tired with the sim, he lay 
 down and slept ; and he saw coming through the rows 
 of vines the flushed face of Bacchus, merry, yet terrible; 
 and Bacchus bade him give himself henceforth to the 
 tragic art. On this anecdote we cannot place much 
 reliance it sounds like a later fabrication; but we 
 may well believe that a " fine frenzy " was early seen 
 in the eyes of ^Eschylus, and that his character was 
 early marked by a fiery earnestness and pride. 
 
 He was born of noble family, and in after-years, 
 when he saw changes passing over the society of Athens, 
 by which the prestige of nobility was lowered, and 
 new men were helped to rise to the highest offices in 
 the state, his pride of birth showed itself in a spirit of 
 haughty reserve and stern conservatism. But in this 
 contempt for the rising citizens of his day there was 
 at least one great truth implied ; a truth, that is, very 
 needful for the time in which he lived. Love of 
 moderation and due proportion, and a hatred of the 
 vulgarity of excess this, the characteristic principle 
 of Greek art in all its branches, was beginning to 
 make itself felt and consciously accepted ; and this 
 is the very principle which new men, in every age, are
 
 24 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 most apt to violate. And ^schylus, as a leader in 
 the development of the artistic spirit, could not but be 
 rightly indignant at the arrogance of newly -gotten 
 wealth. To him, as to all true Greeks, such arro- 
 gance was a sin against the gods. A man exulting in 
 his great prosperity, and presuming on it, was a sight 
 at which the gods were angry : they would impel such 
 a man to violent deeds, and make his pride the instru- 
 ment of his destruction. The moderate wealth and 
 well-founded dignity of an ancient family had all 
 charms for ^Eschylus ; he loved all that was vener- 
 able, and hated arrogance above all crimes. Of this 
 influence of his noble birth we shall find frequent 
 indications. 
 
 But an Athenian citizen, though he might plume 
 himself in private on his birth, would not think of 
 disdaining to mingle on equal terms with the mass of 
 his fellow-citizens in the field and the assembly. In 
 many a stern battle ^Eschylus fought as readily as 
 any ; and his hardihood was not, as with some of our 
 own well-born soldiers, a virtue rarely shown, called 
 out by the occasion, and contrasting strangely with 
 the almost effeminate indolence and luxury of ordinary 
 days. Something of this character appeared afterwards 
 in Alcibiades, but we may be very sure there was none 
 of it in ^Eschylus. He, like all the Greeks of his 
 day, was hardy and warlike always ; more warlike than 
 most, almost fierce perhaps he was ; and though he 
 could turn to elegant pursuits, though he was a cour- 
 tier and a poet as well as a soldier, yet this was not to 
 be noticed in him as an exceptional combination. For
 
 THE SOLDIER-POET. 25 
 
 an Athenian was expected to "be a man of many 
 powers, and not, "because he excelled in one thing, 
 therefore to fail in every other: rather, to "be excellent 
 was with them to excel in all things to which a free 
 and cultivated man might turn his hand. This point 
 it is which makes ^Eschylus, as soldier-poet, so re- 
 markable an object for our consideration. 
 
 Haste and pressure of business make division of 
 labour necessary among ourselves, and each man must 
 cultivate a specialty; so that if a man should appear 
 vrho was well qualified for all posts, we should not 
 believe in him; and more than that, we should not 
 find him out. So soon as he showed excellence in one 
 matter, he would be ticketed with that and tied down 
 to it : any attempts in any other subject would be 
 regarded as graceful by-works, but not as likely to 
 lead to high success. Now in Athens there was not 
 so much pressure, there was not so much tyranny of 
 public opinion, and the state was smaller. 
 
 Yet, even in that small state, it is matter for our 
 admiration that excellence should have succeeded so 
 uniformly as it did in attracting attention and reward, 
 ^schylus, though holding no high command, was 
 selected, with his two brothers, for the prize of pre- 
 eminent bravery at Marathon, and his brother again 
 won the highest honour in the battle of Salamis. 
 Posterity may well admire the judgment of his con- 
 temporaries. No doubt all the Athenians fought well 
 at those two battles, and it must have been hard to 
 assign pre-eminence to any ; but we, looking at the 
 writings and history of ^schylus, can be sure that
 
 26 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 there was that strength and majestic energy about 
 him, which must have made him do acts worthy of 
 such distinction. And to be distinguished at Mara- 
 thon was something worth living for. Civilisation, 
 art, and culture, against barbarism, wealth, and num- 
 bers ; freedom against despotism ; Europe against 
 Asia, no less a strife than this was decided that day. 
 The Greeks came to the encounter with the anxiety of 
 men who were trying a new weapon against an enemy 
 of new powers. They were unused to the vast num- 
 bers and imposing equipment of the Persians, and the 
 power of freedom and culture had hardly yet been 
 tried. It would have been impious to distrust such 
 weapons and such a cause, but still it was an anxious 
 crisis. And when it ended in the utter rout of Darius 
 and his innumerable hosts, the triumph was propor- 
 tionate to that anxiety. Greece was greater that day 
 than any country has ever been since, and on that day 
 ^Eschylus was among the greatest of Greece. And 
 ten years afterward there came a day, less critical, 
 indeed, but even more splendid, when "ships by 
 thousands lay " off Salamis, and the Athenians led the 
 Greeks to the fullest victory. The Athenians then had 
 sacrificed their homes and the temples of their gods to 
 fight for fellow-countrymen who were ungrateful and 
 remiss ; the virtue of one Athenian and the genius of 
 another had made the victory possible ; and on this 
 proudest day that Athens ever saw the brother of 
 ^Eschylus was named as having borne himself the 
 best, and the poet himself was doubtless not far be- 
 hind.
 
 THE SOLDIER-POET. 27 
 
 During the interval between these two "battles our 
 poet had produced many plays, and several times won 
 the prize ; and a few years after the battle of Salamis 
 he wrote the " Persians," a tragedy founded on that 
 event, and representing the tragical end of Xerxes as 
 brought on him by his overweening confidence and 
 pride. In some other plays as well as in this in " The 
 Seven against Thebes," for instance, and the "Eumen- 
 ides " ^Eschylus treated political subjects directly or 
 indirectly, and inculcated a conservative policy which 
 should not seek through violence the aggrandisement 
 of the state, nor carelessly change her venerable insti- 
 tutions. But in Athens at that time all was progress. 
 ^Eschylus had neither the taste nor the opinions which 
 would tend to make a man popular there. Discour- 
 aged perhaps* by the changes effected in the constitu- 
 tion, piqued at the success of younger men, and, in 
 particular, of Sophocles, and annoyed by a charge of 
 sacrilege which he was supposed to have incurred by 
 disclosing on the stage some details of the Eleusinian 
 mysteries, he left Athens in his old age, never to 
 return. 
 
 He retired to the court of Hiero in Syracuse, where 
 he had before been a frequent guest, and there, in the 
 midst of a literary circle, with Pindar, Simonides, 
 and Epicharmus, he passed the remainder of his life. 
 Several plays he wrote during his stay there, and these 
 were probably produced at Athens by the care of his 
 friends. It is likely that his greatest work, the Story 
 of Orestes, was among them. He died at Gela, in 
 Sicily, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. The in-
 
 28 JESCHYLVS. 
 
 habitants of Gela gave him a splendid funeral, and 
 inscribed his own epitaph upon his tomb : 
 
 " This tomb the dust of JLschylus doth hide, 
 Euphorion's son, and fruitful Gela's pride : 
 How tried his valour Marathon may tell, 
 And long-haired Medes who know it all too well." * 
 
 Not much is known of his life; indeed the few 
 facts mentioned here form the greater part of what 
 we are told, but even these are at least enough to 
 show in what great times he lived, and how wide was 
 the range of his gigantic powers. The character which 
 we should be led by his works and his life to attri- 
 bute to him is supported by the contemporary testi- 
 mony of Aristophanes, who caricatures him, but with 
 marked respect, in his comedy of " The Frogs." He 
 is represented there as proud and intolerant, but brave, 
 noble, and dignified ; given to big words and long 
 pompous compounds, but not at all as frothy or empty 
 of sound sense; as a sturdy representative of the 
 genuine spirit of tragedy and of all that was best in 
 the old Athenian temper; one of those "hearts of oak 
 who had fought at Marathon," and, like the rest of 
 these, a little slow to follow the times, but made of 
 a solid stuff of which there was too little remaining. 
 
 Two things then, in particular, are to be noticed in 
 .rffEschylus by the modern reader. First, the " many- 
 sidedness" of which we have already spoken, by which 
 he was a soldier-poet ; and, secondly, the prominent part 
 
 * Translated by Professor Plumptre, to whom this chapter is 
 very largely indebted throughout
 
 THE SOLDIER-POUT. 29 
 
 which he played in a very stirring epoch of the world's 
 history. By this prominence he was qualified, on the 
 one hand, to represent his countrymen ; on the other, to 
 speak to the common sympathies of mankind. As a 
 genuine Athenian citizen, mixed up in the battles and 
 politics of his city, engaged in providing for Athenian 
 taste, and to no small degree in guiding it, he cannot 
 fail to express most truthfully the significant features 
 of the Athenian mind. And since Athens was in a 
 sense the world represented the future civilisation 
 against Persia, and was the chief scene of its growth 
 a citizen of Athens was a citizen of the world, and 
 his character was not only not provincial, but not 
 even transitory. Hence it is that, speaking from the 
 Athenian stage, .ZEschylus can address men of all 
 ages. Hence it is that his views of life, as well as the 
 passions he represents, have interest for us still ; and 
 the pagan creed with which they are connected does 
 not seem to impair their value. 
 
 "What, then, was his view of life, or did he take any 
 consistent view of life at all ? It is possible, perhaps, 
 that men should go through life, as some savages in- 
 deed probably do, without any attempt at explanation 
 of the events that occur to them, regarding each as a 
 separate fact, and not comparing them together. This, 
 however, is only possible where there is not only no 
 history, but not even any continuous memory of the 
 past ; and a nation like the Athenian, which had en- 
 joyed for centuries a noble literature, could not be in 
 any such case as this. To them the freewill of man 
 and his responsibility, and such questions as these, had
 
 30 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 long been suggesting themselves. Was their view of the 
 answer to these questions a cheerful one or the reverse ? 
 All that is bright and sunny, all that savours, as it 
 were, of out-of-doors, seems to belong to the Greek, 
 and cheerfulness, or even thoughtlessness, seems to 
 characterise his temper. He loved light and sought 
 it. Yet even out of this very search comes sadness, 
 for there is not light enough in the world for man's 
 needs.* The inquirer is baffled at every turn, and from 
 that very brightness of his outward life which makes 
 him love light and seek it, he is only led the more 
 to find in the inner meaning of things darkness and 
 mystery, to think the dealings of heaven inscrutable, 
 and to believe in dreadful deities of dim and unknown, 
 even of cruel, powers. So while on the one hand the 
 Greek believed in gods of daylight, as it were, clad with 
 sunny youth like Apollo, or fair like Venus, or wise 
 and kind like Minerva ; on the other hand there were 
 Erinnys and Nemesis and the Furies, who pursued 
 the proud or the impious, and Ate, who clung to a man 
 or to a family in punishment of some half-forgotten 
 crime, and led them into an infatuation under which 
 they should incur new guilt and new vengeance. 
 Hence a dark cloud hung over history : it was but the 
 gloomy record of men raised to success and wealth, then 
 waxing insolent and forgetting to give the gods their 
 due, then by the angry gods abandoned to a reprobate 
 hardihood, in which they began a course of crime 
 whose consequences clung to them and their descend- 
 ants, till some one holier than the rest, by a long 
 * See Raskin's Oxford Lectures on Art, Lect. vii.
 
 THE SOLDIER-POET. 31 
 
 course of expiation, should win the pardon of heaven, 
 and free his family from the curse. Over each step of 
 this dismal round a deity presided. To the prosperous 
 man came the goddess Insolence, and if he admitted 
 her to his hearth, she led him into sin. Often Ate, 
 who clung to him for some ancestral fault, would send 
 Persuasion to him, to make him open his doors to Inso- 
 lence. Then he would kill or wrong a man, a "brother 
 perhaps, or a father, and the righteous indignation of 
 the spectators of his crime would be embodied in or ex- 
 pressed by Nemesis and the stern Erinnys, and these 
 would never cease to cry for vengeance on him, until 
 the Furies seized the hapless victim, and dragged him 
 to destruction. But when the curse at length is to be 
 removed, then the bright gods come upon the scene : 
 Apollo is the cleanser and the advocate; wise Minerva 
 dictates the decision which sets the suppliant free. 
 So strong was the light and shadow in the Greek creed. 
 ^Eschylus is prone, perhaps, to dwell in the shadow, 
 but his masterpiece, the " Story of Orestes," exhibits 
 both in a beautiful and consistent whole. 
 
 Over these two worlds, as it were, one supreme 
 ruler was dimly apprehended. Through all his mention 
 of numerous deities there is ever in .ZEschylus a con- 
 stant reference to one God, by whose will all the 
 principles which govern the life of man have been 
 eternally decreed. Sometimes he is identified with 
 Jove,* but oftener he is vaguely thought of as an un- 
 known God, in whom men may still trust that all is 
 ultimately right. 
 
 * Or, as the Greeks call him, Zeus.
 
 32 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 We have spoken of two distinct classes of gods ; 
 the gloomy deities which belong to the sphere of con- 
 science and moral responsibility, and the cheerful gods 
 of the natural world. This distinction is a just one, 
 but it must not be confounded with another. Accord- 
 ing to the old mythologies, before Jove became king 
 of heaven, and all the young gods, Apollo and the 
 rest, took their places by his side, the throne of 
 Olympus had been filled by an older race of deities 
 Cronus, and Oceanus, and Prometheus, and the Titans 
 who had been exiled at the fall of their dynasty, or 
 bound in prisons and tortures. About these there was 
 something venerable from their age, and something 
 mysterious from the slightness of the knowledge pos- 
 sessed about them. They were therefore favourite 
 subjects with ^Eschylus, as we shall see in his " Pro- 
 metheus." But their darkness and mystery was of a 
 different kind from that of Ate and Erinnys. 
 
 What, then, in this strange medley is true and per- 
 manent 1 The brightness of the natural world this 
 is our first and greatest lesson from the Greeks ; the 
 deep, dreadful responsibility of man ; the possibility 
 of restoration from sin to purity ; the overruling pro- 
 vidence of a supreme Creator. We shall enjoy ^Eschy- 
 lus more if we trace these truths in his poems, and we 
 shall learn how much was good in the pagan creeds, 
 instead of only being disgusted by their falsehood.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 
 
 THE " Prometheus Bound " is probably not the earliest 
 even of the few remaining plays of ^Eschylus ; and 
 yet, for many reasons, it is the fittest of the seven * to 
 begin with, for it is the easiest, the most typical, and 
 the most interesting. 
 
 It is, in several respects, as simple as it could be. 
 The interest is undivided, for the one hero is present 
 throughout, and the other persons who appear from 
 time to time are all introduced directly for the sake 
 of their connection with him. The unity which all 
 plays, and indeed all works of art, ought to possess, is 
 generally attained, if at all, by less simple means. 
 The main thread is often lost sight of for a time, and 
 our interest is temporarily engaged in some side-plot, 
 which is only afterwards and indirectly seen to bear 
 upon the main issue ; so that the poet's skill is shown 
 in enlisting our sympathies in the separate aims of a 
 number of persons, and yet making all those aims 
 
 * jEschylus is said to have written seventy or even a hundred 
 plays, but we have only seven extant. 
 
 A. c. vol. vii. c
 
 34 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 subservient, in one way or another, to the chief action of 
 the piece. But in the " Prometheus " unity is directly 
 secured by having only one person of predominant 
 influence. There is not much elaborate art, certainly, 
 in this course, nor is a result so attained ever quite as 
 striking as that of the more complicated process, when 
 that is used with great power and is completely suc- 
 cessful; but such success is rare indeed. It is too 
 often the case that the surrounding interests, instead 
 of contributing their several currents to the main 
 stream, are only so many drains detracting from it. 
 And so it is that few plays of those written with most 
 elaborate art produce anything like the imposing sense 
 of unity which we gain from the " Prometheus." 
 
 In its plot, too, this play is exceedingly simple. If 
 we consider the series of steps by which the catas- 
 trophe is brought about in a modern play, the great 
 number of events which take place between the rising 
 of the curtain and its fall, how many people pass 
 through vicissitudes of hope and despair, are married 
 and killed, what a long time often elapses, long 
 enough even for changes to appear in the character of 
 the persons ; if we consider this complexity, and then 
 turn to the plot of the " Prometheus," we shall feel 
 that we are dealing with quite a different kind of com- 
 position. 
 
 Prometheus is nailed to a rock, and refuses even 
 under this torture to yield to the will of Jove. That 
 is all. Other persons come and speak to him, urge or 
 command him to relent, or threaten him with the 
 result, but only to be repelled in turn. The attitude
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 35 
 
 of the hero never alters, the issue is never doubtful. 
 This naturally seems to us only a scene out of a longer 
 play and such, in a sense, it is. It is probably the 
 second part in one of those series of three plays, or 
 trilogies, of which we have one complete specimen in 
 the " Story of Orestes." The first of the three would 
 have exhibited the crime of Prometheus, his stealing 
 the divine fire for men ; then came the Prometheus 
 Bound, his punishment ; and lastly, Prometheus Freed, 
 his restoration. There were, in that case, three com- 
 plete pictures, together making one story. We have 
 only one picture left, and it is perhaps the simplest, 
 and certainly the most affecting, of the three. 
 
 Another respect in which the play is simple is its 
 scene. From the nature of the story, this remains 
 unchanged throughout, until it is lost in the final 
 convulsion. 
 
 Now, to have the attention concentrated on one per- 
 son, in one set of circumstances, in one place, would 
 of course be most tedious, unless the play were short. 
 And it is, like most of our author's plays, much 
 shorter than even the average of Greek tragedies. It 
 is little more than a tableau vivant, exhibiting the 
 punishment and fortitude of Prometheus ; a signal in- 
 stance of that character by which the Attic tragedy is 
 especially distinguished from the modern, of statuesque 
 and colossal simplicity. It is a single statue, not even 
 a group : it is less complicated than the Laocoon : 
 though evidently one of a series, it is complete in 
 itself. 
 
 There remains the most important reason why this
 
 36 jESCHYLUS. 
 
 play is a good one to begin with. it is much, the 
 most universally interesting of the surviving dramas 
 of ^3Eschylus. There is very little in it that is exclu- 
 sively Greek or Athenian ; no allusions, or very few, to 
 historical events or national institutions, so that it is 
 as suitable almost to one place and time as to another. 
 The spectacle of a god suffering for the sake of men, 
 so wonderful a prophecy as it is of the great fact of 
 Christianity, has, for most minds, a strong fascination. 
 Goethe, Shelley, and many others, have tried their 
 hands upon the subject not, it is true, following the 
 plain story of ^Eschylus, but each adapting the mate- 
 rials to his own creed. Goethe's work is only a frag- 
 ment. The " Prometheus Unbound" of Shelley, though 
 it is a poem in many points painful and in many fan- 
 tastic, yet has many passages which illustrate ^Eschy- 
 lus with remarkable clearness. But one thing must 
 always prevent any modern adaptation of the situation 
 from being complete, if it is to avoid being blasphem- 
 ous. In the Greek play Prometheus represents the 
 cause of man against Zeus, and openly rebels against 
 him. Now, so long as the supreme god is represented 
 as wicked or unjust, such an attitude can be an object 
 of sympathy; but to those who believe in the true 
 God, a rebel against Him cannot be regarded as a 
 friend to men, or be an object of anything but hatred. 
 Hence it is that the nearest parallel to Prometheus 
 which modern literature affords is Satan himself in 
 " Paradise Lost." As a spectacle of indomitable will, 
 not succumbing under torture, and raising to the last 
 a voice of defiance to heaven, Satan is the very coun-
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 37 
 
 terpart of Prometheus ; but all that wins our sympathy 
 for Prometheus, his goodness, and gentleness, and love 
 of men is of course wanting in the character of Satan. 
 Shelley has made his adaptation more complete, and it 
 scarcely escapes the charge of blasphemy. The race of 
 men are represented, in the person of his Prometheus, 
 as always baffled in all desires and aims at good by 
 the tyranny of some cruel power. In Byron's " Cain," 
 this attitude is still more openly assumed, but the per- 
 son of Cain is not represented as entirely deserving of 
 our sympathy. However, these instances show how 
 favourite a theme this, of mankind suffering in the 
 person of one, has been with later poets. 
 
 But we will turn to a pleasanter comparison, and see 
 mankind suffering, not in antagonism but in conscious 
 submission to the will of God. In the oldest of all 
 poems, it may be, in the Book of Job, the same great 
 spectacle of heroic endurance is set before us, and 
 there too the hero represents humanity. Prometheus, 
 after his long suffering, is restored .to happiness ; 
 humanity suffers and is restored in his person. So it 
 is, in a much higher sense, with Job. Not only in his 
 physical sufferings and restoration, but in the deeper 
 agony of the moral problem which overpowers him, 
 and the higher elevation of the future to which he 
 looks, Job represents all mankind. In him are an- 
 swered the angry questions which Shelley and Byron 
 ask. " What means," say they, " this constant baf- 
 fling of man's best efforts, this universal presence of 
 pain and sin, this obscurity in the ways of God?" 
 These are the questions of humanity in its sufferings,
 
 38 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 and in Job is found the answer. As he was restored, 
 mankind will be freed from this pain ; as he learned 
 the explanation of God's ways, so will mankind be 
 taught. The resurrection will come, and the latter end 
 of the human race will be blessed abundantly; for, in a 
 higher sense than Job could know of, its " Redeemer 
 liveth, and will stand at the latter day upon the 
 earth." 
 
 So Prometheus is the Job of the heathen their pro- 
 phecy of Christ ; and this gives this drama an interest 
 which no other can possess. 
 
 There is one other point which must be mentioned 
 about this play, before we proceed to its actual de- 
 scription. It does not so much give us excitement or 
 instruction, as imprint on our minds a figure. This is 
 somewhat the case with "Hamlet;" it is the case 
 with 'Don Quixote.' "We rise from the perusal of 
 such a work enriched with a constant companion : a 
 strongly-marked character, almost a well-defined form, 
 is stored up within our minds. So is it with the 
 " Prometheus." Just as those who have been among 
 the Alps may carry about with them the vivid pre- 
 sence of some solitary height which stands up alone 
 and defiant in the face of heaven, its rough sides 
 beaten by a thousand storms, and the great mountains 
 sinking at its feet, so those who have studied the 
 " Prometheus " have always in their mind that exhibi- 
 tion of unapproachable greatness and indomitable will. 
 
 Now who was this Prometheus ? He was one of the 
 Titans of whom we spoke in the last chapter, of the 
 older race of gods who reigned in Olympus before Jove
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 39 
 
 and his dynasty came to the throne of heaven. Jove 
 was supposed to have obtained his position by con- 
 spiracy against his father Saturn an impiety in some 
 sort justifiable, because Saturn had dispossessed his 
 father Uranus by means not less outrageous. It is a 
 curious question, "What could have led the Greeks to 
 rest the claims of their gods on such foundations? but 
 we cannot enter upon it here. Jove was aided, of 
 course, in his enterprise, by the gods who, when he 
 had succeeded, found places by his side; and Prome- 
 theus, at the first, was one of these. He had always 
 been a pitying friend to the human race, and his 
 mother Themis, or Right, had encouraged him in the 
 hope that the reign of Jove would be beneficial to 
 mankind. His name, Prometheus, means "forethought," 
 and in his love of men is implied the lesson that fore- 
 thought is the source of all human happiness. Hoping, 
 then, to confer a blessing on mankind, he had helped 
 to raise Zeus to power, at the expense of the old gods, 
 and the Titans, his kindred; but he was disappointed at 
 the result. Zeus entirely neglected mankind, or even 
 sought to depress them more and more, till he should 
 have put an end to the race altogether. To remedy 
 their sad state, Prometheus carried down from heaven 
 by stealth some sparks of fire concealed in a stalk of 
 fennel, that men might learn to forge tools and instru- 
 ments, and so arts and wealth might arise upon the earth. 
 But to use this element of fire had been the special pre- 
 rogative of the gods, and they would not have an 
 inferior race strengthened by it ; fearing, perhaps, lest, 
 so equipped, mankind might aspire to supplant them
 
 40 MSCHYLUS. 
 
 in the empire of heaven. So their wrath was great 
 against Prometheus, and he was regarded as the foe of 
 the gods and the friend of the upstart tribes of men, and 
 Zeus condemned him to be bound upon a peak of 
 Mount Caucasus, there to linger out the long years of 
 eternity; and all the other gods, who enjoyed their 
 prerogatives only through his aid, joined in rejoicing 
 over his fall. Only a few who, like himself, were 
 victims of the tyranny of the new Ruler, were found 
 to sympathise with his troubles. 
 
 Supplied with this knowledge, which nearly every 
 citizen of Athens possessed, we may now take our places 
 in the theatre under the Acropolis, and watch the play. 
 
 When the great curtain has been removed which 
 hung over the back wall of the stage, the wild scene 
 in which all is to take place is opened to our view. 
 Barren craggy cliffs rise up in front and on one side, 
 while on the other we can see down a great precipice, 
 over lower hills and slopes, marked with the course of 
 mountain streams, to the sunny rippling sea. This 
 spot is a peak of Caucasus, and before we can duly 
 estimate the scene, we must just remember what it 
 meant to an Athenian. To us, mountains are beauti- 
 ful and picturesque. We see them only in our holidays, 
 and have not to cross them in hardship and famine ; 
 but a Greek had no friendly feeling for them. A 
 mountain was to him only a hard cruel place, barren 
 and ugly.* And besides the horror that attached to 
 mountain scenes in general, we must remember that 
 
 * See, on the Classical Landscape, Ruskin, Modern Painters, 
 voL iii.
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 41 
 
 Caucasus was the very type of all that was most re- 
 mote, barbarous, inhospitable. It was a place to 
 which no civilised man could ever bear to go ; and the 
 vivid representation of its crags must have struck hor- 
 ror into the minds of the spectators, and prepared 
 them for what was to come. 
 
 The hero is led upon the scene. He is of more than 
 human stature, and his mask represents a face of un- 
 usual dignity; while the calm resignation with which 
 he walks to the scene of his torture contrasts strongly 
 with the violence of those who are dragging him 
 thither. These are two beings of superhuman strength 
 and savage face, to whom Zeus has intrusted the exe- 
 cution of his decree. Their names are Strength and 
 Force, but though their persons are two their office is 
 the same, and one only speaks for both. With them 
 comes the lame god Vulcan, the god of fire, for it is 
 his office to forge the chains and bolts, and to bind the 
 victim. Though it is his own special prerogative which 
 Prometheus has injured, yet Vulcan is reluctant to 
 bind a brother god, and to consign so noble a being 
 to such a wretched fate. He walks somewhat behind 
 the others, his heavy tramp echoing across the theatre. 
 
 When they reach the middle of the stage, Strength 
 begins to urge Vulcan to the execution of his task. 
 "We are come," he says, "to this desert spot of 
 Scythia : bind the crafty trickster fast, as the Father 
 bade thee, in adamantine bonds, that he may learn 
 henceforth to submit to the will of Zeus, and cease 
 from his philanthropy." Vulcan acknowledges the 
 duty, and confesses that he durst not disobey the Fa-
 
 42 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 ther ; "but he cannot refrain from expressing Ms sym- 
 pathy for Prometheus. " Against my will," he says, 
 
 " I fetter thee against thy will with bonds 
 Of bronze that none can loose, to this lone height, 
 Where thou shalt know nor voice nor face of man, 
 But scorching in the hot blaze of the sun 
 Shalt lose thy skin's fair beauty. Thou shalt long 
 For starry-mantled night to hide day's sheen, 
 For sun to melt the rime of early dawn ; 
 And evermore the weight of present ill 
 Shall wear thee down. Unborn as yet is he 
 Who shall release thee : this the fate thou gain'st 
 As due reward for thy philanthropy. 
 For thou, a god not fearing power of gods, 
 In thy transgression gav'st their power to men ; 
 And therefore on this rock of little ease 
 Thou still shalt keep thy watch, nor lying down, 
 Nor knowing sleep, nor ever bending knee ; 
 And many groans and wailings pitiless 
 Thy lips shall utter ; for the mind of Zeus 
 Keinains inexorable. Who holds a power 
 But newly gained, is ever stern of mood." * 
 
 Strength despises this pitifulness, and suggests that 
 Vulcan ought to hate one who had injured him so 
 especially ; and when the fire-god pleads the force of 
 kindred and friendship, hints that no course is so pain- 
 ful as to encounter the wrath of Zeus. Vulcan bit- 
 terly regrets that his possession of the art of working 
 in metals should have brought on him, instead of any 
 other, so distasteful a task. This leads to a remark 
 
 * The translations throughout this play are by Professor 
 Plumptre.
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 43 
 
 from Strength which, though not so intended, is quite 
 in the spirit of that indignation against the tyranny of 
 Zeus which runs through the whole play. "Every 
 lot," he says, " has some trouble in it, except the throne 
 of heaven : none is free but Zeus." Yulcan proceeds 
 reluctantly to his task ; and now the spectators are 
 horrified by the actual sight of the impaling and en- 
 chaining of Prometheus ; and the sound of the iron 
 hammer rings through the theatre. Strength mean- 
 time urges on the work : 
 
 " In thine hands take him. Then with all thy might 
 Strike with thine hammer ; nail him to the rocks. 
 
 Vul. The work goes on, I ween, and not in vain. 
 
 Str. Strike harder, rivet, give no whit of ease : 
 A wondrous knack has he to find resource 
 Even where all might seem to baffle him. 
 
 Vul. Lo this his arm is fixed inextricably. 
 
 Str. Now rivet thou this other fast 
 
 Now drive the stern jaw of the adamant wedge 
 
 Eight through his chest with all the strength thou hast. 
 
 Vul. Ah me, Prometheus, for thy woes I groan ! 
 
 Str. Again, thou'rt loath, and for the foes of Zeus 
 Thou groanest : take good heed to it, lest thou 
 Ere long with cause thyself commiserate." 
 
 Yulcan begs to be spared these constant exhortations, 
 and is moved angrily to say that the cruel words of 
 Strength are only what might be expected from his 
 savage face. Strength answers, 
 
 " Choose thou the melting mood ; but chide not me 
 For my self-will and wrath and ruthlessness."
 
 44 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 And now the work is done ; but Strength cannot re- 
 sist the temptation to stay behind and insult over his 
 victim : 
 
 " Here then wax proud, and stealing what belongs 
 To the gods, to mortals give it. What can they 
 Avail to rescue thee from these thy woes ? 
 Falsely the gods have thee Prometheus called, 
 The god of Forethought : forethought dost thou need 
 To free thyself from this rare handiwork." 
 
 Then the torturers depart, and Prometheus is left alone. 
 The ring of the hammer and the sound of Vulcan's 
 heavy tread have ceased, and for a few moments there 
 is an oppressive silence. While his executioners were 
 at hand, he has not uttered even a groan ; but now 
 that they are gone, his grief breaks out, and he appeals 
 to the only companions that are in sight, the sun, 
 and earth, and rivers, and distant sea. Few scenes are 
 more striking than that of the solitary sufferer in a noble 
 cause, left now to face alone the long years of misery 
 that await him, with no sympathising ear to hear his 
 lamentations. And no translation can do justice to 
 the majestic lines in which his appeal is expressed : 
 
 " Thou firmament of God, and swift- winged winds, 
 Ye springs of rivers, and of ocean- waves, 
 Thou smile innumerous! * Mother of us all, 
 
 Earth, and Sun's all-seeing eye, behold, 
 
 1 pray, what I, a god, from gods endure. 
 
 Behold in what foul case 
 I for ten thousand years 
 
 * The reader will be reminded of Keble's fine adaptation of 
 the figure "The many -twinkling smile of ocean."
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 45 
 
 Shall struggle in my woe, 
 
 In these unseemly chains. 
 
 Such doom the new-made Monarch of the Blest 
 
 Hath now devised for me. 
 Woe, woe ! the present and th' oncoming pang 
 
 I wail, as I search out 
 The place and hour when end of all these ills 
 
 Shall dawn on me at last. 
 What say I ? All too clearly I foresee 
 The things that come, and nought of pain shall be 
 By me unlooked for ; but I needs must bear 
 My destiny as best I may, knowing well 
 The might resistless of Necessity." 
 
 " This," he cries, " is all my reward for my goodness 
 to mankind." Suddenly he stops and listens. " What 
 sound," he cries, " what fragrance is this that floats up 
 to me ? Is some one come to enjoy the spectacle of 
 my woes 3 " 
 
 " Ah me ! what rustling sounds 
 Hear I of birds not far ? 
 With the light whirr of wings 
 The air re-echoeth : 
 All that draws near to me is cause of fear." 
 
 The preceding words had not been more remarkable 
 for dignity than these are for their airy lightness, and 
 for the sudden startled tone which they express. We 
 seem in reading them to see, almost as clearly as the 
 spectators saw upon the stage, the chorus of Ocean- 
 nymphs who now enter, floating in the air, and hover- 
 ing near the place where Prometheus is bound. Their 
 leader tells him that they are come in friendship, to
 
 46 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 show their sympathy, borne by the breeze from their 
 father Ocean's halls, overcoming their maiden modesty 
 in their eagerness to condole with him. They are as 
 indignant as Prometheus is at the tyranny of the new 
 rulers of heaven, and, with the enthusiasm of their sex, 
 are even more open in expressing their indignation ; and 
 when Prometheus feels as the bitterest pang the exulta- 
 tion which he knows his sufferings cause to the other 
 gods, and cries that to be buried in the depths of Tar- 
 tarus, out of sight, though bound in darkness for ever, 
 would be better than their mockery, the Chorus scarcely 
 can believe, they say, that any god but the relentless 
 Zeus could rejoice at such a sight. " He," they say, 
 "will grow more and more tyrannous, till some one 
 overthrows his power at last" " Such a time," says 
 the Titan, endowed as he is with a god's prophetic 
 power, " will come, and Zeus himself will then need 
 my help, for I only know how the plot will be laid, 
 and how he can escape it." 
 
 " I know that Zeus is hard, 
 And keeps the right supremely to himself ; 
 But then, I know, he'll be 
 Full pliant in his will 
 When he is thus crushed down. 
 Then calming down his mood 
 Of hard and bitter wrath, 
 He'll hasten unto me, 
 As I to him shall haste, 
 For friendship and for peace." 
 
 On this the Ocean-nymphs beg to hear the story of 
 his offence, and, painful as it is to go over the sad
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 47 
 
 tale again, Prometheus consents to tell it. He tells 
 how war arose in heaven, how he had helped Zeus to 
 the throne, and joined him in the overthrow of his 
 own brother Titans. The ingratitude of Zeus suggests 
 a remark which was welcome to Athenian ears a re- 
 mark in disparagement of despotism, 
 
 " For somehow this disease in sovereignty 
 Inheres, of never trusting to one's friends." 
 
 For when Zeus set his kingdom in order he entirely 
 neglected the wellbeing of mankind, and even designed 
 utterly to obliterate the race. "And I only," says 
 Prometheus, " dared to cross his will, and my present 
 plight is the result." After a few words of sincere 
 sympathy from the Chorus, Prometheus goes on to 
 describe the steps by which he had improved the con- 
 dition of mortals. Especially he gave them blind hopes, 
 to keep them from dwelling on their fate, and Fire, the 
 mother of all arts. This is his only sin ; for this is 
 laid on him a punishment which can have no end 
 except by the will of Zeus. The Chorus would urge 
 him to leave off regrets and seek some remedy for his 
 trouble ; but he tells them that the consequences of 
 his act were all well known to him, and that he did 
 it all advisedly. He begs them to descend from their 
 airy place and listen to the rest of his story. So they 
 quickly alight upon the stage, form into rank, and 
 walk down to the orchestra, chanting as they go the 
 words, 
 
 " Not to unwilling hearers hast thou uttered, 
 Prometheus, thy request.
 
 48 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 And now with nimble foot abandoning 
 
 My swiftly-rushing car, 
 And the pure sether, path of birds of heaven, 
 I will draw near this rough and rocky land, 
 
 For much do I desire 
 To hear the tale, full measure, of thy woes." 
 
 No sooner have these taken their places in the 
 orchestra than another floating car appears, drawn by 
 a winged gryphon; and in it is borne Oceanus, the 
 father of the nymphs who form the Chorus. He is 
 bound to Prometheus by ties of kindred as well as by 
 respect for his character, and he has come a long jour- 
 ney from the river which bears his name, the mighty 
 river which encircles the earth to offer his assistance. 
 He professes earnest friendship, and his professions are 
 sincere ; but he is too confident in his advice, and has 
 too little tolerance for what he thinks the folly of 
 Prometheus, to be a much better comforter than the 
 friends of Job. Like them, he reminds the sufferer 
 that it is all his own fault ; that the same overbearing 
 pride which he now expresses brought on him origin- 
 ally the wrath of Zeus, and that even now Zeus may 
 hear his words and lay on him far heavier tortures. 
 Prometheus is inclined to suspect the friendship of his 
 visitor, and bids him not endanger himself in his be- 
 half, but take his own advice and keep clear of the 
 wrath of Zeus. Oceanus persists in his offer of help, 
 confident that he can persuade the king of heaven to 
 relax his anger, but still mingles reproaches with his 
 advice, and Prometheus sarcastically rejects it. 
 "Take," he says,
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 49 
 
 1 pray, no trouble for me : all in vain 
 
 Thy trouble, nothing helping, e'en if thou 
 
 Shouldst care to take this trouble. Nay, be still ; 
 
 Keep out of harm's way : sufferer though I be 
 
 I would not therefore wish to give my woes 
 
 A wider range o'er others. No, not so : 
 
 For lo ! my mind is wearied with the grief 
 
 Of that my kinsman Atlas, who doth stand 
 
 In the far west, supporting on his shoulders 
 
 The pillars of the earth and heaven, a burden 
 
 His arms but ill can hold : I pity too 
 
 The giant dweller of Kilikian caves, 
 
 Dread portent, with his hundred hands, subdued 
 
 By force, the mighty Typhon, who arose 
 
 'Gainst all the gods, with sharp and dreadful jaws 
 
 Hissing out slaughter, and from out his eyes 
 
 There flashed the terrible brightness as of one 
 
 Who would make havoc of the might of Zeus. 
 
 But the unsleeping dart of Zeus came on him, 
 
 Down-swooping thunderbolt that breathes out flame, 
 
 Which from his lofty boastings startled him, 
 
 For he i' the heart was struck, to ashes burnt, 
 
 His strength all thunder-shattered ; and he lies 
 
 A helpless, powerless carcass, near the strait 
 
 Of the great sea, fast pressed beneath the roots 
 
 Of ancient Etna, where on the highest peak 
 
 Hephsestos sits and smites his iron red-hot, 
 
 From whence hereafter streams of fire shall burst,* 
 
 Devouring with fierce jaws the golden plains 
 
 Of fruitful fair Sikelia. Such the wrath 
 
 That Typhon shall belch forth with bursts of storm, 
 
 Hot, breathing fire, and unapproachable, 
 
 * The words point probably to an eruption, then fresh in 
 men's memories, which had happened B.C. 476. (P.) 
 A. o. voL vii. D
 
 50 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Though burnt and charred by thunderbolts of Zeus. 
 
 Not inexperienced art thou, nor dost need 
 
 My teaching : save thyself, as thou know'st how ; 
 
 And I will drink my fortune to the dregs, 
 
 Till from his wrath the mind of Zeus shall rest." 
 
 Warned by such examples, and finding it impos- 
 sible to persuade Prometheus, the Ocean-god retires. 
 His four-footed bird is eager, he says, to be in his stall 
 at home, and he sets forth gladly on his return through 
 the blue path of ether. 
 
 Prometheus is alone again with the Chorus, who 
 now express their sympathy in a beautiful ode. Tears 
 for his lot, they say, are flowing down their tender 
 cheeks tears of grief and of indignation at the tyranny 
 of Zeus. All the neighbouring regions mourn for the 
 fall of the stately power of ancient days ; the dwellers 
 in holy Asia, and the bold Amazons upon the Colchian 
 coasts, and the savage Scythians, and the warlike 
 natives of the Caucasus, all mourn in universal sym- 
 pathy. Then they speak again of the like fate of 
 Atlas, ever groaning under the burden of the world, 
 with whom all nature laments, as with Prometheus. 
 
 " And lo ! the ocean-billows murmur loud 
 
 In one accord with him ; 
 The sea-depths groan, and Hades' swarthy pit 
 
 Ke-echoeth with the sound, 
 And fountains of the rivers, flowing clear, 
 
 Wail the sad tale of woe." 
 
 When the soft sweet accents of this graceful song 
 have died away, there is silence for a space, while we
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 51 
 
 wait anxiously for the next words of the hero. It is 
 not pride, he says, that keeps him silent, but indigna- 
 tion. He had himself set these young gods on their 
 thrones ; that is his bitterest pain that, and the 
 cruelty shown to men, for whom he had laboured so 
 much. His efforts in behalf of mortals he then describes 
 in a speech as noble for its poetry as it is remarkable 
 for its philosophy. " These woes of men," he begins, 
 
 " List ye to these, how them, before as babes, 
 I roused to reason, gave them power to think ; 
 And this I say, not finding fault with men, 
 But showing my good-will in all I gave. 
 But first, though seeing they did not perceive, 
 And hearing heard not rightly. But, like forms 
 Of phantom-dreams, throughout their life's whole length 
 They muddled all at random ; did not know 
 Houses of brick that catch the sunlight's warmth, 
 Nor yet the work of carpentry. They dwelt 
 In hollowed holes like swarms of tiny ants 
 In sunless depths of caverns ; and they had 
 No certain sign of winter, nor of spring 
 Flower-laden, nor of summer with her fruits. 
 But without counsel fared their whole life long, 
 Until I showed the risings of the stars, 
 And settings hard to recognise. And I 
 Found Number for them, chief of all the arts, 
 Groupings of letters, Memory, handmaid true 
 And mother of the Muses. And I first 
 Bound in the yoke wild steeds, submissive made 
 Or to the collar or men's limbs, that so 
 They might in men's place bear his greatest toils ; 
 And horses, trained to love the rein, I yoked 
 To chariots, glory of wealth's pride of state ;
 
 52 ^SCHTLUS. 
 
 Nor was it any one but I that found 
 Sea-crossing, canvas-winged cars of ships : 
 Such rare designs inventing (wretched me !) 
 For mortal men, I yet have no resource 
 By which to free myself from this my woe." 
 
 He had taught them, too, the arts of healing and of 
 prophecy, and showed them many ways of augury; 
 disclosed to them the earth's stores of metal, and 
 taught them their use ; in short, he says, from Fore- 
 thought came all arts to mortals. 
 
 This speech has been closely imitated by Shelley, 
 who has amplified it with many beautiful thoughts ; 
 but it has lost in the change its stern simplicity, and 
 gained instead a wonderful richness and voluptuous 
 splendour. Still it explains our author so well that it 
 will not be out of place to subjoin the greaterpart of it : 
 
 " Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes 
 Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers, 
 Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms, 
 That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings 
 The shape of Death ; and Love he sent to bind 
 The disunited tendrils of that vine 
 Which bears the wine of life, the human heart ; 
 And he tamed fire, which, like some beast of prey, 
 Most terrible but lovely, played beneath 
 The frown of man ; and tortured to his will 
 Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power, 
 And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 
 Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. 
 He gave man speech, and speech created thought, 
 Which is the measure of the universe ; 
 And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 53 
 
 "Which shook, but fell not ; and the harmonious mind 
 
 Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song ; 
 
 And music lifted up the listening spirit 
 
 Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, 
 
 Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound ; 
 
 And human hands first mimicked, and then mocked 
 
 With moulded limbs more lovely than its own 
 
 The human form, till marble grew divine, 
 
 And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see 
 
 Reflected in their race, behold and perish. 
 
 He told the hidden power of herbs and springs, 
 
 And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. 
 
 He taught the implicated orbits woven 
 
 Of the wide-wandering stars, and how the sun 
 
 Changes his lair, and by what secret spell 
 
 The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye 
 
 Gazes not on the interlunar sea. 
 
 He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, 
 
 The tempest- winged chariots of the ocean, 
 
 And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then 
 
 Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed 
 
 The warm winds, and the azure aether shone, 
 
 And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. 
 
 Such, the alleviations of his state, 
 
 Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs 
 
 Withering in destined pain." 
 
 Shelley : " Prometheus Unbound." 
 
 A remarkable dialogue ensues, in which Prometheus 
 intimates that over Zeus himself the inevitable laws 
 of necessity have power, but that in what way they 
 will cross his path may not yet be told, for on the 
 keeping of this secret depends the ultimate liberation 
 of Prometheus himself.
 
 54 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Iii the beautiful little ode which follows an ode 
 which Mr Plumptre has translated admirably the 
 Chorus express a pious fear of the power of Zeus, and 
 dread of the effects of such boldness in speech as 
 Prometheus has displayed. Too great, too hopeless 
 was his endeavour on behalf of men, and grievous is 
 its consequence; an end so different from that happy 
 day on which, as the Ocean-nymphs sadly remem- 
 ber, he led as a bride to his halls their own sister 
 Hesione. Their gentle sympathy has reached its ten- 
 derest point, and the soft music, which has held those 
 thirty thousand Athenians enthralled, dies quietly 
 away. 
 
 And now a new person comes upon the scene ; one 
 who, like Prometheus, is a sufferer under the wrath of 
 heaven, the maiden lo. She wears the form of a 
 heifer, though her face is still a woman's, and in this 
 shape she is driven up and down the world, by the 
 jealousy of Juno, because her beauty, by no fault of 
 hers, had attracted the love of the sovereign of Olym- 
 pus. Behind her follows a spectral form, the ghost of 
 Argus the many-eyed, who still, though dead, drives her 
 before him through the earth, while a gadfly, with its 
 constant stings, adds to her restlessness. She comes 
 upon the scene lamenting her lot, and calling upon 
 Zeus for an answer to her prayers. Prometheus re- 
 cognises her at once. " Surely," he says, 
 
 " Surely I hear the maid by gadfly driven, 
 Daughter of Inachos, who warmed the heart 
 Of Zeus with love, and now through Here's hate 
 Is tried, perforce, with wanderings over-long."
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 55 
 
 In answer to her surprised inquiries, the hero tells her 
 his name and the cause of his sufferings ; and she asks 
 him, as a prophet, what the end of her own wander- 
 ings will be. He would at first conceal from her 
 knowledge which could only give her pain, hut he 
 yields at last to her request ; yet before he proceeds to 
 the prophecy, lo herself, at the request of the Chorus, 
 narrates the history of her past life. When a girl in 
 her father's home, she was visited by frequent dreams 
 which told her of the love of Zeus. Her father 
 Inachus, on hearing of those portents, consulted many 
 times the oracles of Delphi and Dodona, and at last 
 was told to drive her from his doors. Reluctantly he 
 did so ; and straightway she became a horned heifer, 
 and the gadfly came to madden her, and the giant 
 herdsman Argus with his innumerable eyes to watch 
 her, and even his death, by the hand of Apollo, failed 
 to free her from his constant pursuit. And so she is 
 driven from land to land. The Chorus bewail her in- 
 credible griefs, but Prometheus tells them that the worst 
 is still to hear. She must yet go through the land of 
 the nomad Scythians, and round the Black Sea's coast, 
 to the dwellings of the Chalybes, the inhospitable race 
 who work in iron ; and thence, across the starry peaks 
 of Caucasus to the country of the Amazons, and on 
 through many wild regions, to the Bosporus, whose 
 name, meaning Ox-ford, will be derived from her 
 journey. And this is only the beginning of her 
 troubles. Her sufferings are grievous indeed, but 
 death will bring an end to them; for Prometheus 
 there is no respite " till Zeus be hurled out from his
 
 56 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 sovereignty." The mention of this possible release 
 occasions a dialogue in which the connection of lo's 
 fate with that of Prometheus is gradually disclosed : 
 
 " To. What ! shall Zeus e'er be hurled from his estate ? 
 Prom. 'T would give thee joy I trow to see that falL 
 lo. How should it not, when Zeus so foully wrongs me ? 
 Prom. That this is so thou now may'st hear from me. 
 lo. Who then shall strip him of his sovereign power ? 
 Prom. Himself shall do it by his own rash plans. 
 lo. But how ? tell this, unless it bringeth harm. 
 Prom. He shall wed one for whom one day he'll grieve. 
 lo. Heaven-born or mortal ? tell, if tell thou may'st. 
 Prom. Why ask'st thou who ? I may not tell thee that. 
 lo. Shall his bride hurl him from his throne of might 1 
 Prom. Yea ; she shall bear child mightier than his sire. 
 lo. Has he no way to turn aside that doom ? 
 Prom. No, none, unless I from my bonds be loosed. 
 lo. Who then shall loose thee 'gainst the will of Zeus ? 
 Prom. It must be one of thy posterity. 
 lo. What ! shall a child of mine free thee from ills ? 
 Prom. Yea, the third generation after ten." 
 
 Thus mysteriously is it foretold how Hercules, the 
 thirteenth from lo, should be the means of Prometheus's 
 freedom. Prometheus goes on, at the earnest request 
 of lo herself and of the Chorus, to tell the rest of 
 her wanderings and the manner of his own release. 
 Through many strange countries she is to pass, and 
 see many monsters the three Graise, with the shapes 
 of swans, and only one eye and one tooth between 
 them ; the three Gorgons, their sisters ; the one-eyed 
 Arimaspians who dwell by the ford of Pluto ; and at 
 last, passing the Ethiopians, she is to come to the land of
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 57 
 
 the Nile. There her descendants will found a colony. 
 At this point Prometheus bitterly says : " If any of this 
 is not clear, ask, and I will repeat it ; I have far more 
 leisure than I like." To confirm his prophecy he tells 
 her what her past wanderings have been; how she 
 visited Dodona, and how she gave a name to the Ionian 
 Sea. Then, passing on to the prophecy of his own re- 
 lease, he tells her that in Canopus, at the mouth of the 
 Kile, a child Epaphus shall be born to her ; from him 
 in the fifth generation shall spring those fifty maidens 
 who, in flight from wedlock with their fifty cousins, are 
 to seek the land of Argos, and there each bride slay her 
 husband, except one, who shall " prefer to be known as 
 weak rather than murderous," and shall save her hus- 
 band alive. From them will spring Hercules, whose 
 arrows will slay the eagle which devours Prometheus, 
 and set him free. So much and no more he will tell. 
 Immediately his prophecies about lo begin to accom- 
 plish themselves. The frenzy which the gadfly's bite 
 inspires seizes on her afresh, and in a wild agony she 
 rushes forth to renew her wanderings through the 
 earth. The music of the Chorus is now heard again, 
 and dancing slowly and sadly round the altar, they 
 chant their reflections on the fate of lo ; deprecating 
 for themselves any ill-matched love, such as lo received 
 from Zeus ; praising the propitious and temperate union 
 of equals, and condemning this is quite ^Eschylean 
 any desire on the part of the working man for wedlock 
 with the rich or the high-born. Such are the thoughts 
 which lo's suffering suggests to these maidens ; above 
 all, they dread any collision with the will of Zeus.
 
 58 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 All that has passed the yielding of Vulcan, the 
 caution of Oceanus, the misery of lo has contributed 
 to increase in our minds the estimate of the irresistible 
 power of Zeus, and so prepare us to admire the more 
 the heroic resistance of Prometheus. A stronger trial 
 of his determination is still to come. In tremendous 
 words he foretells the certain fall of Zeus ; he defies 
 his thunders, and thinks rather how a stronger weapon 
 than the thunder will some day be found ; more 
 violently still he asserts his certain ruin, and even now 
 exults in its anticipation. His words have been heard 
 in heaven. Mercury, the messenger of the gods, ap- 
 proaches, and bears a solemn message to the haughty 
 Titan. The father of heaven commands that Prome- 
 theus should disclose all the details of the danger 
 which his words have threatened. At once, and with- 
 out hesitation, the answer must be given. And the 
 answer is this : 
 
 " Stately of utterance, full of haiightiness 
 Thy speech, as fits a messenger of gods. 
 Ye yet are young in your new rule, and think 
 To dwell in painless towers. Have I not 
 Seen those two rulers driven forth from thence ? 
 And now the third, who reigneth, shall I see 
 In basest quickest fall. Seem I to thee 
 To shrink and quail before these new-made gods ? 
 Far, very far from that am I. But thou, 
 Track once again the path by which thou earnest ; 
 Thou shalt learn nought of what thou askest me." 
 
 Mercury threatens the extremest fury of heaven's 
 wrath, and would persuade Prometheus not, by his
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 59 
 
 stubbornness, to incur such tortures. Taunting him 
 with his youth and his menial service as messenger of 
 Zeus, Prometheus openly defies the king of heaven : 
 
 " Let then the blazing levin-flash be hurled ; 
 With white-winged snowstorm and with earth-born 
 
 thunders 
 
 Let him disturb and trouble all that is ; 
 Nought of these things shall force me to declare 
 Whose hand shall drive him from his sovereignty." 
 
 "Warning the stubborn hero of the storm and earth- 
 quake which presently will crush and bury him, and 
 of the eagle who will then be sent to feed constantly 
 upon his living flesh, Mercury departs, assuring him 
 that of this suffering there will be no end, until some 
 god shall be willing to suffer for him and go for his 
 sake to Hades and gloomy Tartarus. This was done, 
 according to the legend, by Cheiron; a strange fore- 
 shadowing, as Mr Plumptre says, of the mystery of the 
 Atonement. But of this restoration we see nothing 
 in this play; the rest is all darkness, and terror, and 
 storm, through which the grand figure of Prometheus 
 stands out with a majesty which has certainly not 
 been surpassed in poetry. The heroism of the Ocean- 
 nymphs, who will not leave him in this terrible hour, 
 is only what the neighbourhood of his own heroism re- 
 quired. In ordinary levels of daring their conduct would 
 be very noble ; here it attracts only a passing thought 
 of pity : great tragic characters always carry others 
 down in their fall. But the whole of this final passage 
 is so inimitably sublime, even in a translation, that we 
 cannot say another word which might mar its effect :
 
 60 &SCH7LUS. 
 
 " Prom. To me who knew it all 
 He hath this message borne ; 
 And that a foe from foes 
 Should suffer is not strange. 
 Therefore on me be hurled 
 The sharp-edged wreath of fire ; 
 And let heaven's vault be stirred 
 With thunder and the blasts 
 Of fiercest winds ; and earth 
 From its foundations strong, 
 E'en to its deepest roots, 
 Let storm-winds make to rock ; 
 And let them heap the waves 
 Of ocean's rugged surge 
 Up to the regions high, 
 Where move the stars of heaven ; 
 And to dark Tartaros 
 Let him my carcass hurl, 
 With mighty blasts of force ; 
 Yet me he shall not slay. 
 
 Merc. Such words and thoughts from one 
 Brain-stricken we may hear. 
 What space divides his state 
 From frenzy ? what repose 
 Hath he from maddened rage ? 
 But ye who pitying stand 
 And share his bitter griefs, 
 Quickly from hence depart, 
 Lest the relentless roar 
 Of thunder stun your souL 
 
 Chorus. With other words attempt 
 To counsel and persuade, 
 And I will hear ; for now 
 Thou hast this word thrust in 
 That we may never hear.
 
 PROMETHEUS BOUND. 61 
 
 How dost thou bid me train 
 My soul to Baseness vile 1 
 With him I will endure 
 Whatever is decreed. 
 Traitors I've learnt to hate ; 
 Nor is there any plague 
 That more than this I loathe. 
 
 Merc. Nay, then, remember ye 
 What now I say, nor blame 
 Your fortune ; never say 
 That Zeus has cast you down 
 With evil not foreseen. 
 Not so ; ye cast yourselves : 
 For now with open eyes, 
 Not taken unawares, 
 In Ate's endless net 
 Ye shall entangled be 
 By folly of your own. 
 
 [.4 pause, and then flashes of lightning 
 and peals of thunder. 
 
 Prom. Yea, now in very deed, 
 No more in word alone, 
 The earth shakes to and fro, 
 And the loud thunder's voice 
 Bellows hard by, and blaze 
 The flashing levin fires ; 
 And tempests whirl the dust, 
 And gusts of all wild winds 
 On one another leap 
 In wild conflicting blasts, 
 And sky with sea is blent : 
 Such is the storm from Zeus 
 That comes as working fear, 
 In utter chaos whirled 
 In terrors manifest.
 
 62 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 O mother venerable ! 
 O JEther ! rolling round 
 The common light of all, 
 See ye what wrongs I bear ? " 
 
 During all this the storm and the thunder have 
 been increasing, till at last the earth is opened, and 
 Prometheus, with the rock to which he is chained, 
 sinks into the abyss. 
 
 Our first feeling is one of indignation against Zeus, 
 but it is not altogether the right feeling. His triumph 
 is, after all, in accordance with the great moral laws 
 by which, according to ^Eschylus, the world is gov- 
 erned. "We, with our better morality, cannot help 
 sympathising with Prometheus more than perhaps the 
 poet did: we love him for his love of men, and 
 admire his courage and high spirit. But this is partly 
 because we do not believe in Zeus. ^Eschylus called 
 that high spirit arrogance ; and arrogance or excess, 
 wherever it is found, must always appear a crime to 
 the Greek and the artist. When a good man is mur- 
 dered in the midst of excessive prosperity, we must 
 tremble, but we cannot complain; and the divine 
 justice will assert itself in taking vengeance on his 
 murderer. So we must feel here rather awe than 
 indignation, and be confident in the ultimate resto- 
 ration of Prometheus, and his reconciliation with the 
 lord of heaven. Such, at least, is the ^Eschylean esti- 
 mate of the hero's fate ; and probably, if we could see 
 it worked out in the preceding and following plays, 
 which have unhappily been lost, we should find it not 
 so altogether alien from our own.
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS j OB, THE CHILDREN OF IO. 
 
 THIS play takes its name, as many do, from the per- 
 sons who form its chorus. In this case these are the 
 principal characters in the drama ; they are the " Sup- 
 pliants " whose supplication is the subject of the piece. 
 We have seen in the " Prometheus " the unhappy lo 
 wandering through the world, and we have heard there 
 the prophecy of the end which was to be set to her 
 troubles; how she should come at last to Egypt, and 
 there bear a son, Epaphus "the Touch-born" be- 
 gotten by the touch of Zeus, whose descendants should 
 form a colony at Canopus. In the fourth generation 
 arose Belus, king of this race of exiles, and to him 
 were born two sons, Danaus and ^Egyptus. Danaus 
 had fifty daughters, and his brother had fifty sons ; 
 and these desired to take their cousins for their wives. 
 The maidens, horrified at the proposal, but unable, 
 even with their aged father's help, to resist the deter- 
 mination of fifty men, took flight, with Danaus him- 
 self to lead them, to Argos, the cradle of their race, 
 the home of lo. Argos was the chief city of the
 
 64 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 Pelasgians who then dwelt in Greece, and from their 
 king Pelasgus the maidens sought protection. Their 
 prayer and its success constitute the simple plot of the 
 drama. 
 
 The legend may possibly strike us as absurd, and in 
 particular the obvious improbability of the numbers of 
 the cousins may seem to indicate a childish credulity 
 in those who could receive it. It is something like 
 the story of St Ursula and her eleven thousand com- 
 panions, whose bones are still shown at Cologne ; one 
 of the most improbable of medieval legends, and the 
 ofispring of a time when there was neither power nor 
 inclination to distinguish between what was proved 
 and what was incapable of proof. But the Danaids 
 are not to be classed with the martyrs of Cologne, nor 
 the keen, travelled Athenian with the credulous me- 
 dieval. Rather the obvious improbability in the 
 Greek story is entirely in' keeping with the spirit of 
 Attic tragedy, which did not, as modern dramas do, 
 aim at imitating the actual life of men, at being pro- 
 bable or like the truth, but set forth an ideal picture 
 of a life apart from and above the real, whose impres- 
 siveness was due in great measure to its being far re- 
 moved from reality.* In a colossal statue, to repeat 
 the old comparison, it is right to represent hair and 
 dress only conventionally, to make the locks of hair 
 and the folds of dress all large and regular regularity 
 giving grandeur, and literal truth not being here de- 
 sirable ; so, in the tragedy before us, the large and 
 
 * See, on this subject, De Quincey's admirable essays on the 
 Greek tragedy.
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 65 
 
 equal numbers of the cousins contribute to the solem- 
 nity and greatness of the whole, while the improba- 
 bility increases that separation 'from the actual world, 
 by which an event, in itself not heroic, is raised to the 
 level of the ideal.* This consideration is necessary to 
 a due appreciation of the poetical value of the plot, 
 and is not at all invalidated by the fact that ^Eschylus 
 only used the story as he found it. Had it been other 
 than it was, he would probably have modified it; 
 but if it had been other, it would not have been Greek. 
 The story of lo was well fitted to interest an Athenian 
 audience for two reasons : because it gave opportunity 
 for the romance of geography in general, and because 
 it was connected with Egypt. The naval enterprise . 
 of the Athenians had of late been greatly developed, 
 and they were becoming by this time acquainted with 
 many distant countries ; and an interest in geography 
 was spread even among those who had stayed at home ; 
 while yet knowledge had not advanced far enough to 
 remove the halo which the dimness of distance throws 
 around strange lands, or to destroy the notion that far- 
 off countries contained wonders and monsters innu- 
 merable. Something similar was the case in England 
 in the great times of discovery, when the Plymouth 
 sailor told the boy Raleigh endless stories of the Great 
 Cham and Prester John, or the wondrous wealth of 
 El Dorado. But of all wonderful lands of monsters, 
 
 * This consideration, however, will not excuse the monstrous 
 fable of St Ursula, in which the numbers are so exaggerated as 
 far to pass the boundary which separates the sublime from the 
 ridiculous. 
 
 A. c. vol. vii. B
 
 66 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 the most wonderful was Egypt. There was no good 
 or strange thing which was not supposed by the 
 Athenians of that day to have come from Egypt. The 
 gods of Greece, the letters, the philosophy, all inven- 
 tions and all history, were popularly derived from the 
 country of the miraculous Mle ; and to explore Egypt 
 was the great object of the traveller's ambition. 
 Among the experiences pf Herodotus his Egyptian 
 researches occupy a prominent place ; and any story 
 which the priests chose to tell him about their animals 
 or their gods, or their endless genealogies, was eagerly 
 accepted. In the light of this fact we see why ^s- 
 chylus dwelt so much in the " Prometheus " on the 
 wanderings of lo, and traced her finally to Egypt ; and 
 we are ready to appreciate the interest with which a 
 chorus of Egyptian girls, in the dress and character 
 of their country, would be received on the Athenian 
 stage. Of these there were of course fifty, as the story 
 required ; but as the usual number of the chorus was 
 twelve, we must imagine twelve only of the Danaids 
 as singing and dancing, while the rest remained silent, 
 and probably were disposed in a group behind the 
 actual chorus.* 
 
 With the entrance of these fifty Danaids the play 
 begins. Slowly they march, with audible tramp, to 
 the sound of their own chanting, appealing as they go 
 to Zeus, the god of suppliants, for the protection which 
 he especially owes them as the founder of their race. 
 They describe in few words the causes of their flight, 
 
 * If this was part of a trilogy, the choruses of all four plays 
 perhaps appeared here, as at the end of the " Eumenides."
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 67 
 
 and pray that their pursuers may be overwhelmed in 
 the sea, and never reach the shores of Argos. And 
 now they have reached the orchestra, and dividing into 
 ranks and companies, they range themselves about the 
 altar, there to sing, no longer to the music of a march, 
 but in more varied strains, their prayers and lamenta- 
 tions. Just as Prometheus compares his sufferings 
 with those of Atlas and Typhon, so these maidens 
 compare themselves to Tereus' bride, the piteous 
 nightingale: 
 
 " As she, driven back from wonted haunts and streams, 
 
 Mourns with a strange new plaint, 
 And takes her son's death as the theme of song, 
 
 How he at her hand died, 
 Meeting with evil wrath uninotheiiy ; 
 E'en so do I, to wailing all o'ergiven, 
 In plaintive music of Ionian mood, 
 Vex the soft cheek on Neilos' banks that bloomed, 
 
 And heart that bursts in tears, 
 And pluck the flower of lamentations loud." 
 
 In their appeals to Zeus, here and throughout the 
 play, the suppliants assert the sublimest truths about 
 the one supreme God. The mystery that shrouds 
 His ways and the certainty of His justice are their 
 favourite themes: 
 
 " For dark and shadowed o'er 
 The pathways of the counsels of His heart, 
 And difficult to see. 
 
 And from high towering hopes He hurleth down 
 To utter doom the heir of mortal birth :
 
 68 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Yet sets He in array 
 No forces violent ; 
 
 AH that God works is effortless and calm : 
 Seated on loftiest throne, 
 Thence, though we know not how, 
 He works His perfect will." 
 
 There is much in these songs of the Chorus that 
 reminds us of the Hebrew* poetry. They exhibit the 
 same intermingling of general statements about the 
 ways of God and the nature of man with particular 
 applications to the immediate occasion, while their 
 form closely resembles the "parallel" structure of the 
 Jewish writings. The Chorus is divided into two 
 bands, which answer one another in strophe and anti- 
 strophe. One band sings a stanza, and then rests 
 while the other, in a corresponding stanza, utters a 
 somewhat similar sentiment, repeating sometimes the 
 same words, and always using the same metre, music, 
 and measure of the dance. And in the " Suppliants" 
 these points are particularly noticeable, for the chorus 
 predominates here more than in any other of our poet's 
 dramas. Hence it has been thought to be one of his 
 earliest, written when the dialogue had not yet acquired 
 its full prominence on the stage ; and even if other 
 evidence makes this doubtful, yet certainly we have in 
 this play a return to the alder style. 
 
 But the long choric song comes to an end ; and now 
 Danaus, who has hitherto been waiting in suppliant 
 posture at the foot of the statues of the gods which 
 stand upon the stage, addresses his daughters, and calls 
 them to come and take a position near him, within the
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 69 
 
 place of sanctuary. For a host, he says, is approach- 
 ing ; and whether their coming be friendly or hostile, 
 it is well to await it under the immediate protection of 
 the gods. He warns them, too, how to hear them- 
 selves towards the strangers; to tell their tale simply 
 and modestly; 
 
 " And be not prompt to speak 
 Nor full of words ; the race that dwelleth here 
 Of this is very jealous : and be mindful 
 Much to concede ; a fugitive thou art, 
 A stranger and in want, and 'tis not meet 
 That those in low estate high words should speak." 
 
 Then they all ascend to the stage, and group them- 
 selves there under the statues which decorate the 
 temple front. The scene is a striking one. Their 
 limbs are dark, and their robes and veils are chiefly 
 white, though varied with rich embroidery of gold and 
 purple, and in their hands they bear branches of 
 myrtle wreathed about with festoons of white wool, 
 the well-known badge of the suppliant ; and as the sun- 
 shine streams in upon them, with contrast of bright 
 light and deep shadow, the whole group stands out 
 in intense relief of black and white, with a strange 
 and fascinating distinctness. At their father's bidding 
 they offer prayers to each of the great gods in turn, 
 those " gods of contest " who presided over the great 
 games of Greece, to Zeus, Apollo, Neptune or Poseidon, 
 and to Hermes or Mercury, the herald and guide. 
 These prayers are scarcely completed when the king 
 Pelasgus, with his chariot and his train, comes on the 
 scene. " Whence," he asks, " is this strange company,
 
 70 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 whose dress proves them of no Grecian race ? How 
 has a band of helpless women, without guide or herald, 
 ventured to our shores ?" In return the maidens ask 
 to whom they speak, whether to a citizen, a herald, or 
 a prince. Pelasgus unfolds his name, and boasts the 
 greatness of his kingdom ; and tells how it gained its 
 name of the Apian land from Apis, a physician-prophet 
 of old, who had cleared the region of the dragons and 
 monsters by which it had been infested. Finally he 
 asks them to tell their story, and to tell it shortly. 
 That they are of Argive ancestry he will not at first 
 believe, for they resemble more, he says, the Egyptians 
 or the Cyprians, or Indians who ride on camels, or 
 the hateful Amazons ; but in the course of a series of 
 short leading questions and suggestive answers their 
 true connection with Argos is explained. 
 
 On hearing the causes of the maidens' flight, the 
 king is reluctant to incur, as he must by protecting 
 them, the dangers of a war with .ZEgyptus and his 
 sons ; while, on the other hand, he fears the anger of 
 the gods if he should neglect the sacred claim of the 
 suppliants. And so he trembles when he sees the 
 branches and the woollen fillets with which the shrines 
 are decked. But religion is to prevail over fear. The 
 two bands of the Chorus sing each in turn an appeal 
 to his piety and generosity, and after each the king 
 replies. At first he only expresses his hope that no 
 evil may come upon his land through their request ; 
 then he reminds them that it is for the whole state, 
 not for himself alone, to answer them ; soon he 
 acknowledges that he cannot willingly consent to
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 20. 71 
 
 reject them. The appeal is continued. The king 
 urges objections. " What if the suitors have some legal 
 claim upon them ? What if his people condemn his 
 clemency, and say that he prefers the interest of 
 foreigners to that of his own subjects ?" But it grad- 
 ually becomes evident that his inclination is to yield, 
 so terrible is the risk of provoking the suppliants' 
 god. Loss of wealth may be repaired by Zeus the 
 giver ; malicious words, if the people were offended, a 
 soft answer might appease ; but if he should incur, for 
 himself and his people, any stain from the blood of sup- 
 pliants abandoned, and those suppliants, too, a kindred 
 race, that pollution many sacrifices could scarcely 
 expiate. One more argument remains, a threat so 
 horrible that it is only dimly and gradually unfolded. 
 If Pelasgus refuses their request, the desperate maidens 
 will destroy themselves at the very shrines of the gods, 
 will hang themselves by their girdles to the statues, and 
 so lay the whole land under an intolerable pollution. 
 Pelasgus resists no longer. " Lo then !" he says 
 
 " Lo then ! in many ways sore troubles come. 
 A host of evils rushes like a flood ; 
 A sea of woe none traverse, bottomless, 
 This have I entered ; haven is there none, 
 For if I fail to do this work for you, 
 Thou tellest of defilement unsurpassed ; 
 And if for thee against ^Egyptos' sons, 
 Thy kindred, I before my city's walls 
 In conflict stand, how can there fail to be 
 A bitter loss, to stain the earth with blood 
 Of man for woman's sake ? And yet I needs
 
 72 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Must fear the wrath of Zeus, the suppliant's god ; 
 That dread is mightiest with the sons of men. 
 Thou then, aged father of these maidens, 
 Taking forthwith these branches in thine arms, 
 Lay them on other altars of the gods 
 Our country worships, that the citizens 
 May all behold this token of thy coming ; 
 And about me let no rash speech be dropped, 
 For 'tis a people prompt to blame their rulers. 
 And then perchance some one, beholding them 
 And pitying, may wax wrathful 'gainst the outrage 
 Of that male troop, and with more kindly will 
 The people look on you ; for evermore 
 All men wish well unto the weaker side." 
 
 Danaus expresses the thanks of his daughters, and 
 goes forth, attended by an escort given him by the 
 king, to seek the other altars and appear as a public 
 suppliant before the: citizens. Meanwhile the Chorus 
 are bidden to leave the shrine, and await in a neigh- 
 bouring glade their father's return. Being thus re- 
 moved from the consecrated spot, in which they were 
 safe at least for the time, they begin to mistrust the 
 goodwill of the king, and think themselves betrayed; 
 but he reassures them thus : 
 
 " Nay, no long time thy sire will leave thee lorn ; 
 And I, all people of the land convening, 
 Will the great mass persuade to kindly words ; 
 And I will teach thy father what to say. 
 Wherefore remain, and ask our country's gods, 
 With suppliant prayers, to grant thy soul's desire ; 
 And I will go in furtherance of thy wish : 
 Sweet Suasion follow us, and Fortune good."
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 73 
 
 The opening of their new supplication is striking. 
 They appeal to Zeus by his old love for lo, their 
 mother : 
 
 Strophe. 
 11 King of kings, and blest 
 
 Above all blessed ones, 
 And power most mighty of the mightiest ! 
 
 O Zeus, of high estate ! 
 
 Hear thou and grant our prayer ! 
 Drive thou far off the wantonness of men, 
 
 The pride thou hatest sore, 
 And in the pool of darkling purple hue 
 Plunge thou the woe that conies in swarthy barque." 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 " Look on the women's cause ; 
 
 Recall the ancient tale 
 Of one whom thou didst love in time of old, 
 
 The mother of our race : 
 
 Remember it, O thou 
 Who didst on lo lay thy mystic touch. 
 
 We boast that we are come 
 Of consecrated land the habitants, 
 And from this land by lineage high descended." 
 
 There follows a description of lo's life and wander- 
 ings, with the same fulness of geographical learning 
 which we have noticed before, and the same revelling 
 in euphonious and romantic names. The origin of the 
 Egyptian settlement is told again ; and the ode ends 
 with another solemn acknowledgment of the greatness 
 of Zeus, such as might almost come from the Book of 
 Psalms itself :
 
 74 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Strophe. 
 " Which of the gods could I -with right invoke 
 
 As doing juster deeds ? 
 He is our father, author of our life, 
 The king whose right hand worketh all his will, 
 Our line's great author, in his counsels deep 
 
 Eecording things of old, 
 Directing all his plans, the great work-master Zeus." 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 " For not as subject sitting 'neath the sway 
 
 Of strength above his own, 
 Reigns he subordinate to mightier powers ; 
 Nor does he pay his homage from below 
 While one sits throned in majesty above ; 
 
 Act is for him as speech, 
 To hasten what his teeming mind resolves." 
 
 And now Danaus returns to say that the people 
 have decided, and his eager hearers learn with, joy 
 that the decree is entirely in their favour. In full 
 assembly, the air rustling with the eager raising of 
 their hands the sound which the Athenians knew so 
 well in their own popular assemblies all have unani- 
 mously assented to the reception of the strangers. Full 
 rights and protection are accorded them, and any citizen 
 who should refuse them his assistance, in case of any 
 assault from their enemies, is declared degraded and 
 outlawed. " All this," says Danaus, " the Pelasgians 
 have decreed; but it all comes from Zeus/' With 
 pious gratitude the successful suppliants chant, 
 
 " Come, then, come, let us speak for Argives 
 Prayers that are good for good deeds done ;
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 75 
 
 Zeus, who o'er all strangers watches, 
 
 May he see with his praise and favour 
 
 The praise that comes from the lips of strangers, 
 
 And guide in all to a faultless issue." 
 
 The prayer that follows must have been, as a poeti- 
 cal and musical masterpiece, the most interesting 
 portion of the play. "We can well imagine, remem- 
 bering the prayers in some of the most beautiful 
 modern operas, what a hush of admiration must have 
 come over the great theatre when its solemn stanzas 
 were chanted. And if, as some suppose, the play had 
 a political character, and was intended to promote 
 goodwill towards Argos, and advocate an alliance with 
 that city, a double interest must have attached to this 
 chorus. " Never may war," such is the burden of 
 the strain, " reap his sad crop in these fields of the 
 merciful and pious ; nor ever pestilence nor civil strife 
 strew them with native blood : but let old piety ever 
 dwell here, and the favour of heaven make the earth 
 fruitful with corn and herds ; and may songs of joy 
 rise ever here from holy lips." 
 
 Strophe.' 
 
 u And may the rule in which the people share 
 Keep the State's functions as in perfect peace, 
 
 E'en that which sways the crowd, 
 
 Which sways the commonwealth 
 
 By counsels wise and good ; 
 And to the strangers and the sojourners 
 May they grant rights that rest on compacts sure, 
 
 Ere war is roused to arms 
 
 So that no trouble come ! "
 
 76 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 
 "And the great gods who o'er this country watch, 
 May they adore them in the land they guard, 
 
 With rites of sacrifice 
 
 And troops with laurel-boughs, 
 
 As did our sires of old ! 
 For thus to honour those who gave us life, 
 This stands as one of three great laws * on high, 
 
 Written as fixed and firm, 
 
 The laws of right revered." 
 
 "When these prayers are ended their father warns 
 them that he has serious tidings to announce, and 
 begs them not to fear. From his high position he can 
 see the ship which brings their pursuers ; and as he 
 speaks it becomes more and more clearly visible, till 
 the sails are furled, and the vessel approaches the 
 shore with oars alone. Danaus encourages his daugh- 
 ters to be confident in the protection promised them, 
 and to be sure that the vengeance of heaven will fol- 
 low their persecutors. In short broken strains the 
 Chorus express their fears and their abhorrence of the 
 sons of ^gyptus, who regard not the gods of sanctu- 
 ary, and may have recourse to violence before Pelasgus 
 has had time to succour his suppliants. " There is 
 yet time enough," the father replies, "to rouse the 
 Argives : to anchor in a harbourless country and to 
 get ashore is not the work of a moment, especially 
 when night, as now, is drawing on ; and we must not 
 
 * The " three great laws" were those ascribed to Triptolemus : 
 To honour parents, to worship the gods with the fruits of the 
 earth, to hurt neither man nor beast."
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 77 
 
 distrust the gods, to whom we have appealed." And 
 so he goes away to arouse the city, and the Chorus 
 are left alone. Fain would they find a hiding-place, 
 but there is none. Fain would they be like the 
 smoke that rises up into the clouds of Zeus and 
 vanishes, or like the dust that passes out of sight. 
 Any form of death were welcome, rather than this 
 hateful marriage. "Ah!" they say, 
 
 " Ah ! might I find a place in yon high vault 
 Where the rain-clouds are passing into snow, 
 
 Or lonely precipice, 
 
 AVhose summit none can see, 
 
 Kock where the vulture haunts, 
 Witness for me of my abysmal fall, 
 Before the marriage that will pierce my heart 
 
 Becomes my dreaded doom." 
 
 And the answering band replies : 
 
 " I shrink not from the thought of being the prey 
 Of dogs and birds that haunt the country round, 
 
 For death shall make me free 
 
 From ills all lamentable ; 
 
 Yea, let death rather come 
 Than the worse doom of hated marriage-bed. 
 What other refuge now remains for me, 
 
 That marriage to avert ? " 
 
 And still they appeal to God, "whose eyes look 
 upon the thing that is equal," without whom nothing 
 comes to the children of men. Their appeal is inter- 
 rupted by the arrival of a herald who comes on behalf 
 of the sons of JEgyptus, to command the Danaids to
 
 78 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 embark immediately in their ship with them. The 
 complaints and prayers of the Chorus are now mingled 
 with the haughty orders of the herald. They refuse ; 
 he threatens force ; they cry, and call upon the gods, 
 and imprecate bitter curses upon their ravishers, but 
 all in vain ; the herald seizes their leader to drag her 
 by her hair towards the ship. At this point the king 
 with his train appears, and indignantly demands an 
 account of this outrage. The herald protests that he 
 is only asserting a legal claim, and is prepared to 
 justify it by war. The king replies, that if he can 
 persuade the maidens to accompany him, he may take 
 them, but that no constraint shall be put upon them. 
 " Here," he says, " the nail is fixed." The decree is 
 unchangeable, and the herald is peremptorily dismissed. 
 " The Greeks," says the king, " will be more than a 
 match for the Nile ; wine and bread are better than 
 barley-beer and byblus-fruit, the food of the Egyptians." 
 Then, turning to the maidens, he offers them safe 
 dwellings in the city whether they prefer to live 
 among others in the public palaces, or to dwell apart 
 with their attendants; and they refer the choice to 
 their father, who is now returned with a force of 
 soldiers. His answer is wise and fatherly, but a little 
 reminds us of the somewhat tedious wisdom of Pol- 
 onius. " Men are apt," he says, " to find fault in 
 foreigners, and young girls especially must beware of 
 the least breath of scandal ; the safer course must be 
 theirs, to dwell apart in maidenly modesty." 
 
 And now all the action of the play is ended, and 
 nothing remains but the final ode. Divided into two
 
 THE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 79 
 
 bands, the Danaids sing good wishes for their new 
 country. No longer is the Nile to claim their praise, 
 
 " Nay, but the rivers here, that pour calm streams through 
 our country, 
 
 Parents of many a son, making glad the soil of our mea- 
 dows, 
 
 With wide flood rolling on in full and abounding riches." 
 
 Then they are somewhat divided in their words : the 
 one band can only repeat its fears of their hateful pur- 
 suers, and finds all love and marriage henceforth odious ; 
 while the other half of the Chorus is anxious rather not 
 to disparage the divinity of the Cyprian goddess, and 
 looks forward yet to happy wedlock. Yet both unite 
 in speaking well of Aphrodite : 
 
 Semichorus A. 
 
 " Not that our kindly strain does slight to Cypris immortal, 
 For she, together with Hera, as nearest to Zeus is mighty, 
 A goddess of subtle thoughts she is honoured in mysteries 
 solemn." 
 
 Semichorus B. 
 
 11 Yea, as associates too with that their mother beloved 
 Are fair Desire and Suasion, whose pleading no man can 
 
 gainsay ; 
 
 Yea, to sweet Concord too Aphrodite's power is intrusted, 
 And the whispering paths of the Loves." 
 
 And so, with good hopes for the issue of the trial 
 which yet remains finally to decide their case, the 
 play concludes. This trial probably formed the sub- 
 ject of a succeeding piece.
 
 80 JtSCHYLUS. 
 
 The motive which predominates in this play is one 
 with which moderns, at least in civilised countries, are 
 not familiar. The claim which any fugitive was sup- 
 posed to possess on the protection of those to whom 
 he might address himself, naturally ceases to be ac- 
 knowledged when the improvement and extension of 
 law guarantee safety to all who deserve it, and take 
 out of the hands of private individuals the punishment 
 of those who do not. A suppliant in England nowa- 
 days would be at once referred to the law to be pro- 
 tected from wrong or punished for fault. But when 
 law could not do these things, but left the inflicting 
 of punishment in great measure to the offended person, 
 or, in the case of murder, to the relatives of the dead, 
 it was obviously the interest of every man, as well as 
 his duty, to accord to others that protection which he 
 might some day need for himself. Especially in the 
 case of accidental or justifiable homicide the protection 
 of private men was necessary to the slayer, and took 
 the place occupied among the Jews by their cities of 
 refuge. And when the case was such as could be tried 
 at law, it was only by private protection that the 
 accused was preserved from his accuser until the mat- 
 ter could be legally decided. It is clear, then, that in 
 such times the acknowledgment of the suppliant's claim 
 was necessary to society. Being so, it was invested 
 with a religious sanction. The temples of the gods 
 were the natural refuges, since in so holy a spot a man 
 could not be killed without defilement ; and hence the 
 gods themselves were believed to befriend the sup- 
 pliant. And then to fulfil this special function a
 
 TEE SUPPLIANTS; OR, THE CHILDREN OF 10. 81 
 
 special person or a special form of the supreme God 
 was believed to exist, and "Zeus of Supplication" 
 was added to the list of deities. In just the same way 
 " Zeus of Hospitality " enforced the duty, then so im- 
 portant, of receiving those who, in the absence of 
 inns, could find no other resting-place. And how tre- 
 mendous was the authority of these deities the play 
 before us shows. 
 
 But both these duties lose their relative importance 
 as civilisation advances. They were losing it even 
 when ^Eschylus wrote ; and here, as well as elsewhere, 
 we may see him lingering affectionately about the 
 traces of past times and creeds, and investing with 
 picturesque solemnity ruins which he could not restore. 
 
 A. c. vol. vii.
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE PERSIANS. 
 
 " THE PERSIANS" was not produced until six or seven 
 years after the events which it celebrates; and this 
 was perhaps an advantage. For no great event can 
 easily be regarded as an entire whole until some time 
 after its occurrence. Details are at first too prominent ; 
 personal or local interests have not yet sunk down 
 into their proper relative importance : it is not fully 
 seen, until later, what was the true beginning and 
 source of the main action, nor when it can be rightly 
 said to have ended in short, the spectator is too close 
 to the object to see it as a whole, and to grasp the 
 principle of its structure. Now it is the very essence 
 of all tragedy that it should present a great action as a 
 whole in its greatness, not in its complexity ; and in 
 Greek tragedy, through its shortness and simplicity, 
 this character is especially marked. Further, we have 
 seen that the Greek dramatist contemplates an action 
 as part of a course of divine providence ; sets it, that 
 is, in its true light as a moral result, and traces through- 
 out it the retributive agency of heaven. Clearly this
 
 THE PERSIANS. 83 
 
 function cannot be adequately fulfilled until time 
 enough has elapsed to distinguish permanent effects 
 from those which were transient, and to enable the 
 observer, freed from the obstructions of temporary pas- 
 sion, to award praise and blame with justice. 
 
 With these considerations before us, we may say 
 that ^Eschylus could not have produced his drama of 
 " The Persians " earlier, without losing something of 
 unity and certainty, and something of that distance, 
 or half-unreality, which constitutes the characteristic 
 charm of the Athenian tragedy. 
 
 Knowing how essential this distance from common 
 life this " removedness " of the scene and action is, 
 we shall rather wonder that the poets did not entirely 
 avoid subjects taken from recent history, and confine 
 themselves to 
 
 " Presenting Thebes and Pelops' line, 
 Or the tale of Troy divine." 
 
 And in fact the cases in which they did leave the my- 
 thological cycle were exceptional, and perhaps not 
 often successful ; though the pre-eminent importance 
 of the Persian war made success possible here. An 
 early contemporary of ^Eschylus, Phrynichus, had 
 many years before made a great mistake by his inju- 
 dicious choice of such a subject one connected with 
 this very Persian war itself. The war originated, as 
 the reader will remember, in the feuds between the 
 Persians and the Ionian colonies in Asia Minor, of 
 which Miletus was chief. These cities had attempted 
 to throw off the yoke of the Persians, who had long
 
 84 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 assailed their liberties, and in the failure of their 
 attempt Miletus was destroyed. The Athenians, as 
 lonians themselves, were kinsmen and close allies of 
 these Asiatic Greeks ; and the fall of their leading city 
 was a heavy blow to Athens, especially as she had made 
 the. Ionian cause her own by that enterprise of almost 
 incredible courage, in which her troops burnt the royal 
 city of Sardis, and so brought upon Greece the two 
 gigantic invasions which were repelled at Marathon and 
 Salamis. It was the fall of Miletus which Phrynichus 1 
 chose for his subject, and so far as its importance went, 
 it was a truly tragic theme; but it came home too 
 closely to the feelings of the Athenians they could not 
 bear to see the sufferings of their friends so vividly re- 
 presented, the sympathy exacted was too painful, the 
 drama too like reality; so they fined Phrynichus a large 
 sum for breaking the rules of his art, and giving pain 
 to his audience. Not unnaturally, when the fall of 
 Miletus had been amply revenged, Phrynichus hastened 
 to atone for his error by representing the triumph. 
 He produced a drama founded on the Persian war, two 
 years after Salamis ; as soon, that is, as it could be< 
 safely said that Persia was finally defeated. "We may, 
 not doubt that on this latter occasion the Athenian 
 audience forgot the violation of an unwritten canon of 
 art, in their exultation at the picture of their successes ; 
 but we may be sure, at the same time, that Phrynichus 
 was unable to give to his play the same heroic and 
 ideal greatness which we find in that of ^Eschylus. 
 
 We have said that the paramount importance of the 
 Persian war made it .a fit subject for tragedy, and we
 
 THE PERSIANS. 85 
 
 need not here enlarge upon the causes and signs of 
 that importance ; we will point now to another fact by 
 which its case differed from most other events of con- 
 temporary history. This fact is the comparative igno- 
 rance of the manners and character of the Persians 
 which still prevailed among the Greeks. The enor-r 
 mous size of their armies, their boundless wealth and 
 luxury, their barbarous tongues and dark faces, these, 
 exaggerated to still greater proportions in the popular 
 imagination, produced an impression of dim and in- 
 definite greatness, not unlike that in which the mist 
 of time veiled the heroes of mythology. How fully, 
 aware the poet was of this is amply shown by his 
 manner of dealing with the subject. He has kept as 
 far as possible from familiar names and places; his 
 hero is not the victorious Greek, but the defeated 
 Persian king; the scene is not the battle-field, not 
 Marathon, or Thermopylae, or Salamis, but the palace 
 of Xerxes, far away in the wonder-land of the east ; 
 and all is treated from the Persian side. Instead of 
 the triumph of Israel, he gives us the fears and sorrows 
 of the mother of Sisera and her attendant ladies. 
 
 Very much, then, is gained by this treatment. Not 
 only is Xerxes greater in his fall than even Miltiades 
 in his triumph, as a despot, if great at all, is greater 
 than one leader among many can be in a free people^ 
 but the familiar event is set in a new light, as a 
 Persian calamity instead of a Greek success, arid in a 
 light even more flattering . to the national pride of 
 Athens. 
 
 We have spoken at length on this point, lest it
 
 86 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 should be thought that uEschylus makes Xerxes his 
 hero simply because tragedy requires a calamity. A 
 sad ending is not essential to tragedy; greatness and 
 " removedness " are. 
 
 But we must hasten to inquire at what point in the 
 series of events the action of the play begins, and what 
 was the knowledge of the preceding history with 
 which the Athenian spectator was prepared. It was 
 in the year 500 B.C., eight-and-twenty years ago, that 
 the Ionian cities rebelled against Darius, and nearly 
 six years later that Miletus was sacked and the revolt 
 suppressed. The next year the Athenians had come to 
 the assistance of their kinsmen in Asia ; had accom- 
 plished a two months' march from the sea to Sardis, 
 and insulted the Great King almost in his own house. 
 Darius had no sooner put down the rebels in Ionia 
 than he remembered the insolent strangers who had 
 ventured to burn his palace; and in the year 490 B.C. 
 he sent over the great armament under Mardonius 
 which was to bring the Athenians in chains to Persia. 
 Till of late their very name was unknown to him. 
 He is said to have asked contemptuously where 
 Athens was ; a question which, in the play before us, 
 is put into the mouth of his wife Atossa. But the 
 unknown little state proved too strong for Mardonius, 
 and Marathon destroyed the hopes of that expedition. 
 This was in 490 B.C., or about eighteen years ago. 
 
 Darius bequeathed to his son Xerxes the task of 
 subjugating Greece, and after several years spent in 
 preparations, the young king set forth to lead against 
 these few despised tribes the flower of all the nations
 
 THE PERSIANS. 87 
 
 which owned his rule. The incredible numbers which 
 the historians assign to his forces are well known; at 
 the lowest calculation they far exceeded the greatest 
 hosts of modern times. But wealth, when it has given 
 birth to pride, always brings ruin on its possessor. 
 Overweening confidence is, in the Greek creed, an insult 
 to the gods, and cannot fail to call down their wrath. 
 Such was the fate of Xerxes. Checked at Thermopylae, 
 routed at Salamis, driven home in confusion to his own 
 shores, followed thither by losses and defeat, the Great 
 King became a spectacle to all men of the vanity of 
 greatness when it is not guarded by moderation. Now 
 for five years at least the Persian power has lain pros- 
 trate at the feet of Greece, and men have had time to 
 learn the lesson which her misfortunes teach. 
 
 Such are perhaps the reflections which pass through 
 the Athenian's mind when he hears it announced that 
 the next play is to be " The Persians." 
 
 The curtain rises* on a splendid scene of Eastern 
 magnificence. It is Susa, the Persian capital, the 
 abode of fabulous wealth, though now so humbled. 
 The Chorus enter with the usual stately march, and 
 with more than the usual gorgeousness of dress. They 
 are the state councillors of the Great King, who, under 
 the queen-mother Atossa, guard the dominions of their 
 absent master. As they advance towards the orchestra 
 they sing, in their processional hymn, a strain of 
 anxiety and sad foreboding. No messengers have 
 
 * Or, more strictly speaking, "falls." The curtain was re- 
 moved by winding it round a roller placed below not, as in our 
 theatres, above.
 
 88 JESCHYLUS. 
 
 come from the host of late; the -land is empty, all are 
 gone to the war; and a gloomy desolation, not un- 
 mixed with apprehension, makes wives and parents 
 
 " Count the slow days, 
 And tremble at the long protracted time." 
 
 The chant contains a catalogue of nobles who are 
 gone ; a list of sounding names, diversified with pic- 
 turesque circumstances, reminding us of the roll of the 
 fallen angels in Milton, or the lists of dead warriors in 
 Homer : 
 
 " Amistres, Artaphernes, and the might 
 Of great Astaspes ; Megabazes bold . . . 
 Artembares, that in his fiery horse 
 Delights : Masistres ; and Imoeus bold, 
 Bending with manly strength his stubborn bow ; 
 Pharandaces, and Sosthenes that drives 
 With military pomp his rapid steeds." 
 
 From sacred Nile and Memphis ; Lycians, the sons 
 of luxury; foresters from far inland; troops from 
 Euphrates and golden Babylon; Mysians who wield 
 the javelin ; Mardon from Tmolus, and Tharybis and 
 Arcteus all are gone forth to battle, and Persia is 
 desolate and sad. 
 
 Some have found in this opening a burlesque of 
 Persian names intended to amuse the Athenians : we 
 may rather regard it as showing, what we have seen 
 before, how ^Eschylus shares with Homer and Milton 
 and Scott that power over names, which is one of the 
 surest signs, says Mr Palgrave, of high poetic talent. 
 
 When the Chorus have reached the orchestra, their
 
 THE PERSIANS. 89 
 
 song begins with a description of the grand departure of 
 the army, and the proud position of Xerxes, himself the 
 most beautiful in person of all that magnificent host. 
 
 Strophe. 
 
 " Already o'er the adverse strand 
 In arms the monarch's martial squadrons spread ; 
 
 The threat'ning ruin shakes the land, 
 And each tall city bows its towered head. 
 
 Bark bound to bark, their wondrous way 
 
 They bridge across the indignant sea ; 
 The narrow Hellespont's vexed waves disdain, 
 
 His proud neck taught to bear the chain. 
 Now has the peopled Asia's warlike lord, 
 
 By land, by sea, with foot, with horse 
 
 Resistless in his rapid course, 
 O'er all their realms his warring thousands poured ; 
 
 Now his intrepid chiefs surveys, 
 And glitt'ring like a god his radiant state displays." 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 
 " Fierce as the dragon scaled in gold 
 Through the deep files he darts his glowing eye : 
 
 And pleased their order to behold, 
 His joyous standard blazing to the sky, 
 
 Rolls onward his Assyrian car, 
 
 Directs the thunder of the war, 
 Bids the winged arrows' iron storm advance 
 
 Against the slow and cumbrous lance. 
 What shall withstand the torrent of his sway, 
 
 When dreadful o'er the yielding shores 
 
 The impetuous tide of battle roars, 
 And sweeps the weak opposing mounds away ? 
 
 So Persia with resistless might 
 Rolls her unnumbered hosts of heroes to the fight."
 
 90 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Very pleasing to the Athenian is the irony which he 
 traces here ; the contrast between the hope and the 
 event. Those clouds of arrows only kept the sun 
 from the eyes of the Greeks, while the " slow and 
 cumbrous lance" was active enough to scatter all 
 those " unnumbered hosts of heroes." Still intenser 
 is the irony in the stanzas that follow " What mor- 
 tal," they sing, " can withstand misfortune and the 
 vengeance of the sky? Flattering at first, she falls 
 with crushing power upon her victim : and so " mark 
 here the irony " shall Persia fall upon her foes." 
 But there is ground for fear too. While all are away 
 in Greece, any invader might find in Persia an easy 
 prey. Then how would her homes be filled with 
 mourning ; with maidens rushing in despair about her 
 streets, lamenting for the guardians of her towers; with 
 wives deploring the long absence of their loves ! So 
 the song ends with the very same strain of lamenta- 
 tion for a supposed calamity as will soon be raised for 
 a real one; when the youth, for whom the maidens 
 weep, will be known to be absent for ever, and the 
 matron's couch for ever desolate. 
 
 When this chorus, one of the finest in all ^Eschylus, 
 is concluded, Atossa, the queen-mother, " the mother 
 of the Persians' god," comes upon the scene, and is 
 greeted by the elders with the utmost reverence. She 
 comes to seek their advice. Unquiet thoughts have 
 for some time disturbed her, and dreams of ominous 
 import have visited her, but especially in the night that 
 is just past. " Methought," she says,
 
 THE PERSIANS. 91 
 
 " Two women stood before mine eyes 
 Gorgeously vested, one in Persian robes 
 Adorned, the other in the Doric garb. 
 With more than mortal majesty they moved, 
 Of peerless beauty ; sisters too they seemed, 
 Though distant each from each they chanced to dwell, 
 In Greece the one, on the barbaric coast 
 The other. 'Twixt them soon dissension rose : 
 My son then hasted to compose their strife, 
 Soothed them to fair accord, beneath his car 
 Yokes them, and reins their harnessed necks. The one 
 Exulting in her rich array, with pride 
 Arching her stately neck, obeyed the reins ; 
 The other with indignant fury spurned 
 The car, and dashed it piecemeal, rent the reins 
 And tore the yoke asunder : down my son 
 Fell from the seat, and instant at his side 
 His father stands, Darius, at his fall 
 Impressed with pity : him when Xerxes saw, 
 Glowing with grief and shame he rends his robes. 
 This was the dreadful vision of the night." 
 
 Disturbed "by such a dream, the queen had gone to 
 sacrifice to the gods, but there a new omen had pre- 
 sented itself an eagle defeated by a hawk, and flying 
 for sanctuary to the altar of the Sun. She cannot but 
 interpret these things as portending some misfortune 
 to her son, and she feels that on his success in war his 
 prestige at home, and perhaps his throne, depends. By 
 the advice of the elders, she promises to seek assistance 
 from the gods, and in particular to pray for help to the 
 shade of her dead husband Darius. Meanwhile she asks 
 the old question that had so irritated Athenian pride 
 " Where, in what clime, the towers of Athens rise ?"
 
 92 jESCHYL US. 
 
 " Chorus. Far in the west," where sets the imperial sun. 
 Atossa. Send they embattled numbers to the field ? 
 Chor. A force that to the Medes hath wrought much 
 
 woe. 
 
 Atos. Haye they sufficient treasures in their houses ? 
 Chor. Their rich earth yields a copious fount of silver.* 
 Atos. From the strong bow wing they the barbed 
 
 - shaft ? 
 
 Chor. They grasp the stout spear, and the massy shield. 
 Atos. What monarch reigns, whose power commands 
 
 their ranks ? 
 
 Chor. Slaves to no lord, they own no kingly power. 
 Atos. How can they then resist the invading foe ? 
 Chor. As to spread havoc through the numerous host' 
 That round Darius formed their glitt'ring files. 
 Atos. Thy words strike deep, and wound the parent's 
 
 breast, 
 Whose sons are marched to such a dangerous field." 
 
 In this way the queen gains some notion of her son's 
 danger, while, by the way, the Greek spear is again 
 contrasted with the Persian arrow, and the Athenian 
 freedom with the despotic rule of Xerxes. Atossa is 
 made to wonder that a free people can resist nations 
 who are driven into battle with whips and goads, in 
 order that the Athenian may be led to reflect that he 
 owes his independence to his free constitution. 
 
 But forebodings are now to be converted into actual 
 lamentation. A messenger arrives with cries of "Woe 
 to Persia ! " and briefly tells his tale " The whole bar- 
 baric host has fallen." 
 
 1 * The silver mines of Laurium, in the south of Attica.
 
 THE PERSIANS. 9S 
 
 " In heaps the unhappy dead lie on the strand 
 Of Salamis, and all the neighbouring shores." 
 
 Under the first crushing force of this announcement 
 Atossa is silent. The Chorus are loud in their cries, 
 "but the queen speaks no word; and when at last she 
 finds a voice, she dares not utter the question that is 
 nearest to her heart, but asks, "Who is not fallen ? 
 
 "What leader must we wail ? What sceptred chief 
 Dying hath left his troops without a lord ? " , . _ , 
 
 The messenger answers her meaning, 
 
 " Xerxes himself lives, and beholds the light." 
 
 Then conies a list of the fallen ; a list as long as, and 
 even more beautiful than, that which the Chorus gave 
 of the chiefs in their hour of pride. It is doubtless 
 imitated from Homer, and has some of those touches 
 of pathos in which Virgil delights on a similar oc- 
 casion. 
 
 " Amestris, and Amphistreus there 
 Grasps his war-wearied spear ; there prostrate lies 
 The illustrious Arimardus, long his loss 
 Shall Sardis weep : the Mysian Sisames, 
 And Tharybis that o'er the burdened deep 
 Led five times fifty vessels ; Lerna gave 
 The hero birth, and manly grace adorned 
 His pleasing form, but low in death he lies, 
 Unhappy in his fate." 
 
 ' ; ' . "'. . '; . 
 
 Our sympathy is roused for the hero of Lerna, just 
 as in the ^Eneid for Ehipeus, or Panthus, t-
 
 94 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 " Then Bhipeus followed in th' unequal fight, 
 Just of his word, observant of the right, 
 Heaven thought not so." Virg., Mn. i. 426. (Pitt) 
 
 Having mentioned a long list of the dead yet only a 
 few out of so many the messenger goes on to describe 
 the circumstances of the defeat. And here we are to 
 have, from an eyewitness, a detailed account of the 
 fight at Salamis. The poet had best be accurate and 
 impartial, for half his audience were present there, and 
 any error will be promptly noticed. 
 
 " In numbers, the barbaric fleet 
 "Was far superior : in ten squadrons, each 
 Of thirty ships, Greece ploughed the deep ; of these 
 One held a distant station. Xerxes led 
 A thousand ships ; their number well I know ; 
 Two hundred more and seven, that swept the seas 
 With speediest sail : this was their full amount. 
 And in the engagement seemed we not secure 
 Of victory ? But unequal Fortune sunk 
 Our scale in fight, discomfiting our hosts." 
 
 And even Atossa is constrained to say; 
 
 " The gods preserve the city of Minerva : " 
 and the messenger replies ; 
 
 " The walls of Athens are impregnable, 
 Their firmest bulwarks her heroic sons !" 
 
 How the Athenian audience must have cheered ! 
 
 The description which follows gives us a more vivid 
 picture of an ancient sea-fight than is anywhere else to 
 be found. It is the work of a soldier who understood 
 the tactics displayed, as well as of a poet whose eyes
 
 THE PERSIANS. 95 
 
 were open to the outward aspect of the scene. It ex- 
 plains to us why there was so little distinction in those 
 times between the soldier and the sailor. The same 
 men who fought on land at Marathon fought on the 
 sea at Salamis, and their naval warfare consisted mainly 
 in hand-to-hand fighting after the ships had grappled 
 one another ; the chief aim, besides this, being to dis- 
 able the enemy's ship by a blow from the armed prow, 
 either crashing in its sides, or passing over and break- 
 ing its oars. 
 
 The messenger narrates how, by a stratagem of the 
 Greeks, which we know from Herodotus was due to 
 Thernistocles, the Persians had been induced to sur- 
 round the Greek fleet, in the belief that they meditated 
 flight by night. Every passage by which a Greek ship 
 could escape was carefully secured, but the Greeks did 
 not stir. But when the day with its white steeds 
 spread in its beauty over the earth, 
 
 " At once from every Greek with glad acclaim 
 Burst forth, the song of war, whose lofty notes 
 The echo of the island rocks returned, 
 Spreading dismay through Persia's hosts thus fallen 
 From their high hopes : no flight this solemn strain 
 Portended, but deliberate valour bent 
 On daring battle ; whilst the trumpet's sound 
 Bandied the flames of war." 
 
 With oars dashing up the waves, the Greeks advance 
 to the attack, their right wing leading, and on every 
 side the voice of exhortation is heard. "Forward, 
 Greeks, for your homes and the temples of your gods, 
 and for your father's tombs : all are at stake to-day !"
 
 96 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 A Greek ship is the first to strike, and crushes in by 
 the force of its charge the sculptured prow of a Phoeni- 
 cian : then the engagement rages along the whole line. 
 
 " The deep array 
 
 Of Persia at the first sustained the encounter ; 
 But their thronged numbers, in the narrow seas 
 Confined, want room for action ; and, deprived 
 Of mutual aid, beaks clash with beaks, and each 
 Breaks all the other's oars : with skill disposed 
 The Grecian navy circled them around 
 With fierce assault." 
 
 The sea is hidden with ships floating keel upwards, 
 and with wrecks and corpses. The shores are covered 
 with the dead. The Persians take to flight, and the 
 Greeks pursue, spearing and striking their drowning 
 foes, " as men spear a shoal of tunnies," with spars and 
 broken oars; and over the wide sea wailing is heard 
 and lamentation, until night falls upon the scene of 
 destruction. Worse even than this remains. For on 
 a little island close to Salamis, a rugged island such as 
 Pan delights in, Xerxes had set the flower of his 
 nobility, that they might cut down the Greeks who 
 would seek shelter there, or help any Persians in 
 distress ; and all these, the bravest of his hosts, were 
 cut to pieces before the monarch's eyes. "Bitter 
 fruit," Atossa cries, 
 
 " My son hath tasted from his purposed vengeance 
 On Athens famed for arms ; the fatal field 
 Of Marathon, red with barbaric blood, 
 Sufficed not ; that defeat he thought to avenge, 
 And pulled this hideous ruin on his head."
 
 THE PERSIANS. 97 
 
 Already the sufferers are attributing their troubles to 
 the wanton rashness of Xerxes, and we shall see that 
 this feeling is more and more clearly expressed as the 
 play goes on, so that Darius, with whom the whole 
 expedition originated, is regarded as having been com- 
 paratively cautious and sparing of his people. This 
 is not a true view of the history. Xerxes was rather 
 indolent and reluctant, and required much pressure 
 before he would carry out his father's plans. Whether 
 ^Eschylus was himself in error on this point, or 
 wished to represent the Persians as forgetting the 
 true state of the case in their distress, we cannot tell : 
 at any rate, it is necessary to the poem that the 
 author of the calamity should suffer by it, so that it 
 was natural to exaggerate the rashness of Xerxes, and 
 to contrast with it the supposed moderation of his 
 father. 
 
 But there are more calamities still to tell. In their 
 disordered flight some died of thirst and famine ; some 
 perished in the attempt to cross the frozen Strymon, 
 the great river of Thrace, where " such as owned no 
 god till now, awe-struck, with many a prayer, adored 
 the earth and sky." A few "dragged on their toilsome 
 march, and reached their native soil," few indeed out 
 of so many. 
 
 " My visions," says the unhappy queen, " were too 
 true; it is too late for sacrifices now to change the past, 
 yet I will offer libations to the dead and prayers to 
 the gods, in case there may yet be some better thing in 
 store." Then she departs, begging the Chorus to receive 
 her son with words of comfort. 
 
 A. o. voL vii. o
 
 08 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 Sad and majestic music now swells up the crowded 
 theatre, and echoes on the steep rocks of the Acro- 
 polis. The Persian councillors begin that chorus of 
 lamentation which was portended by their opening 
 chorus of anxiety. 
 
 Strophe. 
 " Awful sovereign of the skies, 
 
 When now o'er Persia's numerous host 
 Thou bad'st the storm with ruin rise, 
 All her proud vaunts of glory lost, 
 Ecbatana's imperial head 
 
 By thee was wrapped in sorrow's dark'ning shade ; 
 Through Susa's palaces with wide lament, 
 By their soft hands their veils all rent, 
 The copious tear the virgins pour, 
 That trickles their bare bosoms o'er. 
 From her sweet couch upstarts the widowed bride, 
 
 Her lord's loved image rushing on her soul, 
 Throws the rich ornaments of youth aside, 
 
 And gives her griefs to flow without control; 
 Her griefs not causeless ; for the mighty slain 
 Our melting tears demand, and sorrow-softened strain." 
 
 Antistroplie. 
 " Now her wailings wide despair 
 
 Pours these exhausted regions o'er ; 
 Xerxes, ill-fated, led the war ; 
 
 Xerxes, ill-fated, leads no more : 
 Xerxes sent forth the unwise command, 
 The crowded ships unpeopled all the land ; 
 
 That land o'er which Darius held his reign, 
 Courting the arts of peace, in vain, 
 O'er all his grateful realms adored, 
 The stately Susa's gentle lord.
 
 THE PERSIANS. 99 
 
 Black o'er the waves his burdened vessels sweep, 
 For Greece elate the warlike squadrons fly : 
 
 Now crushed, and whelmed beneath the indignant deep, 
 The shattered wrecks and lifeless heroes lie ; 
 
 Whilst from, the arms of Greece escaped, with toil 
 
 The unsheltered monarch roams o'er Thracia's dreary 
 soH." 
 
 And they lament for power overthrown, so many 
 nobles and rulers lost, not without implying that the 
 power of Xerxes himself is shaken, and "his regal 
 greatness is no more." 
 
 Atossa returns : this time she comes without her 
 queenly train, and "bears the offerings which are to 
 call Darius from the dead. The list of them is grace- 
 ful and pathetic. "We may notice here again how 
 ^Eschylus shares with other great poets the power of 
 moving us by these simple things ; they are like Per- 
 dita's flowers, or the offerings "to deck the laureate 
 hearse where Lycid lies." 
 
 " Delicious milk that foams 
 White from the sacred heifer ; liquid honey, 
 Extract of flowers ; and from its virgin fount 
 The running crystal : this pure draught, that flowed 
 From the ancient vine, of power to bathe the spirits 
 In joy ; the yellow olive's fragrant fruit, 
 That glories in its leaves' unfading verdure ; 
 With flowers of various hues, earth's fairest offspring, 
 Enwreathed." 
 
 The Chorus join to hers their prayers to Darius, 
 and entreat the powers that rule the dead, and earth, 
 and heaven, to send up his ghost into the light, that
 
 100 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 he may show the future, and the remedy, if there be 
 any. They praise the dead monarch, who "wasted 
 not his subjects' blood," and with repeated cries call 
 him from the tomb. Darius comes. The ghost rises 
 from the ground before his tomb, like the ghost in 
 " Hamlet," in 
 
 " That fair and warlike form 
 In which the majesty of buried Persia 
 Did sometimes march ; " 
 
 and, anxiously startled, asks what troubles are troubling 
 the state. Like the Danish king, Darius, for all his 
 greatness, speaks with awe and reverence of the realms 
 from which he comes : the gods there are stern, and 
 will not easily allow the dead to return ; his time is 
 short ; the " fearful summons " will soon call him back. 
 He hears the full story of the calamity, and attributes 
 all to the arrogance and rashness of his son, who had 
 dared to chain the sacred Hellespont and divine Bos- 
 porus, and "to rise above the gods and Neptune's 
 might." " Those who urged him on," says the ghost, 
 " to this mad enterprise, have done a deed of ruin such 
 as never yet was done to Persia, and have wasted the 
 grand fabric which so many illustrious kings had 
 raised. Greece must be attacked no more ; the very- 
 earth fights for her, destroying your troops by famine 
 and disease. The remnant who survive shall not re- 
 turn. In their wanton insolence they have overthrown 
 temples and statues of the gods, and now heaven's 
 anger is upon them. On Platsea's fields they shall 
 lie in heaps, to teach mortals humility."
 
 THE PERSIANS. 101 
 
 A tender passage follows, in which the father bids 
 his wife show all gentleness to her offending son. It 
 is not unlike the tenderness with which the ghost in 
 " Hamlet " ends his revelations, bidding the son be 
 gentle to his mother : 
 
 " With gentlest courtesy- 
 Soothe his affliction ; for his duteous ear, 
 I know, will listen to thy voice alone. 
 Now to the realms of darkness I descend." 
 
 Again the Chorus chant the glories of Darius's reign, 
 and sadly contrast them with the present ruin, while 
 the queen goes away to put on her most gorgeous robes, 
 according to the ghost's command, and meet her son. 
 
 " E'en the proud towns, that reared 
 Sublime along the Ionian coast their towers, 
 
 Where wealth her treasures pours, 
 Peopled from Greece, his prudent reign revered. 
 
 With such unconquered might 
 His hardy warriors shook the embattled field, 
 
 Heroes that Persia yields, 
 And those from distant lands that took their way, 
 
 And wedged in close array 
 Beneath his glittering banners claimed the fight. 
 
 But now these glories are no more : 
 Farewell the big war's plumed pride, 
 
 The gods have crushed this trophied power ; 
 Sunk are our vanquished arms beneath the indignant tide." 
 
 As this chorus ends, Xerxes, in rent robes and with 
 disfigured face, comes lamenting upon the scene, tor- 
 tured with the thought of his lost heroes, and wishing
 
 102 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 that he had died with them. The rest of the play is 
 but one long wail. "I have no voice," the Chorus 
 
 says, 
 
 " No swelling harmony, 
 No descant, save these notes of woe, 
 Harsh and repulsive to the sullen sigh, 
 Rude strains that unmelodious flow, 
 To welcome thy return." 
 
 They ask after all the chiefs, after Phamaces and 
 
 Dotamas, 
 
 " Psammis in mailed cuirass dressed, 
 And Susiscanes' glitt'ring crest." 
 
 And in every gloomy pause Xerxes replies that they 
 are dead drowned, or killed in the shock of battle. 
 
 The climax of disaster and disgrace is reached in the 
 condition of the king himself. 
 
 " Clio. Is all thy glory lost ? 
 
 Xer. Seest thou these poor remains of my rent robes ? 
 Cho. I see, I see. 
 
 Xer. And this ill-furnished quiver ? 
 
 Cho. Wherefore preserved ? 
 
 Xer. To store my treasured arrows. 
 
 Cho. Few, very few. 
 Xer. And few my friendly aids." 
 
 And the irony of the whole, and its bearing on Athe- 
 nian prowess, is summed up : 
 
 " Cho. I thought these Grecians shrank appalled at arms. 
 Xer. No ; they are bold and daring."
 
 THE PERSIANS. 103 
 
 And so, with reiterated lamentations, the spectacle 
 concludes. 
 
 With the Athenians, whose glory it exhibited so 
 prominently, this play was naturally a favourite ; but 
 it appealed also to a far wider audience. The Persian 
 War had been the means of bringing all Greeks to- 
 gether in union against the common foe ; and accord- 
 ingly, a play like this could not but be welcomed as 
 an expression of the new national enthusiasm. This 
 explains the fact that it was among those chosen by 
 Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, while ^Eschylus was his 
 guest, to be repeated before the Greeks of Sicily ; and 
 this also justifies the poet in leaving for once the old 
 national heroes, Hercules and Agamemnon, to celebrate 
 the event which, for the first time since the Trojan 
 war, was for all Greece a common triumph.
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 
 
 THE story of Thebes and its sieges was one of the most 
 favourite themes of the Greek poets from the earliest 
 times. The many old chronicles in verse which re- 
 corded different parts of the history formed a continu- 
 ous series, second only in popularity to that Trojan 
 series of which the ' Iliad ' was the centre. In the 
 uncritical language of the early Greeks, all these were 
 attributed to Homer, and to a few other names for 
 they are little more ; so that when we are told that 
 .<Eschylus called his own tragedies only scraps from 
 the great banquet of Homer, it is not to the ' Iliad ' 
 and 'Odyssey' alone, but to this large collection of 
 poetical chronicles, that we must suppose him to refer. 
 But the dramatist cannot deal with the history of 
 whole cities ; his subjects are individuals or families. 
 Out of all the noble names which were connected with 
 the Theban story, the fancy of the Greek tragedians 
 dwelt most fondly on the fate of the unhappy house of 
 (Edipus. The terrible story is well known. 
 
 Laius the king (so runs the legend) cast out his son
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 105 
 
 OEdipus that he might die, "because an oracle had fore- 
 told that the child should kill his father. But Laius 
 did not so avoid his fate, for the child was preserved 
 by a shepherd, and became a man; and meeting Laius 
 one day on a road he slew him unwittingly, and came 
 to Thebes. He saved the city from the ravaging Sphinx 
 by guessing her riddle about the life of man, and so 
 became king of Thebes, and husband of the late king's 
 wife his own mother. But at last the gods brought it 
 about that all the truth should be revealed to this un- 
 happy king ; and when he heard it, he put out his own 
 eyes in his despair. Afterwards his sons Eteocles and 
 Polynices, wishing that so horrible a thing should be 
 forgotten, shut up their father in a prison ; and he in 
 his anger cursed them, and prayed that they might 
 divide the kingdom between them by the sword. 
 
 So they, fearing lest the gods should fulfil that 
 prayer, determined to reign in turn, each for a year. 
 Eteocles, as the elder, reigned first, and at the end 
 of the time agreed on, Polynices came and asked for 
 the sceptre ; but Eteocles refused, and clung resolutely 
 to his throne, and sent him away empty. Then Poly- 
 nices went away, and came to Argos, and married the 
 daughter of King Adrastus, and persuaded him to help 
 him with an army to recover his kingdom. So Adras- 
 tus gave him a great host, and he came against the 
 Thebans. And six other captains led the host with 
 him, and he was the seventh ; and each led a division 
 against one of the seven gates. 
 
 In the besieged city the scene is now laid. Before 
 us rises the citadel, and the citizens among whom
 
 106 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 enters Eteocles himself are gathering in the square 
 beneath. Here is a picturesque scene to begin with. 
 Such openings are favourites in our own operas ; and 
 the reader will remember how effective they are ren- 
 dered by variety of dresses, and the signs of different 
 trades by rapid motion, and the hum of many voices. 
 These gay pictures are fit introductions to a modern 
 opera ; but the serious tragedy of Athens requires a 
 more solemn opening. Moreover, the square of a Greek 
 city would not supply so highly coloured, so harlequin- 
 like a scene ; nor would the taste of a Greek audience 
 appreciate it. They prefer the beautiful to the pic- 
 turesque. Our Theban citizens come in with more 
 order, and less animation ; their dresses are graceful in 
 their folds, and rich in their simple colours ; and their 
 grouping on the stage is formal and systematic, instead 
 of studiously disordered. We are to remember that 
 they represent the dignity of a great people, and are 
 there not to amuse or excite us, but to enact a solemn 
 scene in the history of a very serious world. 
 
 The Athenian audience is always interested in a 
 crowd. Every citizen is a politician, and delights in 
 comparing other constitutions with his own ; so that 
 when a popular assembly in any shape comes before 
 his eyes he is eagerly on the watch for indications of the 
 degree of freedom which they possess, and for illustra- 
 tions of his own political theories. This curiosity is 
 consulted in the opening words of Eteocles, who begins 
 by stating the necessity of watchfulness on the part 
 of a ruler, the helmsman of the state, since his posi- 
 tion is both responsible and thankless. Prosperity, he
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 107 
 
 says, is attributed to the gods, while for disasters the 
 king is always held guilty. Much the same sentiment 
 is expressed by an English writer : 
 
 " Among misfortunes that dissension brings 
 This not the least is, that belongs to kings : 
 If wars go well, each to a part lays claim ; 
 If ill, then kings, not subjects, bear the blame." 
 
 Only the Englishman says nothing about the gods. 
 However, it is ill-omened to speak of disaster, so 
 Eteocles goes on to pray that all such calamity may 
 be kept from Thebes by Zeus the Averter. We, who 
 are in the poet's secret, know that the ill omen is not 
 to be so lightly put aside. The king calls on all, 
 young and old, to come to the aid of the state, and 
 pay to their native earth the debt due to her for their 
 nurture. This claim of the mother-land is very touch- 
 ingly urged. " Defend," he says, 
 
 " This land, your common parent, 
 And dearest nurse, who on her fost'ring soil 
 Upheld with bounteous care your infant steps, 
 And trained you to this service, that your hands 
 For her defence might lift the faithful shield." * 
 
 This childlike attachment to the native soil, the 
 simplest basis of patriotism, has been generally ex- 
 changed among civilised nations for love of one's 
 countrymen, or loyalty to the king or has been sup- 
 planted by philosophical theories about nationality ; 
 but even now it is curious to notice how, when a 
 nation is strongly and deeply moved, the old simple 
 
 * The translations throughout this play are from Potter.
 
 108 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 ideas crop up again, and we see theory and loyalty 
 comparatively weak motives by the side of love for 
 the waters of the Ehine, or the sacred soil of France. 
 The old world-worn nation becomes a child again in 
 the violence of its passion. Cicero appeals half 
 poetically it is true, but very beautifully to the same 
 feelings, when he is claiming for the state the services 
 of its members in peace as well as war. " Our 
 country has not given us birth and reared us without 
 expecting from us in return some 'nurture-fee'; she 
 did not mean only to make herself the slave of our con- 
 venience, and furnish us with a safe shelter to be idle 
 in, a quiet spot for our repose : she gave us birth and 
 nurture that she might engage our best energies and 
 talents in her own service, allowing us to use for our 
 own private ends so much, and so much only, as might 
 not be needed for her own." And so says Ben Jonson; 
 
 " She is our common mother, and doth claim 
 The prime part of us." 
 
 With the Thebans now the call of patriotism is most 
 pressing. Blind Tiresias, the wise augur, has an- 
 nounced that this night a great assault upon the town 
 may be expected, and against this danger every pre- 
 caution must be taken. Scouts have been sent out to 
 reconnoitre ; and, even while the king is speaking, 
 one of them arrives. He brings tidings that the 
 prophecy of the augur is being already fulfilled. Seven 
 great chiefs are arming, and have sworn a solemn oath 
 over the body of a bull slain on a black-orbed shield, 
 dipping their hands in the blood
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 109 
 
 " From their firm base to rend 
 These walls, and lay their ramparts in the dust ; 
 Or, dying, with their warm blood steep this earth." 
 
 And they were casting lots, when he left, for their 
 several stations. He urges on Eteocles, as " prudent 
 helmsman " * of the state, the duty of guarding the 
 towers, for already 
 
 " All in arms the Argive host comes on, 
 Involved in dust, and from the snorting steeds 
 The thick foam falls, and whitens all the fields. 
 Even now the waves of war roar o'er the plain." 
 
 The scout returns to his post; and after a brief 
 appeal to the protection of the gods, the king also 
 leaves the scene to attend to the defences, and the 
 stage is for a moment empty. Then the Chorus enters 
 a band of Theban maidens, who are going in solemn 
 procession to offer their supplications at the altars of 
 the gods. They enter the orchestra at once, and 
 deploy the ranks of their little battalions, like the 
 Egyptian Suppliants in a former play. Their song 
 presents a wonderful intermingling of the various 
 
 * The reader will notice how constantly metaphors from 
 naval life occur in the poets of the seafaring Athenians. The 
 figure before us has become a commonplace in modern poetry. 
 So Scott says of Pitt : 
 
 "With Palimire's unaltered mood, 
 Firm at his dangerous post he stood ; 
 Each call for needful rest repelled, 
 With dying hand the rudder held, 
 Till in his fall, with fateful sway, 
 The steerage of the realm gave way."
 
 110 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 tones which "befit the inhabitants of a besieged and 
 panic-stricken city. Fear is the predominant emotion; 
 but from time to time martial chords break out through 
 the uncertain strain, as they describe the sound and 
 aspect of the attacking force ; and from time to time 
 the music sinks into the tenderest notes of pathos, as 
 the maidens call for help on each god and goddess in 
 turn. First they call on Mars, as god of war, to look 
 upon his own city, which once he held so dear, on all 
 the gods who love Thebes 
 
 "And all ye powers whose guardian care 
 Protects these walls, this favoured land, 
 O hear these pious, suppliant strains ; 
 Propitious aid us, aid a virgin band, 
 And save us from the victor's chains !" 
 
 Then they appeal to Zeus, in whose hands are all 
 events, and to his warlike offspring, Pallas, and great 
 Poseidon, lord of the horse and the ocean, and Venus, 
 the mother of their race. They cry to Apollo, and 
 Artemis the goddess of the dreadful bow, and queenly 
 Juno ; beseeching them in turn, by the crash of shields, 
 and the noise of crested warriors, and clang of bits 
 ringing out slaughter by the seven champions at the 
 gates by the heavy rumbling of chariots, and the 
 showers of stones that rage against the battlements 
 to rout these alien hosts and save the sacred city. 
 
 But the prayers of maidens, beautiful as they are, 
 are not thought the best means for nerving the energy 
 of the citizens and promoting the defence. Eteocles, 
 returning, rebukes them in no measured terms ; and,
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. HI 
 
 as a man might who was hampered by the weakness 
 of women in the moment of emergency, he launches 
 out into stern condemnation of the sex 
 
 " Nor in misfortune, nor in dear success, 
 Be woman my associate ; if her power 
 Bears sway, her insolence exceeds all bounds ; 
 But if she fears, woe to that house and city. 
 
 War is no female province, but the scene 
 
 For men : hence ; home, nor spread your mischiefs here ! " 
 
 The Greek had not that chivalrous respect for wo- 
 men which would insure the condemnation, by a 
 modern audience, of such a sentiment ; and, on the 
 other hand, their sense of proportion was offended by 
 anything approaching to forwardness on a woman's 
 part, or any interference with the offices of men. 
 Their estimate of " women's work " is best expressed 
 by the words which Thucydides puts into the mouth 
 of Pericles : " That woman is most laudable whose 
 name is least heard among men either for praise or 
 blame." In the last lines, however, Eteocles goes 
 beyond the general Greek sentiment and practice. 
 Both Homer and Virgil represent the matrons of a 
 beleaguered town as going in procession to the temples, 
 to entreat for their countrymen the protection of the 
 gods ; and in all civilised countries the rule has to 
 some extent been recognised, that " men must work 
 and women must weep." And the king soon modifies 
 his prohibition. He orders the women to leave the 
 shrines, but to continue their prayers in quiet by
 
 112 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 themselves, where the sound of their grief may not 
 increase the panic. 
 
 " My charge shall be at our seven gates to fix 
 Six of our bravest youth, myself the seventh, 
 In dreadful opposition to the foe." 
 
 In obedience to the king's command, the band of 
 maidens begin their prayers afresh. The first tones 
 are soft and feminine, and exhibit, in their expressions 
 of fear, that delicate perception of a particular phase 
 of emotion and wonderful command of words for its 
 description, which, even in this early period, distin- 
 guishes the Greek writers. " Care and fear," the 
 maiden says, "keep all rest from my heart; pressing 
 on my inmost soul comes a crowd of anxieties, that 
 kindles there a burning dread." 
 
 " And as the trembling dove, whose fears 
 
 Keep watch in her uneasy bow*r, 
 Thinks hi each rustling leaf she hears 
 
 The serpent gliding to devour, 
 I tremble at each sullen sound 
 Of clashing arms, that roars around : 
 With all their troops, with all their powers, 
 Fierce they advance to storm our towers ; 
 
 Now hurtling hi the darkened sky 
 What does my cruel fate prepare ! 
 
 Rude batt'ring stones incessant fly, 
 And all the missive storm of war." 
 
 Half familiarly they argue with the gods. " Where 
 will ye find," they say, "a better home?" If the 
 city is taken, it will be because the gods have left it,
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 113 
 
 as the king said earlier in the play. " The gods, 'tis 
 said, desert a conquered town." Then they must go 
 forth these gods who have dwelt so long in Thebes, 
 and gotten their shrines and favourite haunts there 
 they must go out to seek some other resting-place, 
 some vacant spot unoccupied by deities, desolate, and 
 cherished by no devoted worshippers. Gods, like 
 men, have homes which they get to love; they cling 
 to the people who have been kind to them, and feel 
 uneasy in a strange abode. 
 
 " Ah, to what fairer, richer plain, 
 Your radiant presence will you deign, 
 These fields abandoned to the foes, 
 
 Through whose crisped shades and smiling meads, 
 Jocundly warbling as she goes, 
 
 Dirce her liquid treasures leads, 
 And boasts that Tethys never gave, 
 Nor all her nymphs, a purer wave !" 
 
 Then they plead the antiquity of their city. It would 
 be sad for so venerable a city to be cast down to 
 Hades, and for its daughters to be dragged like horses, 
 by their hair, through the streets, with their robes 
 torn from about them. The cruel outrages offered to 
 women are the most prominent feature in ancient de- 
 scriptions of the sufferings of a captured town. The 
 other features are vividly described : 
 
 " From house to house, from street to street, 
 The crashing flames roar round and meet ; 
 Each way the fiery deluge preys, 
 And girds us with the circling blaze. 
 A. c. voL vii. H 

 
 114 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 The brave that 'midst these dire alarms 
 
 For their lost country greatly dare, 
 And fired with vengeance rush to arms, 
 
 Fall victims to the blood-stained spear. 
 The bleeding babe, with innocent cries, 
 Drops from his mother's breast, and dies. 
 See rapine rushes, bent on prey, 
 His hasty step brooks no delay ; 
 The spoiler, loaded with his store, 
 
 Envious the loaded spoiler views ; 
 Disdains another should have more, 
 
 And his insatiate toil renews. 
 Thick on the earth the rich spoil lies ; 
 
 For the rude plunderers' restless-rolling tide, 
 Their worthless numbers waving wide, 
 Drop in their wild haste many a glitt'ring prize." 
 
 The chorus is brought to an end by the return of 
 the messenger, who is now able to give a full account 
 of the seven champions who are leading the attack. 
 The portion of the play which follows is occupied 
 entirely with the description of the combatants who 
 are to meet at each gate. It combines three elements 
 an epic, a tragic, and a scenic. 
 
 It is a grand epic muster-roll : heroes and arms and 
 warlike challenges are described with the pomp and 
 circumstance of the Homeric story; as graphic as 
 Scott, as solemn as Milton. 
 
 The tragic element is twofold. First, through all 
 the messenger's description of arms and shields, runs 
 the idea of the moral conflict that is to be waged at 
 the same time between moderation and boastfulness, 
 between patriotism and fury ; a part and type of the
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 115 
 
 conflict which the Greek and the artist are always 
 waging against the Oriental and the savage. Secondly, 
 and this is its main purpose in the play, the de- 
 scription of the several champions of the foe, each in 
 turn calling for a Theban to oppose him, leads up 
 gradually to the last pair, when Polynices, the brother 
 of the king, and most daring of the assailants, can be 
 opposed by none but by the king himself. As one 
 chief after another is named, we tremble to feel that it 
 will soon come to this ill-fated pair, and we know 
 what the issue will be, 
 
 " How each will slay his brother at a blow," 
 
 and how their fall will " leave the land accurst," a 
 legacy of new troubles for the unhappy house of 
 CEdipus. 
 
 Besides these, the passage has a scenic element. 
 It is a remarkable instance of that stately regularity 
 which we have noticed before. The messenger and 
 the king stand together on the stage, and the Chorus 
 is arrayed in the orchestra. The messenger describes 
 an Argive champion ; the king, in reply, describes the 
 Theban whom he will send against him ; the Chorus 
 utters a short prayer for the success of the native 
 champion. This is repeated seven times ; the seventh 
 being distinguished by the addition of some discus- 
 sion between the three speakers, and ending in a 
 much longer choric ode. Each of the Argive heroes 
 is known by the cognisance on his shield, like the 
 knights of medieval chivalry. 
 
 The first foe is Tydeus.
 
 116 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 " Already near the Prcetian gate in arms 
 Stands Tydeus raging ; for the prophet's voice 
 Forbids his foot to pass Ismenus' stream, 
 The victims not propitious : at the pass 
 Furious, and eager for the fight, the chief, 
 Fierce as the dragon when the mid-day sun 
 Calls forth his glowing terrors, raves aloud, 
 Reviles the sage as forming tim'rous league 
 With war and fate. Frowning he speaks, and shakes 
 The dark crest streaming o'er his shaded helm 
 In triple wave ; whilst dreadful ring around 
 The brazen bosses of his shield, impressed 
 With this proud argument. A sable sky 
 Burning with stars ; and in the midst, full-orbed, 
 A silver moon, the eye of night, o'er all 
 Awful in beauty pours her peerless light. 
 Clad in these proud habiliments, he stands 
 Close to the river's margin, and with shouts 
 Demands the war, like an impatient steed, 
 That pants upon the foaming curb, and waits 
 With fiery expectation the known signal, 
 Swift at the trumpet's sound to burst away. 
 What equal chief wilt thou appoint against him ? " 
 
 So speaks the soldier, and Eteocles replies : 
 
 " This military pride, it moves not me. 
 The gorgeous blazonry of arms, the crest 
 High waving o'er the helm, the roaring boss, 
 Harmless without the spear, imprint no wound. 
 The sable night, spangled with golden stars, 
 On his proud shield impressed, perchance may prove 
 A gloomy presage. Should the shade of night 
 Fall on his dying eyes, the boastful chargo 
 May to the bearer be deemed ominous,
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 117 
 
 And be the prophet of his own destruction. 
 
 Against his rage the son of Astacus, 
 
 That breathes deliberate valour, at that gate 
 
 Will I appoint commander ; bent on deeds 
 
 Of glory, but a votary at the shrine 
 
 Of modesty, he Bcorns the arrogant vaunt 
 
 As base, but bids brave actions speak his worth. 
 
 The flower of that bold stem, which from the ground 
 
 Rose armed, and fell not in the deathful fight, 
 
 Is Menalippus ; him his parent earth 
 
 Claims as her own, and in her natural right 
 
 Calls him to guard her from the hostile spear : 
 
 But the brave deed the die of war decides." 
 
 Then the Chorus follows, with, its prayer : 
 
 " Go then, my guardian hero, go ; 
 And may each fav'ring god with bright success 
 Thy gen'rous valour bless ; 
 For at thy country's dear command 
 Thou arm'st thy righteous hand, 
 To pour her vengeance on the foe. 
 Yet my sad heart must sigh, 
 When on the blood-empurpled ground, 
 Gored with many a gaping wound, 
 I see my dearest friends expiring lie." 
 
 At the Electra gates stands Capaneus, the impious, 
 who openly defies both gods and men. He laughs at 
 the thunderbolts of heaven, and will take the city, he 
 says, "whether Zeus will or no." His cognisance is a 
 flaming torch, and his motto, " I will burn the city." 
 Against him is set the fiery Polyphontes; and the 
 Chorus prays that the heaven's lightning which he 
 defies may fall and blast him; as, indeed, it did.
 
 118 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 To the gates of K"eis comes Eteoclus, who bears on 
 his shield an armed man climbing a scaling-ladder, and 
 round is written, " Not Mars himself shall beat me 
 from the towers." Against him Megareus, son of 
 Creon, is matched with little fear. 
 
 The giant Hippomedon attacks the gates of Pallas. 
 Upon his vast shield appears a Typhon breathing out 
 fire and smoke ; and like one of the frenzied followers 
 of Bacchus, he rushes shouting to the war. To face 
 this foe Eteocles has two champions. First, Pallas 
 herself, who, 
 
 " Holding near the gates 
 Her hallowed state, abhors his furious rage ; "- 
 
 and, of mortal combatants, the bold Hyperbius, whose 
 shield is a good omen of his success. For, as Hippo- 
 medon displays the Typhon, so 
 
 " Hyperbius bears 
 
 The majesty of Jove securely throned, 
 Grasping his flaming bolt, and who e'er saw 
 The Thund'rer vanquished ? In the fellowship 
 Of friendly gods, the conquerors are with us, 
 They with the conquered ; and with like event 
 These warriors shall engage. As Jove in fight 
 Subdued the fell Typhceus, so his form 
 Emblazoned on the shield shall guard Hyperbius." 
 
 Fifth, at the northern gates, a soft-cheeked youth is 
 set the girl-faced Parthenopeeus, who has, none the 
 less, the soul of a hero. His cognisance is no good 
 omen for Thebes. It is the hateful Sphinx the old 
 enemy of the city and she is represented as carrying 
 a Theban in her clutches, and holding him up as a
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 119 
 
 mark for the enemy's arrows. Against him goes 
 Actor, who will not boast, but do ; " and I doubt 
 not," says the king, "that he will keep the hateful 
 monster outside the city, only to draw a more furious 
 attack upon the man who carries her." 
 
 The sixth chief is Amphiaraus, the prophet, who 
 knew from the first the fate that awaited the expedi- 
 tion. Even now he is rebuking Polynices bitterly for 
 leading foreign arms against his native land. 
 
 " How grateful to the gods must this deed be, 
 Glorious to hear, and in the roll of fame 
 Shining to distant ages, thus to lead 
 These foreign arms to waste thy bleeding country, 
 To raze those princely mansions where thy fathers, 
 Heroes and demigods, once held their seats ! " 
 
 And for himself he says : 
 
 " Prescient of fate I shall enrich this soil 
 Sunk in the hostile plain. But let us fight. 
 One thing at least is mine ; I will not find 
 A vulgar or dishonourable death." 
 
 The warrior-prophet alone bears no device upon his 
 broad shield, for he 
 
 " Wishes to be, not to appear, the best." * 
 
 Eteocles enlarges on the misery of the fate that 
 makes a righteous man a companion of the wicked, 
 and exposes him to a share in their punishment. 
 
 * When the play was produced at Athens this line was re- 
 cognised as a description of Aristides, the actor turning towards 
 him as he sat in the theatre, and the whole audience applaud- 
 ing the application. . ..
 
 120 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Amphiaraus, the king thinks, will not engage at all; 
 yet the veteran hero Lasthenes is sent out to face him. 
 And now comes the terrible part of the messenger's 
 announcement : 
 
 " The seventh bold chief forgive me that I name 
 Thy brother, and relate the horrible vows, 
 The imprecations which his rage pours forth 
 Against the city; on fire to mount the walls, 
 And from their turrets to this land proclaim, 
 Bending its echoes with the song of war, 
 Captivity : to meet thee sword to sword, 
 Kill thee, then die upon thee." 
 
 His shield bears a golden figure of Justice, and the 
 scroll 
 
 " Yet once more to his country, and once more 
 To his paternal throne I will restore him." 
 
 Eteocles recognises the fulfilment of the imprecations 
 uttered by (Edipus himself against his sons, but he 
 determines unflinchingly to face the issue. Never was 
 Justice, virgin child of Zeus, a teacher or friend of 
 Polynices, and so his arrogant motto will not restore 
 him. 
 
 " In this confiding I will meet his arms 
 In armed opposition : who more fit ? 
 Chief shall engage with chief, brother with brother, 
 And foe with foe. Haste, arm me for the fight ; 
 Bring forth my greaves, my hauberk, my strong spear ! " 
 
 The Theban maidens beg their king not to incur the 
 inexpiable guilt of fratricide. Let Theban fight with 
 Theban ; that blood can be washed away,
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 121 
 
 " But death of brothers by each other slain, 
 That stain no expiation can atone." 
 
 To their entreaties the king opposes the claims of 
 honour, and he faces the curse with the courage of 
 despair. 
 
 " No ; since the god impels me, I will on. 
 And let the race by Laius, let them all 
 Abhorred of Phoebus, in this storm of fate 
 Sink down to deep Cocytus' dreary flood." 
 
 The Chorus think that in calmer moments Eteocles 
 will give up so wild a resolution ; but his choice is 
 deliberate, he sees the certain ruin, and goes out un- 
 hesitatingly to meet it. 
 
 The ode which follows strikes the key-note of the 
 piece. The issue of the war is being determined at the 
 seven gates, and meanwhile the Chorus express the 
 anxiety of the spectators, and show how fully the past 
 history of the royal house justifies the gloomiest appre- 
 hensions. We give the whole ode, as a good instance of 
 the function of the Chorus in explaining the true moral 
 significance of an event : 
 
 " She comes, the fierce tremendous power, 
 
 And harrows up my soul with dread ; 
 No gentle goddess, prompt to shower 
 
 Her blessings on some favoured head. 
 I know her now, the prophetess of ill, 
 
 And vengeance ratifies each word, 
 
 The votive fury, fiend abhorred, 
 The father's curses to fulfil. 
 
 Dreadful she comes, and with her brings 
 The brood of fate, that laps the blood of kings.
 
 122 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 The rude barbarian, from the mines 
 
 Of Scythia, o'er the lots presides ; 
 Ruthless to each his share assigns, 
 
 And the contested realm divides. 
 To each allots no wider a domain, 
 
 Than on the cold earth, as they lie, 
 
 Their breathless bodies occupy, 
 Eegardless of an ampler reign. 
 
 Such narrow compass does the sword, 
 A cruel umpire, their high claims afford. 
 
 Conflicting thus in furious mood, 
 
 Should each by other's hand be slain, 
 Should the black fountain of their blood 
 
 Spout forth and drench the thirsty plain ; 
 Who shall the solemn expiation pay? 
 
 Who with pure lavers cleanse the dead? 
 
 Miseries to miseries thus succeed, 
 And vengeance marks this house her prey, 
 
 Swift to chastise the first ill deed ; 
 And the sons' sons in her deep fury bleed. 
 
 The first ill deed from Laius sprung ; 
 
 Thrice from his shrine these words of fate 
 Awful the Pythian Phoebus sung, 
 
 ' Die childless, wouldst thou save the state.' 
 Urged by his friends, as round the free wine flows, 
 
 To Love's forbidden rites he flies. 
 
 By the son's hand the father dies, 
 He in the chaste ground, whence he rose, 
 
 Was bold to implant the deadly root, 
 And madness reared each baleful spreading shoot. 
 
 Wide o'er misfortune's surging tide 
 Billows succeeding billows spread ;
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 123 
 
 Should one, its fury spent, subside, 
 Another lifts its boist'rous head, 
 And foams around the city's shattered prow. 
 But should the rough tempestuous wave 
 Force through our walls, too slight to save, 
 And lay the thin partition low, 
 
 Will not the flood's resistless sway 
 Sweep kings and people, town and realms away? 
 
 The dreadful curse pronounced of old 
 
 To vengeance rouses ruthless hate ; 
 And slaughter, ranging uncontrolled, 
 
 Pursues the hideous work of fate. 
 Wrecked in the storm, the great, the brave, the wise, 
 
 Are sunk beneath the roaring tide. 
 
 Such was the chief, this city's pride, 
 Dear to each god in yon bright skies, 
 
 Whose prudence took our dead away, 
 The ravening monster gorged with human prey. 
 
 Where now the chief ? his glories where ? 
 Fallen, fallen. From the polluted bed 
 Indignant madness, wild despair, 
 
 And agonising grief succeed. 
 The light of heaven, himself, his sons, abhorred, 
 Darkling he feeds his gloomy rage, 
 Bids them, with many a curse, engage 
 And part their empire with the sword. 
 
 That curse now holds its unmoved state, 
 The furious fiend charged with the work of fate." 
 
 The messenger returns. The city has escaped the 
 yoke of slavery; the boasts of the mighty are fallen; 
 and the vessel of the state having sprung no leak 
 under all the assaults of the wave, now rides in calm
 
 124 JESCHYLUS. 
 
 water. But sorrow is mingled with the general joy, 
 for the royal brothers have fulfilled their father's 
 curse ; each has slain his brother, and with them is 
 fallen the whole race of Laius. 
 
 This sorrow far outweighs the joy, at least with us, 
 whose interest is mainly in the family of (Edipus. The 
 rest of the play, accordingly, is full of lamentation till 
 close upon the end, when Antigone, the sister of the 
 dead brothers, claims our admiration ; but even she, 
 in announcing her heroic resolution, reminds us that 
 there are still more woes in store for this devoted 
 house. The Chorus chant a dirge, and while we listen 
 to its music, a long procession of Theban citizens enters 
 across the whole front of the stage, bearing the bodies 
 of Eteocles and Polynices ; after them come Antigone 
 and Ismene her sister, with a long train of women 
 wailing and lamenting. As the first mourners pass, 
 the Chorus beat their breasts and heads with regular 
 stroke in time to the music, which here assumes for a 
 moment, without losing its sadness, the character of 
 those strains by which the time was set for the rowers 
 in an Athenian galley. They are echoing the beat of 
 the oars in that ship of gloomy sanctity, 
 
 " Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," 
 
 which is moving now over the waves of Acheron to 
 the unseen land. Then the music changes to a dis- 
 tinct march, as Antigone and Ismene come with their 
 procession of women, and take their places, as the men 
 had done, upon the stage. The corpses of the two 
 brothers are placed in front, and the women are grouped
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 125 
 
 behind them in robes of mourning, and behind these 
 again stand the multitude of Theban citizens. As we 
 contemplate this grand tableau of sorrow, the Chorus, 
 divided into two bands, express the general feeling. 
 The varied music gives interest and beauty to words 
 which in themselves are dull and monotonous. Re- 
 petition is characteristic of lamentation. The mourner 
 has only one feeling to express, and cares little to find 
 new words to express it ; he gets little further than, 
 " my son, Absalom! Absalom, my son, my son!" 
 But the song ends with words of rest, though it is the 
 rest of the exhausted storm. 
 
 " It falls, the royal house, it falls ; 
 Kuin lords it o'er the walls, 
 And the Furies howl around, 
 Notes of shrill, soul-piercing sound. 
 Slaughter reeking yet with gore, 
 Raises high each gate before, 
 Where they fought, and where they bled, 
 Trophies of the mighty dead ; 
 And, the rival chief subdued, 
 Ceases from her work of blood." 
 
 Then Antigone and Ismene come forward, and take up 
 their places, Antigone by the corpse of Polynices, and 
 Ismene by that of Eteocles ; and there, in short answer- 
 ing cries, lament for their dead brothers. Here we see 
 the systematic wailing of those mourning women, " the 
 women and the minstrels making a noise," whose 
 services were and still are constantly employed in the 
 East. The words are nothing it is the series of sud- 
 den piercing cries that so forcibly expresses grief.
 
 126 JESCHYLUS. 
 
 Here the actual subject of the play could end ; but 
 we are not only to be satiated with calamity, but to 
 expect more ; and, what is better, the weakness of all 
 this wailing is to be relieved by the heroism of Anti- 
 gone. A herald comes upon the scene, bringing the 
 decree of the elders of the city with regard to the 
 burial of the two brothers. Eteocles is to be carried 
 to 'the tomb with all honour, as a hero and patriot ; 
 but Polynices, as an enemy of his country, is to be 
 cast out, unburied, to the birds and to the dogs. 
 Such is the decree of the Theban rulers. Antigone 
 replies : 
 
 " And to the Theban rulers I declare, 
 If none besides dare bury him, myself 
 Will do that office, heedless of the danger, 
 And think no shame to disobey the state, 
 Paying the last sad duties to a brother. 
 Nature has tender ties, and strangely joins 
 The offspring of the same unhappy mother 
 And the same wretched father. In this task 
 Shrink not, my soul, to share the ills he suffered, 
 Involuntary ills ; and while life warms 
 This breast be bold to show a sister's love 
 To a dead brother ! Shall the famished wolves 
 Fatten on him 1 Away with such a thought ! " 
 
 In spite of the state's repeated prohibition she per- 
 sists in her resolve, and goes out at once to perform it. 
 This is the closing scene. The two corpses are carried 
 out separately, Antigone and half the Chorus follow- 
 ing that of Polynices ; the other half, with Ismene, that 
 of Eteocles.
 
 THE SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 127 
 
 " To those that wait the fate of Polynices 
 Let the state act its pleasure. We will go 
 Attend his funeral rites, and aid his sister 
 To place him in the earth. Such sorrows move 
 The common feelings of humanity ; 
 And when the deed is just the state approves it." 
 
 Such are the words of Antigone and her friends. The 
 other train reply : 
 
 " And we with him, as justice and the state 
 Concur to call us. Next th' immortal gods 
 And Jove's high power this valiant youth came forth 
 The guardian of his country, and repelled 
 Th' assault of foreign foes, whose raging force 
 Rushed like a torrent threatening to o'erwhelm us."
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 
 
 PROM the story of Thebes we pass now to Pelops* 
 line, to contemplate there again the terrible course of 
 divine displeasure once provoked against a family. 
 Atreus, the son of Pelops, being wronged by his 
 brother Thyestes, revenged himself by an act of 
 treachery and impiety. He invited Thyestes to a 
 banquet, in which the flesh of his own children was 
 set before the unconscious father. The sun turned 
 back in his course to avoid a sight so horrible, and 
 from this time calamity never departed from that 
 house, till an expiator was found in the person of 
 Orestes. Agamemnon, who led the Greeks to Troy 
 to revenge the injury of his brother Menelaus, was son 
 of this impious Atreus. "While he was waging war for 
 ten years in Asia, his wife, Clytemnestra, was unfaith- 
 ful to him, and admitted into his palace one ^Egisthus, 
 the son of the outraged Thyestes, who was destined 
 bitterly to avenge his father's wrong upon the house 
 of Atreus. The guilty pair determined to murder 
 Agamemnon on his return, for both were afraid to
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 129 
 
 face him ; and Clytemnestra had, besides, this charge 
 against him, that he had sacrificed her daughter 
 Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis, whose 
 wrath had kept the whole Grecian fleet becalmed at 
 Aulis. Moreover, Agamemnon too was found un- 
 faithful, for he brought with him Cassandra, the in- 
 spired daughter of Priam, to be his concubine. And 
 so Agamemnon died, and Clytemnestra and ^gisthus 
 reigned in Argos; but Orestes, son of Agamemnon, 
 when he became a man, was charged by Apollo to 
 avenge the murder of his father. And he obeyed, and 
 killed both ^Egisthus and his mother. Then the dark 
 deities who pursue impious murderers drove the mat- 
 ricide in misery from land to land, until at last his 
 cause was tried, and Apollo pleaded for him before the 
 high court of Areopagus at Athens, and Minerva, the 
 patron goddess of the city, gave the casting-vote that 
 set him free. And so at last the curse was put away, 
 and the Furies, who had been cruel powers, became 
 beneficent, and a temple was assigned to them in 
 Athens, and they were called the Kind Ones. 
 
 Such are the outlines of the story. In the " Agamem- 
 non" is represented the death of the king; in the "Choe- 
 phori," the vengeance of Orestes ; in the " Eumenides," 
 his trial and deliverance ; the three plays thus forming 
 one connected whole, or Trilogy. Since this Trilogy is 
 universally regarded as one of the greatest works of 
 human art, while some perhaps would admit no rival 
 to it, we must try at the outset to show in what direc- 
 tion the features of its greatness are to be looked for. 
 
 A. c. vol. vii. I
 
 130 
 
 Perhaps we do not sufficiently remember how real a 
 person Agamemnon was to the Athenian audience. 
 In Homer's verses, which were constantly in their 
 mouths, he lived and moved as a familiar figure ; they 
 never doubted that he was all that Homer made him, 
 chosen captain of the whole Grecian hosts, the first 
 man in Greece (and Greece was the world), " the king of 
 men." And here we are to see him in the hour of his 
 triumph, the representative of Greece victorious over 
 the barbarian world. And as the actors, from the first, 
 are heroes great from their fame and position, so, as 
 the play goes on, the action is caught up into the hands 
 of the gods themselves, and we are admitted to see 
 and hear Apollo, and Minerva, and the Furies. But 
 this greatness of fame and position is something 
 merely outward, it serves to create a prejudice in 
 favour of the persons, to insure attention to all they 
 do or say ; but their real greatness lies, of course, in 
 their characters as depicted by the poet. In this 
 direction we shall have to look for one of the chief 
 elements of sublimity : in the force of intellect exhib- 
 ited by the actors; the intensity not violence, but 
 restrained intensity of the emotions expressed; and 
 the strength of the wills which are shown conflicting. 
 But even more than in the characters we must look for 
 greatness in the action. There again there is an outer 
 and an inner side. The mere death of Agamemnon is a 
 tremendous event. " Kill a king, said'st thou?" A king 
 in the old heroic days, when a real divinity hedged 
 him round ? The king of men himself?
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 131 
 
 " The cease of Majesty 
 Dies not alone ; but like a gulf, doth draw 
 What's near it with it ; it is a massy wheel 
 Fixed on the summit of the highest mount, 
 To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things 
 Are mortised and adjoined ; which when it falls, 
 Each small annexment, petty consequence, 
 Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone 
 Did the king sigh, but with a general groan." * 
 
 And the death of Clytemnestra and ^gisthus is a tre- 
 mendous act of vengeance. A similar act forms the plot 
 of one of Shakespeare's greatest plays; for Orestes is a 
 Greek Hamlet, as Clytemnestra is the Greek Lady Mac- 
 beth. And in the last of the three plays the actions are 
 important indeed. The solemn foundation of the Areo- 
 pagus to be for ever a high court in Athens, the estab- 
 lishment of the Eumenides as guardians of the city, 
 and the conducting of them with solemn pomp to their 
 temple, were events, at least to an Athenian, of over- 
 powering interest. But this is only the outside. The 
 real plot consists in the course of divine providence, the 
 working out of moral laws; and the unity of the whole 
 Trilogy is best seen when we trace this plot through- 
 out it. The veil is drawn aside which hides the dark 
 forms of Erinnys and Ate from men's eyes as they 
 scowl upon the sinner and dog his steps ; as they stir 
 up the powers that punish, or in their anger rear the 
 fell brood of arrogance and impiety in their victim's 
 home. And we are admitted, too, to see the conflict 
 
 * "Hamlet," Act iii. sc. 3.
 
 132 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 between the bright gods of day and the powers of 
 darkness; we are taught why men suffer, and how they 
 may be healed. In the inner moral significance of the 
 plot, then, we must look for the chief element of great- 
 ness. Nor is it fanciful to regard the play in this way, 
 as if we were seeking for allegory or mystical interpre- 
 tations ; for the poet clearly treated his subject so, and 
 meant his audience to receive it. The moral meaning 
 of events is traced continuously, and openly expressed. 
 
 The reader will be able to judge for himself of the 
 value of the answer which ^Eschylus gives to the great 
 question of the origin of evil. How far does his solu- 
 tion fail in the several points which it attempts ? Does 
 it correspond with the facts? Does it justify God? 
 Does it cheer man? Out of the depth of heathen 
 darkness, from among the idols and the impure rites 
 of pagan Greece, there conies up a gleam of light 
 light of explanation, light of reproof, light of encourage- 
 ment. What is it worth ? Does it seem to be a faint 
 remnant of some old revelation, diluted, refracted, dis- 
 coloured, but still a remnant of the truth ? Or is it a 
 spark of promise a beginning which is to burst into 
 fuller light some day ? This question is surely most 
 important. If we consider how much modern Europe 
 owes to these Greeks who applauded ^schylus, we 
 cannot but inquire with the deepest interest into the 
 degree and character of their moral enlightenment. 
 And on this point no information is more valuable 
 than that which the tragedians give us ; and this Tri- 
 logy is, of all tragedies, the most instructive. 
 
 Once more, to consider the main drift of these plays.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 133 
 
 We are so much accustomed to regard each man as 
 responsible for his own sins, and these only, that we 
 are inclined to forget how much is to be said for a dif- 
 ferent view to forget that children bear the iniquity 
 of their parents. Now here is a nation full of the joy 
 of life, and full also of careful and wondering reflection 
 just like a child, in fact, in both; and this nation gives 
 us or one of its greatest minds gives us as its ex- 
 perience, that a man is not entirely responsible for his 
 own deeds, but is impelled by temptation which comes 
 on him in punishment of his father's crimes. The moral 
 unit, so to speak, is a house, not a man. A family 
 sins, and a family is punished. The gods then are 
 just, though their course of action presses hardly on 
 the individual. But where is the hope 1 The Prome- 
 theus and the Eumenides seem to give it. On the one 
 hand, suffering at last expiates, and vengeance can be 
 satisfied ; on the other hand, a constant and conscien- 
 tious pursuit of duty may obtain remission. These 
 two points are shown thus. When Orestes is set free, 
 not only has the house of Pelops suffered enough to 
 satisfy the justice of the gods, but Orestes, by his care- 
 ful execution of all divine commands, has been the 
 means of carrying out the divine will, and restoring, as 
 it were, the moral balance. He has awarded to each 
 his exact due, whether of punishment or respect ; he 
 has given to piety and to vengeance their right propor- 
 tion ; and when the balance is restored, nothing is 
 wanting except certain ceremonies to complete his 
 expiation. 
 
 !N"ow we may think what we will about the right-
 
 134 42SCHYLUS. 
 
 ness or wrongness of this view of morals, but we are 
 compelled to notice, with, respect as well as pity, that 
 the Greeks, our teachers, once thought thus ; and to 
 consider how dismal was the state of a man who ever 
 feared that some Fury, resistless and malignant, was 
 urging him to a ruin which he could not but rush into. 
 How little hope the individual could draw from his 
 confidence that in the end all would come right, seeing 
 that, although the race might be restored, the indivi- 
 dual was to perish by the way ! 
 
 But the sadder all this is the fitter it is for tragedy ; 
 and if we have in any degree realised it, we shall the 
 better see the terrible grandeur of the powers which 
 ^Eschylus shows us at work in Clytemnestra and 
 Agamemnon. 
 
 But let us go into the theatre and see it all for our- 
 selves. First comes the " Agamemnon " the " Mac- 
 beth of antiquity," as Milman calls it ; "as noble a 
 tragedy," says Professor "Wilson, " as ever went sweep- 
 ing by across the floor of a stage." 
 
 The busy conversation of the crowd is hushed, the 
 curtain is removed, and the play begins. A stately 
 palace, built of vast stones, such as were 
 
 " Piled by the hands of giants 
 For godlike kings of old," 
 
 forms the background of the scene ; and upon a lonely 
 tower on its outer wall a watchman lies, resting on his 
 arm, and " looking forth into the night." For ten long 
 years he has watched there, with his eyes towards 
 Troy; for Agamemnon had promised, when he went 

 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 135 
 
 away, to send, as soon as Troy should fall, a message 
 of beacon-fires to tell the good news to his wife in 
 Argos. The watchman has hardly spoken before we 
 feel, from his weariness, how long the war has lasted, 
 and how long Clytemnestra's faithfulness has been 
 tried. Night after night he has watched the stars, 
 and passed the damp cold hours in sleepless weariness, 
 striving at times to beguile his loneliness with song ; 
 but at all such times gaiety has been driven away 
 by what 1 
 
 " Still, as I strive to guile the unquiet night 
 Sad remedy ! with song or carol gay, 
 I. can but weep and mourn this fatal house, 
 Not as of old with righteous wisdom ruled." * 
 
 While he is speaking, far away out on the right of the 
 stage a bright flame shoots up : it is the beacon's blaze. 
 " All hail," the watchman cries, 
 
 " All hail, thou glory of the night ! that blazest 
 With noon-day splendour, wakening Argos up 
 To dance and song for this thrice-blest event ! " 
 
 He will go to tell the queen of the good news, good 
 news, and yet, 
 
 " But peace ! no more ! the seal is on my lips ! 
 The palace' self, could it but find a voice, 
 Would speak from its dark walls ! To the understanding 
 I speak ; to those who understand not nothing." 
 
 Already we begin to fear that some storm is coming. 
 
 * The translations throughout the " Agamemnon " are by 
 Dean Milman.
 
 136 JESCHYLUS. 
 
 The watchman is gone, and the Chorus, twelve old 
 Argive senators, troop in and take their place. No 
 sounds of all that we have heard in the preceding 
 plays seem to equal the grandeur of this half-trium- 
 phant, half -desponding song. The Greek fleet sail 
 forth proudly, led by the " twin-throned, twin-sceptred 
 pair," Menelaus and Agamemnon, 
 
 " And loud and fierce their "battle-clang, 
 Like screams of angry vultures rang," 
 
 as they go, heaven-sent, to punish Paris, and bring 
 alike on Greece and Troy 
 
 " Many a wild and wearying strife, 
 
 With failing knees bowed to the dust, 
 And lances shivering in their onward thrust." 
 
 Then the sad prophetic note is struck again : 
 
 " But be the issue as it may, 
 Eternal fate will hold its way ; 
 Nor lips that pray, nor eyes that weep, 
 Nor cups that rich libations steep, 
 Soothe those dark Powers' relentless ire, 
 Whose altars never flame with hallowed fire." 
 
 And now the whole city is seen ablaze with the fires 
 of sacrifice, and the Chorus guesses that Clytemnestra 
 has received the long-wished-for tidings. While they 
 wait, eager to hear if this be so, their song takes up 
 the story of the journey of the fleet to Troy. 
 
 An awful portent had appeared on the way to the 
 two monarchs. Two eagles, while the host was start- 
 ing, were seen close by the palace, preying on a hare,
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 137 
 
 the favourite of Artemis. And Calchas, the seer, read 
 the omen thus : " Troy will fall before the sons of 
 Atreus, but a shade hangs over their proud array, for 
 Artemis is angry at the eagles' feast ; " and though the 
 prophet prayed that the omen might be averted, yet 
 the gloomy burden peals out startlingly : 
 
 " Ring out the dolorous hymn, yet triumph still the good !" 
 
 Calchas prayed that the injured goddess might not in 
 anger delay the fleet, and force upon the chiefs 
 
 " That other sacrifice 
 That darker sacrifice, unblest 
 By music or by jocund feast : 
 
 Whence sad domestic strife shall rise, 
 And, dreadless of her lord, fierce woman's hate ; 
 Whose child-avenging wrath in sullen state 
 Broods, wily housewife, in her chamber's gloom, 
 Over that unforgotten doom. 
 
 Such were the words that Calchas clanged abroad, 
 When crossed those ominous birds the onward road 
 Of that twice royal brotherhood : 
 A mingled doom 
 Of glory and of gloom. 
 Ring out the dolorous hymn, yet triumph still the good !" 
 
 Ominous, indeed, is the starting ; and the mind, 
 oppressed with apprehension, turns to think of the 
 holy powers that govern all these things. Zeus it is 
 who rules unrivalled. Two dynasties of gods have 
 fallen before him ; and still his lesson to mortals is, 
 " Learning through Sorrow." Dark and sad it all seems
 
 138 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 now, and wisdom when it comes will be the wisdom 
 of remorse. 
 
 The fears of Calchas were too well founded. On 
 Chalcis' coast, by Aulis' rock-bound shore, winds came 
 that kept the fleet in unwelcome rest, and famine and 
 weariness wasted the strength of Greece. At last the 
 seer spoke out in the name of Artemis, and called for 
 a virgin's blood, the blood of Iphigenia. It was a 
 hard choice for Agamemnon, 
 
 " Dire doom ! to disobey the Gods' commands ! 
 More dire, my child, mine house's pride, to slay, 
 Dabbling in virgin blood a father's hands." 
 
 But necessity is overpowering, 
 
 " So he endured to be the priest 
 In that child-slaughtering rite unblest, 
 The first-fruit offering of that host 
 In fatal war for a bad woman lost. 
 The prayers, the mute appeal to her hard sire, 
 
 Her youth, her virgin beauty, 
 Nought heeded they, the Chiefs for war on fire. 
 
 So to the ministers of that dire duty 
 (First having prayed) the father gave the sign, 
 Like some soft kid, to lift her to the shrine. 
 
 There lay she prone, 
 
 Her graceful garments round her thrown ; 
 But first her beauteous mouth around 
 Their violent bonds they wound, 
 Lest her dread curse the fated house should smite 
 
 With their rude inarticulate might. 
 But she her saffron robe to earth let fall : 
 The shaft of pity from her eye
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 139 
 
 Transpierced that awful priesthood one and all. 
 
 Lovely as in a picture stood she by 
 As she would speak. Thus at her father's feasts 
 The virgin, 'mid the revelling guests, 
 Was wont with her chaste voice to supplicate 
 For her dear father an auspicious fate." 
 
 At the end of this sad story the Chorus cease. This 
 omen was but too true ; yet it is no gain, they say, to 
 know the future it is only antedating sorrow. Yet 
 may better days come now. 
 
 Such hopes are little better than forebodings. 
 
 That beautiful picture of the death of Iphigenia has 
 been the theme of many poets. Euripides has a 
 tragedy upon it the " Iphigenia in Aulis ;" and among 
 the Eomans, Lucretius has described it finely, transla- 
 ting and almost improving the two tragedians, as an 
 instance of the evils to which religion has prompted 
 men ; and Tennyson has drawn the whole in a few 
 lines with intense vividness, in his " Dream of Fair 
 "Women." 
 
 " With the sound of these prophetic strains yet in their 
 ears, the Chorus sees the approach of Clytemnestra. Their 
 strain has prepared us for something dreadful in the face 
 and figure of the avenging Queen, 
 
 ' For ne'er was mortal sound so full of woe.' 
 
 She comes and then we have such a description as makes 
 the glow-worm light of modern poetry 
 
 * Pale its ineffectual fires. ' 
 
 She comes rejoicingly, exultingly floating on stately and 
 beautiful in her revenge of which the passion, about to
 
 140 J3SCHYLUS. 
 
 be satiated and appeased, breaks out into a glorious burst, 
 that shows how sin and wickedness can make a Poetess of 
 the Highest Order. 
 
 She tells the Chorus that Troy has been taken, and they 
 ask, ' How long ago ? When was the city sacked ? ' She 
 replies, ' 'Twos in the night that bore this rising light' 
 The Chorus, incredulous, asks again, * But how ? What 
 messenger could coine so fast ? ' And this is her glorious 
 reply:"* 
 
 " The Fire-God, kindling his bright light on Ida ! 
 Beacon to beacon fast and forward flashed, 
 An estafette of fire, on to the rocks 
 Of Hermes-hallowed Lemnos : from that isle 
 Caught, thirdly, Jove-crowned Athos the red light, 
 That broader, skimming o'er the shimmering sea, 
 Went travelling in its strength. For our delight 
 The pine-torch, golden-glittering like the sun, 
 Spoke to the watchman on Macistus' height. 
 Nor he delaying, nor by careless sleep 
 Subdued, sent on the fiery messenger: 
 Far o'er Euripus' tide the beacon-blaze 
 Signalled to the Messapian sentinels. 
 Light answering light, they sent the tidings on, 
 Kindling into a blaze the old dry heath ; 
 And mightier still, and waning not a whit, 
 The light leaped o'er Asopus' plain, most like 
 The crescent moon, on to Cithaeron's peak, 
 And woke again another missive fire. 
 Nor did the guard disdain the far-seen light, 
 But kindled up at once a mightier flame. 
 
 * From Professor Wilson's critique on the "Agamemnon," 
 appended to his ' Homer and his Translators.' W. Blackwood 
 & Sons.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. HI 
 
 O'er the Gorgopian lake it flashed like lightning 
 
 On the sea-beaten cliffs of Megaris ; 
 
 Woke up the watchman not to spare his fire, 
 
 And, gathering in its unexhausted strength, 
 
 The long-waving bearded flame from off the cliffs 
 
 That overlook the deep Saronian gulf, 
 
 As from a mirror streamed. On flashed it ; reached 
 
 Arachne, our close neighbouring height, and there, 
 
 Not unbegptten of that bright fire on Ida, 
 
 On sprang it to Atrides' palace-roof. 
 
 Such were the laws of those swift beacon-fires : 
 
 So flash the torches on from hand to hand 
 
 In the holy rite, brightest the first and last. 
 
 Such is the proof and sign of victory 
 
 Sent by my husband from now captured Troy." 
 
 The reader will recognise here the original of 
 Macaulay's "Armada." Indeed that poem gives, better 
 than any translation, the spirit and dash and pictur- 
 esqueness of the passage ; from the kindling of the 
 first beacon on Mount Edgecombe's height, 
 
 " Till Belvoir's lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent, 
 
 And Lincoln sped the message on o'er the wide vale of 
 Trent; 
 
 Till Skiddaw saw the fire that burned on Gaunt's em- 
 battled pile, 
 
 And the red gkre on Skiddaw roused the burghers of 
 Carlisle." 
 
 Then Clytemnestra describes what she imagines to 
 be the scene in Troy, where the cries of the vanquished, 
 as wives and children weep over the bodies of the slain, 
 are mingled in discord with the sbouts of the plunder-
 
 142 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 ing conquerors. No longer forced to sleep on the 
 damp ground, the victors take their ease in the Trojan 
 palaces ; but even in their success there is danger of 
 that pride which "brings reverses. All is not safe yet; 
 the dangers of return are to "be encountered, and 
 even then, if any new offence should be committed, 
 Troy may yet be avenged. 
 
 The irony is scarcely concealed. 
 
 Now conies a new choric song, a prayer to Zeus, 
 whose judgments cannot fail ; who against Paris "bent 
 his bow and made it ready," decreed and it was done ; 
 who " marks that race from son to son " that dares too 
 much, and grows insolent in over-great prosperity. In 
 moderation is the only safety. Then is described the 
 curse that Paris brought on Troy when Helen came : 
 
 Strophe. 
 
 " Bequeathing the wild fray to her own nation 
 Of clashing spears, and the embattled fleet, 
 Bearing to Troy her dowry desolation, 
 
 She glided through the gate with noiseless feet, 
 Daring the undareable ! But in their grief 
 
 Deep groaned the prophets of that ancient race : 
 ' "Woe to the palace ! woe to its proud Chief, 
 The bed warm with the husband's fond embrace ! ' 
 
 Silent there she stood, 
 Too false to honour, too fair to revile ; 
 For her, far off over the ocean flood, 
 Yet still most lovely in her parting smile, 
 A spectre queens it in that haunted spot. 
 Odious, in living beauty's place, 
 Is the cold statue's fine-wrought grace. 
 Where speaking eyes are wanting, love is not."
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 143 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 
 " And phantasms, from his deep distress unfolding, 
 
 Are ever present with their idle charms. 
 And when that beauteous form he seems beholding, 
 
 It slides away from out his clasping arms. 
 The vision ! in an instant it is gone, 
 
 On light wing down the silent paths of sleep ! 
 Around that widowed heart, so mute, so lone. 
 
 Such are the griefs, and griefs than these more deep 
 
 To all from Greece that part 
 For the dread warfare : Patient in her gloom, 
 Sits Sorrow, guardian god of each sad home, 
 And many woes pierce rankling every heart. 
 Oh, well each knew the strong, the brave, the just, 
 Whom they sent forth on the horrid track 
 Of battle ; and what now comes back ? 
 Their vacant armour, and a little dust ! " 
 
 And the sorrow for friends thus lost rises in an 
 ominous murmur against the sons of Atreus, who led 
 the flower of Greece to die in a strange land, in a 
 woman's quarrel. The heavy burden of a people's 
 curse suggests fears that may not be spoken. And 
 again and again, in new words the old burden is re- 
 peated : when men are highest in pride, then Erinnys 
 comes, and heaven's thunder bursts first on the over- 
 glorious : 
 
 " Mine be the unenvied fate, 
 
 Not too wealthy, not too great. 
 I covet not, not I, the bad renown 
 To be the sacker of another's town, 
 Or see, a wretched slave, the sacking of mine own."
 
 144 &SCHYLUS. 
 
 All doubts that remain about the truth of the beacon- 
 message are now dispelled by the arrival of a herald, 
 who comes from the army itself. He is the fore- 
 runner of Agamemnon, and all that he says is intended 
 to enhance the greatness of the king's arrival. He 
 salutes, in touching words, his country and her gods, 
 and the palace of Agamemnon, which now shines its 
 best to welcome its monarch, who comes like dawn out 
 of darkness. 
 
 " Greet, greet Vn'm nobly. Is't not well to greet 
 Him who the firm foundations of old Troy 
 Dug up with the avenging spade of Jove, 
 Searching the soil down to its deepest roots ? 
 The altars and the temples of their Gods 
 Are all in shapeless ruin ; all the seed 
 Utterly -withered from the blasted land. 
 Such is the yoke, that o'er the towers of Troy 
 Hath thrown that elder chieftain, Atreus' son. 
 
 Blest above mortals, lo, he comes ! Of men 
 Now living, who "so worthy of all honour ? " 
 
 The leader of the Chorus tells the herald how the 
 army has been ruined, and speaks of some undefined 
 fear. And the herald says, " All suffer in turn, but 
 it is well at last." He describes most graphically the 
 sufferings of the besieging host : 
 
 " Our beds were strewn under the hostile walls ; 
 And from the skies, and from the fenny land, 
 Came dripping the chill dews, rotting our clothes, 
 Matting our hair, like hides of shaggy beasts. 
 Our winters shall I tell, when the bleak cold 
 Intolerable, down from Ida's snows
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 145 
 
 Came rushing ; even the birds fell dead around us. 
 
 Or summer heats, when on his mid-day couch 
 
 Heavily fell the waveless sea, no breath 
 
 Stirring the sultry air. Why grieve we now ? 
 
 All is gone by ! the toils all o'er ! the dead ! 
 
 No thought have they of rising from their graves. 
 
 Why count the suffrages of those who have fallen ? 
 
 The living only, fickle fortune's wrath 
 
 Afflicts with grief. I to calamity 
 
 Have bid a long farewell. Of the Argive host 
 
 To us, the few survivors, our rich gains 
 
 Weigh down in the scale our poor uncounted losses. 
 
 In the face of the noon-day sun we make our boast, 
 
 Flying abroad over the sea and land, 
 
 That now the Argive host hath taken Troy ; 
 
 And in the ancestral temples of their Gods 
 
 Hath nailed the spoils for our eternal glory." 
 
 Clytemnestra now comes forward with expressions of 
 exuberant delight ; but she never quite hides from us, 
 who are in the secret, the true purpose of her relentless 
 heart. " What day," she cries, " so bright, so blessed, 
 as when the wife greets her returning husband ! Throw 
 wide the gates of welcome ; go and meet him, and tell 
 him that his wife is waiting for him, unchanged and 
 unchangeable ! No pleasure have I known but the 
 thought of him, and have watched, like a faithful guar- 
 dian, over his treasures and his honours." She retires. 
 All has now been done to raise our expectation for the 
 arrival of the king. He is to come at the height of his 
 triumph, and his wife will greet him with enthusiastic 
 welcome. So now the undertone of sorrow is heard 
 again. The herald tells of storms that have harassed 
 
 A. c. vol. vii. K
 
 146 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 the army on its return, and of the many warriors who 
 can never regain their homes. But with good hopes 
 he goes away, and again the choral song peals in our 
 ears. Again it is of Helen, " the fated to destroy," 
 whose very name meant " ruin." 
 
 " To Ilion in beauty came 
 The wedded mischief ! of her name 
 The wrath of the great Gods on high 
 Fulfilled the awful augury ; 
 The hoarded vengeance long preparing 
 For that deed of guilty daring : 
 Dishonour of the stranger- welcoming board, 
 
 And Jove, the Hospitable God and lord. 
 The brothers of the house, that princely throng, 
 
 With the glad hymenean song, 
 Hymned the eve of that bright wedding-day. 
 
 That hymn unlearned, a sadder lay 
 Shall Priam's ancient city chant anon 
 The many- voiced wail and moan,' 
 In evil hour o'er Paris led 
 To that disastrous bridal-bed : 
 
 Foredoomed t' endure the flood 
 For years poured wasteful of her citizens' blood." 
 
 So a man cherishes a lion's cub, and it is gentle at 
 first and loving, the children's toy, the old man's plea- 
 sure ; but ere long the lion-nature shows itself, and it 
 proves a priest of Ate", and spreads blood and ruin 
 through the house. So Helen 
 
 " Too soon in Troy, her coming seemed to be 
 Like gentle calm over the waveless sea ; 
 She stood, an image of bright wealth untold.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 147 
 
 Oblique from her soft eye the dart 
 
 Preyed sweetly on the inmost heart, 
 Making love's flower its tenderest bloom unfold. 
 So changing with the changing hours 
 
 That wedlock brought her to a bitter end, 
 
 A cruel sister, and a cruel friend, 
 To Priam's daughters in their chamber bowers : 
 By Hospitable Jove sent in his ire, 
 No tender bride, rather a Fury dark and dire." 
 
 And still the burden is repeated. Wealth brings a 
 misery that never dies, but breeds a brood of evils ever 
 growing. Beneath the quiet cottage-roof dwells Justice, 
 and "decent life flows peaceful on;" but over the 
 gilded palace is spread the funeral pall of Ate. 
 
 Agamemnon enters. 
 
 Earthly greatness and triumph are at their height, 
 as the chief returns, with chariots and retinue, to his 
 palace. The Chorus welcome him as he deserves : 
 
 " Hail, king of Atreus' race renowned, 
 Who Troy hast levelled with the ground ! 
 How to address thee how adore ; " 
 
 but they are anxious to observe a safe moderation in 
 their congratulations ; 
 
 " Nor with exceeding praise run o'er, 
 Nor turning short, pass by too light 
 The mark and standard of thy might." 
 
 They confess that at first his enterprise seemed rash, 
 but now success has justified his daring. Time always 
 reveals true wisdom.
 
 148 &SCHYLUS. 
 
 The welcome is, after all, not so enthusiastic as it 
 might be. 
 
 The king greets his native land and his country's 
 gods, and describes the state of the defeated city. He 
 is grand as he stands there, a true representative of the 
 heroic age, and tells us how Ate's hurricane howls 
 through the smoking town, and how the Greek nobles 
 leapt forth from the fatal horse. 
 
 " The roaring lion rampant o'er the towers 
 Sprang, glutting his fierce maw with kingly blood." 
 
 But still the king of men remembers the dangers of 
 prosperity, and tempers his exultation with regret for 
 the calamities of many of his friends. He is just about 
 to go modestly into his palace without pomp, when 
 the traitress, gorgeously decked out to meet her hus- 
 band, enters on the scene, 
 
 " According to the simplicity," says Potter, " of ancient 
 manners, Clytenmestra should have waited to receive her 
 husband in the house ; but her affected fondness led her to 
 disregard decorum. Nothing can be conceived more artful 
 than her speech ; but that shows that her heart had little 
 share in it ; her pretended sufferings during his absence are 
 touched with great delicacy and tenderness ; but had they 
 been real, she would not have stopped him with the quer- 
 ulous recital ; the joy for his return, had she felt that joy, 
 would have broke out first ; this is deferred to the latter 
 part of her address ; then, indeed, she has amassed every 
 image expressive of emotion ; but her solicitude to assemble 
 these leads her beyond nature, which expresses her strong 
 passions in broken sentences, and with a nervous brevity, 
 not with the cold formality of a set harangue. Her last
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 149 
 
 words are another instance of the double sense which ex- 
 presses reverence to her husband, but intends the bloody 
 design with which her soul was agitated." * 
 
 " Men ! citizens ! Elders of Argos' state ! 
 I blush not in your presence to pour forth 
 All a wife's fondness for her lord beloved ; 
 For timorous bashfulness soon dies away 
 Before familiar faces. Not from others 
 Learning, but only from mine own sad knowledge 
 Will I describe my solitary life, 
 While he was far away under Troy's walls." 
 
 She describes at great length how she suffered from 
 rumours of her lord's death ; how she had three times 
 tried to hang herself; how her eyes had been dried up 
 with weeping, and her short sleep broken by miserable 
 dreams. As Dean Milman says, 
 
 " Methinks the lady doth protest too much." 
 
 Then she addresses the king in terms of over-artful 
 panegyric : 
 
 " Thou, watchdog of the unattainted fold ! 
 The main-stay that secures the straining ship ! 
 The firm-based pillar, bearing the lofty roof ! 
 The only son to childless father born ! 
 Land by the lost despairing sailor seen ! 
 Day beaming beautiful after fierce storms ! 
 Cool fountain to the thirsty traveller ! " 
 
 But she will lead him to the pitch of pride, that his 
 fall may be complete : she will make him impious that 
 the gods may be against him. 
 
 * Quoted by Professor Wilson, loc. cit.
 
 150 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 " Stay, nor set 
 
 On the bare earth, King, thy hallowed foot , 
 That which hath trampled upon ruined Troy. 
 Why tarry ye, my damsels ? 'Tis your office 
 To strew the path with gorgeous carpetings ; 
 Like purple pavement rich be all his way ; 
 That justice to his house may lead him in 
 The house he little dreamed of. All the rest 
 Leave to my care, that may not sleep. So please 
 The Gods, what's justly destined shall be done." 
 
 Irony cannot be carried further. 
 
 Agamemnon, however, is not easily flattered to his 
 ruin, and he refuses an honour fit only for the gods. 
 
 " Treat me not like a soft and delicate woman, 
 Nor, gazing open-mouthed, grovelling on earth 
 Like a barbarian, raise discordant cry : 
 Nor, strewing with bright tapestries my way, 
 Make me an envy to all-jealous Heaven. 
 These are the proud prerogatives of the Gods ; 
 That mortal thus should walk on rich embroideries 
 Beseems not : do it I cannot without awe. 
 As a man, honour me, not as a God ! 
 Though she wipe not her feet on carpetings, 
 Nor variegated garments fine, Fame lifts 
 High her clear voice. To be of humble mind 
 Is God's best gift. Blessed is only he 
 Who in unbroken happiness ends his days. 
 Still may I prosper, thus not overbold." 
 
 But at last he is persuaded to tread the purple, 
 though he insists on removing his sandals for the sake 
 of humility. He steps upon the carpet : we feel that 
 he is doomed. One more touch has to be added ; the
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 151 
 
 one thing that might justly provoke the queen is to be 
 done. He leads forth Cassandra, and with kind con- 
 siderate words recommends her to Clytemnestra's care. 
 
 " But thou this stranger-maid 
 Lead in with courteous welcome. The high Gods 
 On him who rules his slaves with gentleness 
 Look gracious : for to hear the yoke of slavery 
 Is a sore trial to the struggling will. 
 And she, of our rich spoils the chosen flower, 
 The army's precious gift, follows me here. 
 And since to yield to thee I am compelled, 
 Walking on purple, enter I the palace." 
 
 The queen does not notice this request. She repeats 
 her protestations that no profusion could be too great 
 to welcome such a prince, or to express her joy; and 
 then she joins exultingly in the procession which leads 
 him in. And her parting words are these : 
 
 " Jove ! Jove ! that all things perfectest, my prayers 
 Bring to perfection ! to perfection bring 
 What tliou hast yet to do ! Be this thy care." 
 
 The grand procession here enters the palace, and 
 the stage is left vacant, except that Cassandra is still 
 there, sitting silent in her chariot. But the notes of 
 melancholy music call our eyes from the stage to the 
 orchestra, where the Chorus is moving in mysterious 
 figures about the altar, where it stands down beneath us 
 on the floor of the theatre. Fear resistless inexpli- 
 cable fear is now the burden of their song ; so that, 
 though their own eyes have seen the safe return of the
 
 152 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 army, yet a sense of danger and calamities to come still 
 overpowers them an apprehension connected in some 
 way with that dread of excessive wealth which they 
 have expressed so often. Cassandra is not inattentive 
 to their forebodings : her gestures show that she shares 
 them. But now Clytemnestra comes out again. She 
 bids the captive prophetess, sternly but not insultingly, 
 to accept her lot, and enter the palace as a slave. For 
 a long time Cassandra listens in silence to the queen's 
 command and the advice of the Chorus, her look grow- 
 ing every moment wilder, and her gestures more ex- 
 cited. At last she speaks, and cries again and again to 
 Apollo, the author of her unhappy inspiration, of her 
 sad prophecies that have been always disregarded, and 
 with each repetition her ravings portend more clearly 
 the dreadful deed that is to come. She looks round in 
 horror at the palace-gates, and cries, 
 
 " Dwelling accurst of God ! 
 
 Dark home of murder and infanticide ! 
 The lord lies slaughtered in that drear abode, 
 And the dank floor with bloody dew is dyed." 
 
 She calls to mind the impious feast of Thyestes, and 
 speaks not dimly of another crime to come. Her 
 beautiful face is disfigured with passion; her hair 
 " streams like a meteor on the troubled air," as the 
 vision forces itself more and more vividly on her re- 
 luctant soul. She sees the murderess raise her hand ; 
 she sees the bath in which the deed is done, and the 
 Furies punishing the guilty queen. And her own fate, 
 too, is before her:
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 153 
 
 " Alas ! alas ! for myself I fear 
 
 Mine own death-hour of agony ! 
 Oh, wherefore do ye lead me here ? 
 Oh, wherefore, but with him to die ? " 
 
 Each wild utterance of Cassandra is followed by a 
 short song from the orchestra in comment on her 
 words. " Why," asks the Chorus, 
 
 " Why heaven-struck, heaping ill on ill, 
 
 Pour'st thou thy frantic sorrows vain? 
 Why shrieks thy voice, ill-omened still, 
 
 Its awful burthen in awakening strain ? 
 - Why roams thy sad prophetic song 
 Only the paths of grief along ? " 
 
 Again she is tortured with visions of the past scenes 
 of horror that have defiled the house of Pelops. The 
 murdered children of Thyestes pass before her eyes, 
 with the same terrible distinctness with which the 
 children and the eight kings force themselves on the 
 fancy of Macbeth : 
 
 " See, see ye not iipon yon palace-roofs, 
 Like shapes in dreams, they stand and jibber there, 
 The children murdered by their nearest kin ? 
 Lo, there they are, in their full-laden hands 
 Entrails and bowels, horrible food, on which 
 Their fathers have been feasting." 
 
 Vengeance is coming for these things upon the house 
 of Atreus ; and though the she-wolf welcomes her lord 
 with flattering words, yet death is certainly prepared 
 for him. There is no longer any concealment. Cas- 
 sandra foretells in plain words the crime of Clytem-
 
 154: ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 nestra, and tlie excuse she will allege ; and at last she 
 tears the prophet-garlands from her head, and dashes 
 down her wand in the dust, hating her unhappy task 
 of uttering warnings that are fated to be disbelieved. 
 Yet she will not die unavenged, for even now she sees 
 the long-exiled son Orestes return, and claim, satisfac- 
 tion for his father's death. 
 
 Suddenly, while speaking for a moment more 
 calmly to the Chorus, Cassandra starts back- in horror. 
 " Foh ! " she cries, 
 
 " Foh ! how the house smells with the reek of blood ! " 
 
 Fluttered like a bird with terror, she yet restrains her- 
 self to utter one last prayer for vengeance, one last 
 reflection on the fickleness of fortune, and then goes 
 into the palace to meet her death. 
 
 For a minute we are left to consider this wonder- 
 ful scene of madness ; to reflect on its strange medley 
 of emotions, where Ophelia's tenderness and Lear's 
 frenzy are gathered into one, and joined with the 
 agony of foresight of Lochiel's Seer; while the Chorus 
 moralises still over the danger of prosperity. Sud- 
 denly a cry is heard within, 
 
 " Woe's me, I'm stabbed ! stabbed with a mortal blow ! " 
 
 Again and again it is repeated, as the majestic voice 
 of Agamemnon, that so often rose above the din of 
 battle, sounds fainter and fainter in the agony of 
 death. The deed is done. 
 
 In the orchestra utter confusion prevails, for each 
 member of the Chorus has some different advice to
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 155 
 
 urge, and they start up and rush to and fro in restless 
 excitement. But in a moment all is hushed into the 
 silence of awe. 
 
 The back of the stage opens, and the very scene of 
 the murder is brought forth to view. Terrible in her 
 triumph, the bloody axe still in her hands, Clytem- 
 nestra is seen standing over her husband's corpse. 
 For all her wickedness still a queen, she stands up 
 boldly and dares to defend her deed : 
 
 " This is no unpremeditated strife : 
 Over this ancient feud I have brooded long, 
 That the slow time at length hath brought to pass. 
 Here stand I, as I smote. 'Twas I that slew him ! 
 Thus, thus I did it ! Nought will I deny ! 
 That he could not defend himself, nor 'scape. 
 As round the fish the inextricable net 
 Closes, in his rich garments' fatal wealth 
 I wrapt him. Then once, twice, I smote him home. 
 Twice groaned he, then stretched out his failing limbs ; 
 And as he lay I added a third blow ; 
 And unto Hades, the dark god below, 
 Warden of the dead, made my thanksgiving vow. 
 So, fallen thus, he breathed out his proud life, 
 And spouted forth such a quick rush of blood, 
 It splashed me o'er with its black gory dew. 
 Yet not the less rejoiced I, than the flower 
 Within the pregnant folds of its sweet cup 
 Rejoices in the dropping dews of heaven. 
 Being as it is, ye Argive elders all, 
 If that ye too feel joy, rejoice with me, 
 And I protest that were it meet to make 
 Libations for the dead, 'tis I would make them : 
 For all that's done is just is more than just.
 
 156 dSSCHYLUS. 
 
 He that hath filled the chalice of this house 
 With cursing and with woe, on his return 
 Himself should drink it to the very dregs." 
 
 The Chorus, the elders of her people, condemn her 
 straightway to be outcast and abhorred ; but she still 
 defends herself and defies them, relying on the help 
 of ^Egisthus, her accomplice. 
 
 " And now hear ye my stern, my solemn oath : 
 By Justice, the avenger of my child ; 
 By Ate, by Erinnys, at whose shrine 
 I have offered up this man, slain by mine hand ! 
 I look not in the house of fear to dwell, 
 So long as on my hearth kindles his fire 
 JSgisthus, as of old my constant friend : 
 He to my daring is no slender shield. 
 Low lies the man who hath done shameful wrong 
 To me his wife ; he, once the dear delight 
 Of the fair Chryseid, 'neath the walls of Troy ; 
 And her his captive, her his prophetess, 
 The sharer of his bed, his soothsayer, 
 His faithful consort on his couch of sleep, 
 And on the deck, under the groaning masts. 
 For this these two have paid the rightful price 
 He as ye see him ; she, like the sweet swan, 
 Singing her farewell song, her own sad dirge, 
 Lies here, his paramour, the delicate morsel, 
 Intruded here, where I should feast alone." 
 
 The Euin which the gods, in their mysterious will, 
 sent down upon the race of Pelops stands before us 
 visible in Clytemnestra. Looked at from the human 
 side, she is an incarnation of consummate wickedness,
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 157 
 
 triumphant and unashamed ; from the divine side she 
 is a messenger of Ate and Erinnys, filled full with 
 their terrible displeasure, the most awful object that 
 could meet the eyes of bewildered and despairing mor- 
 tals. Through a long series of short answering chants 
 her consciousness of this dread mission is contrasted 
 with the timid horror of the Chorus. After attribut- 
 ing the whole line of sorrows to Helen, and wailing 
 over Cassandra's death, the Chorus calls upon the 
 Alastor, the unforgetting fury, 
 
 " That Daemon dread, 
 Whose wrath hangs heavy o'er the head 
 Of each of that predestined line ; 
 A name, the omeii and the sign 
 Of endless and insatiate misery." 
 
 And Clytemnestra takes up the strain : 
 
 " Say not 'twas Agamemnon's wife 
 
 That so cut short his fated life, 
 
 It was the Alastor, whose dread mien 
 
 Took up the likeness of the queen. 
 
 Of that dark house 'twas he, 'twas he, 
 
 The curse and awful Destiny ; 
 
 (Where, father of that race unblest, 
 
 Old Atreus held his cannibal feast ;) 
 Wreaking for that dread crime the vengeance due, 
 The full-grown man for those poor babes he slew." 
 
 But the Chorus will not admit her defence, and mourn 
 in indignation for the kingly head laid low by such 
 foul treachery. Still the queen asserts the justice of 
 her deed :
 
 158 &SCHYLUS. 
 
 " It was not so ; that man of pride ! 
 By no unseemly death he died. 
 Who first into our household brought 
 Dark Ate's snares ? who earliest taught 
 That fateful lesson of deceit, 
 
 Decoying forth that child of many tears, 
 
 Iphigenia, in her tender years ? 
 Evil he did, evil is vengeance meet ! 
 He will not make his insolent boast in Hell ; 
 For with the sword he smote, and by the sword he fell." 
 
 And ever the Chorus returns to its wailings and accu- 
 sations : 
 
 " Woe, woe ! earth, earth ! wilt thou not swallow me 
 Ere I am forced my kingly lord to see 
 Within that bath, with silver walled, 
 On his low bed unhonoured and unpalled ? 
 Oh, who will bury him ? 
 Oh, who will mourn for him ? 
 Wilt thou, wilt thou, thou daring one, presume 
 
 Thou, thine own husband's bloody murderess ! 
 To stand and wail as mourner by his tomb ? 
 
 With graceless grace, unholy holiness, 
 For noble funeral rites the unblest offerings bless." 
 
 And still the murderess "keeps her fixed unaltered 
 mood." 
 
 This is in the true spirit of Athenian tragedy. 
 Lady Macbeth, before her crime, is a very Clytem- 
 nestra ; she welcomes Duncan with the same exagger- 
 ated courtesy, and is as resolute in her purpose ; but 
 afterwards she trembles and turns pale. Shakespeare 
 is painting human nature, weak and fickle even in the
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 159 
 
 strongest ; ^Eschylus is shelving us the wrath of gods, 
 which is simple, direct, and unrepenting. 
 
 At length, in the end of the play, -^Egisthus himself 
 appears, and he exhibits the character of a violent and 
 cowardly tyrant. He congratulates himself shame- 
 lessly on his success, and shows how his father 
 Thyestes is avenged. " Now" he says, 
 
 " Now, 'twere a glorious thing for me to die, 
 Seeing him caught in justice' iron toils." 
 
 The Chorus threaten him with the curse of the 
 people and with stoning ; but ^Egisthus despises the 
 elders of his city, and confidently asserts his ill-gotten 
 power. Violence is on the point of being used, when 
 Clytemnestra interposes. She pacifies ^Egisthus with 
 tenderest words "purring," says Professor Wilson, 
 "like a satiated tigress round her prey;" and while 
 the Chorus threaten them with the possible return of 
 Orestes, she leads her accomplice in "to set in order 
 all things in that ancient kingly house." Truly they 
 are sadly out of order at present. 
 
 The first part of the great threefold drama is over, 
 and while we sit waiting for the next, there can 
 be no want of reflections to occupy our minds. The 
 conversation which ordinarily fills up such intervals in 
 the performance can hardly find place now, for all minds 
 have been oppressed with a weight of awe which does 
 not easily pass away. A confused mass of giant forms 
 and deeds of blood is before our eyes, and mingled tones
 
 160 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 of triumph and despair are still ringing in our ears. 
 But gradually, as we gaze, the several parts sink back 
 into due proportion, and gradually there comes out 
 into distinctness the supremely great figure of Clytem- 
 nestra. It grows up before us more and more vividly 
 as we recall one grand speech after another, as we 
 remember how she exulted at the thought of her hus- 
 band's return ; how great she was in the defiant extra- 
 vagance with which she spread his path ; how fearfully 
 wicked in her unflinching hypocrisy; how she de- 
 spised ^Egisthus, for whom she had done it all. And 
 then, by her side, we begin to see clearly the noble 
 stature of Agamemnon, and pity, which was sup- 
 pressed awhile in awe at Clytemnestra, possesses us 
 again. 
 
 Is all that villany to triumph, and all that noble- 
 ness to perish unavenged? But as we go over in 
 memory the closing scenes, the thought arises of 
 Orestes. What is he doing now ? Growing up to 
 manhood in a distant land, and meditating vengeance. 
 He goes to sacred Delphi and consults Apollo, and is 
 bidden to hasten to Argos and kill his mother and her 
 guilty lover. And how are affairs in Argos? The 
 palace is full of Trojan captives ; Electra herself, Aga- 
 memnon's daughter, is little better than a slave ; 
 while hatred has been gradually growing against 
 ^Egisthus and the queen, till there are many who 
 long, hardly in secret, to see the face of the avenger. 
 
 But the herald's voice proclaims that the next play is 
 to begin, and the curtain falls for the " Choephori, or 
 Libation-bearers." Still the scene is the royal palace
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 161 
 
 of Argos, but in front of it now is seen the tomb of 
 Agamemnon. We seem to breathe a lighter, freer atmo- 
 sphere than that which echoed to the dread choruses 
 of the Argive elders or the shriek of the dying king. 
 A brighter, more beautiful vision is before us. Orestes 
 comes upon the scene in his pride of youth, which 
 sadness cannot obscure. His face and his dress may 
 betoken mourning, but in his whole person shines out 
 the symmetry and the brilliance of white skin and 
 lustrous hair which is seen in the young Greek in the 
 wrestling-schools of Athens. He comes forward to his 
 father's tomb, and solemnly offers there two locks of his 
 hair, the first to tnachus, the river-god of his home, 
 a sign of gratitude for life and nurture ; the second to 
 his dead father, as an offering of love, instead of that 
 which he was not allowed to pay at the time of his 
 funeral. This done, he stands apart, and with him 
 Pylades, his faithful companion, who all this time has 
 remained in silence at his side. They stand apart to 
 watch, for the palace-gates are opened, and a train of 
 black-robed women comes out, led by Electra. They 
 are bearing urns with mixed meal and oil and honey, 
 to be poured as libations, or drink-offerings, on the 
 tomb. Orestes at once recognises his sister, and 
 guesses the object of their coming. 
 
 Electra remains upon the stage close by the tomb ; 
 while the Chorus, these captive women, walk down 
 the broad steps which lead from the stage into the 
 orchestra, and take their stations there to sing. They 
 remain, however, so near the stage as to be at all times 
 
 A. c. voL viL L
 
 162 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 close, like Electra, to the tomb. And thus their chant 
 begins : 
 
 " Sent from the palace, forth I tread, 
 With hands shrill-clapped, a doleful train, 
 Libations bearing to the dead. 
 Marred is my cheek with many a stain, 
 Nail-ploughed the furrows bleed, 
 The while on cries of pain 
 
 My heart doth feed. 
 Bending my flaxen-tissued vest, 
 With smileless passion, uneontrolled, 
 Grief doth my sorrow-stricken breast 
 Dismantle of the garment's decent fold. 
 
 For shrill, hair-bristling Fear, 
 Of Atreus' home dream-prompting seer, 
 Breathing forth rage in sleep, at dead of night, 
 From the recesses of these royal halls, 
 
 Rang out a cry of wild affright 
 That heavy on the women's chambers falls. 
 And dream-interpreters, in Heaven's high name 
 To faithful utt'rance pledged, proclaim 
 That unavenged 'neath earth, the slain 
 Against their slayers wrathfully complain." * 
 
 This is the key-note of the earlier part of the play : 
 this is the fear which hangs over our minds. This 
 fear has led the queen to send forth this mourning 
 procession, as if she might so appease the wrath of her 
 murdered lord. But blood, says the Chorus, cannot be 
 washed out ; Ate will exact her penalty without mercy. 
 
 * For the translations throughout this and the following play 
 the writer is indebted to Miss Swan wick's " Trilogy of ^Eschylus. "
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 163 
 
 Then Electra speaks to the Chorus. How, she 
 asks, can I fulfil my task, and offer these libations to 
 my father? I cannot say, "These are a loving wife's 
 gifts to her husband." Shall I pray that she who 
 sent them may be requited 1 ? 
 
 " Or, with no mark of honour, silently, 
 For so my father perished, shall I pour 
 These vain oblations to the thirsty earth, 
 Then, tossing o'er my head the lustral urn, 
 (As one who loathed refuse forth has cast,) 
 With eyes averted, back retrace my steps ? " 
 
 The Chorus bids her accompany the offerings with 
 good wishes for the righteous for herself, that is, and 
 all who hate ./Egisthus and for Orestes her exiled 
 brother, and pray that on the guilty some god or 
 mortal may come in vengeance. All this is dimly 
 and gradually suggested, and then Electra prays. In 
 perfect beauty she stands before us, sorrow mingled 
 with righteous anger, and prays to the gods below and 
 mother Earth, and to her father's spirit, that they may 
 pity her slavish lot and bring home Orestes from his 
 exile, and that her father's murderess may be justly 
 slain. Then solemnly, she ascends the steps of the 
 tomb and pours out the libation, while the Chorus 
 sings a short hymn of grief for the lost warrior. Sud- 
 denly Electra's white arm is raised, the dark folds of 
 her dress falling off from it, for she has found upon 
 the tomb her brother's votive lock, and now holds it 
 up in wonder to show it to the Chorus. They cannot 
 guess from whom it comes, but the truth quickly
 
 164 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 dawns upon the sister's mind. The hair is like her 
 own in colour ; Orestes is the only friend who could 
 be so lamenting Agamemnon ; footsteps, too, are to be 
 seen leading to the tomb, which in length and shape 
 tally exactly with her own. While she is disturbed 
 and uncertain, hoping but hardly daring to believe, 
 Orestes comes forward and addresses her. She does 
 not know him, and even when he tells her who he is, 
 thinks he is mocking. But when at last she is con- 
 vinced, her gladness overflows; he shows the very 
 cloak which her hands had wrought ; she falls upon 
 his neck, and thus addresses him : 
 
 " Oh ! cherished darling of thy father's house, 
 Hope of our race, thou precious seed, long wept, 
 Trusting in thy strong arm, thou shalt regain 
 Thy natal home. fondly loved, in whom 
 Centre four dear affections ; for perforce 
 Thee must I hail as father, and on thee 
 Love for my mother, justly hated, falls ; 
 And for my sister, pitilessly slain. 
 My faithful brother hast thou ever been, 
 My pride, my awe ; only may Justice, Strength, 
 With Zeus supreme, third Saviour, aid thy cause." 
 
 Orestes joins in her prayers, and explains how Apollo 
 himself has sent him to execute this purpose, recount- 
 ing the calamities which would fall on him if he 
 should refuse the service : how Ate would pursue 
 him ; how every share in festal cup or sacred rite 
 would be denied him, till, friendless and dishonoured, 
 he must die with all the burden of his guilt upon him. 
 Such oracles he cannot disobey. The avenger has
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 165 
 
 announced his resolve, and the Chorus solemnly 
 approves it. "Doer of wrong must suffer," this is 
 the grand old law. 
 
 The course of the action being so clearly marked 
 out, it is now to be still further sanctioned by appeals 
 to Heaven, and our interest in it heightened by hear- 
 ing it dwelt upon, with every variety of treatment, by 
 the two persons engaged upon it. Orestes stands 
 on one side of the tomb, Electra on the other, and 
 just below the Chorus is grouped, to bear part in their 
 alternate song : 
 
 " Ores. What can I, Sire unblest, 
 
 Prayerfully sing, 
 Thee from thy couch of rest 
 
 Hither to wing ? 
 Lo ! in that drear confine, 
 
 Darkness is day ! 
 Vainly to Atreus' line 
 
 Honours we pay ! 
 
 Cho. My son, the wasting jaws of fire 
 Quell not the spirit of the dead, 
 Full late he manifests his ire. 
 When mournedas he whose blood is shed, 
 The slayer is revealed. In time, 
 For slaughtered parents, righteous wail 
 Poured forth unceasing, doth avail 
 To track the crime. 
 
 Elec. In turn, my tearful strain, 
 
 O Father, hear ! 
 Hark how thy children twain 
 Chant anthems drear !
 
 166 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Exiles beside thy toinb, 
 
 Sad, suppliant pair ; 
 No hope relieves our gloom, 
 
 Triumphs despair. 
 
 Cho. And yet, if so the gods ordain, 
 
 Hereafter, gladder notes shall sound ; 
 Instead of dirge, joy's rapturous strain 
 Back to these halls shall lead again 
 The dear one newly found." 
 
 So many times they answer one another, grief by 
 turns taking the place of hope ; the tone sinking 
 sometimes almost to despair, sometimes rising to 
 prophetic exultation ; and throughout it all they 
 call their father, as the Persians called Darius, to 
 come forth from his tomb, and help them to revenge. 
 Gradually the tones grow calmer and more determined ; 
 till they settle down, when the resolve is fully 
 ratified, into the sober language of the ordinary 
 dialogue. Then the Chorus says, 
 
 " Unblamed in sooth have ye your speech prolonged, 
 Due to his tomb, and unlamented fate. 
 But since to action now thy soul is braced, 
 To work forthwith ! and in the god confide." 
 
 Yet even now the fixed resolve is to be strengthened 
 by an omen of success. "Why," asks Orestes, "has 
 the queen sent these offerings to the tomb, seeing that 
 she cannot hope by any sacrifice to wash out the stain 
 of murder ? for, as the saying runs, not all the world, 
 poured out in one libation, could atone for one man's 
 blood."
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 167 
 
 The Chorus answers him. It is a dream that has 
 made her anxious. She dreamt that she gave birth to 
 a dragon, who fed with his savage jaws at her own 
 "breast. She sprang up in terror, and could not rest 
 till these libations had been sent to her husband's 
 tomb. Even to Clytemnestra remorse has come at 
 last, and conscience makes her connect every terror 
 with her crime. She could not know what this 
 dragon meant, but Orestes accepts it as a type of 
 himself : 
 
 " For if the snake, quitting the self-same womb, 
 Was girded straightway with my swathing-clothes, 
 And, gaping round the breast that nourished me, 
 Sucked with my nurture-milk the clotted blood, 
 While she in terror, at the portent shrieked ; 
 Needs must it be, that she who reared the pest 
 A forceful death must die. I, dragon-like, 
 Myself shall slay her, as her dream declares." 
 
 No more is needed to strengthen his resolution or to 
 sanction it, and now he unfolds the details of his 
 plot. With the faithful Pylades, who has never left 
 his side, he is to present himself as a stranger at the 
 gates of the palace, and so to gain admission to the 
 presence of ^Egisthus. Then, so soon as he sees the 
 usurper, he will kill him. Such is his plan. Of his 
 mother he says not a word. That intention, is too 
 dreadful to be spoken of : though unhesitating in his 
 determination, he will not utter it, even to his 
 friends. Surely there is something very touching and 
 dreadful in this silence. 
 Orestes and Pylades go away into the fields, to
 
 168 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 reappear in their new character, and Electra enters the 
 palace. The time of vengeance is close at hand : who 
 does not tremble ? The Chorus gives expression to 
 the universal apprehension in a fine and simple ode. 
 They sing of the terrible extremes to which human 
 guilt, especially woman's, at times has reached. 
 
 " Cho. Full many a horror drear 
 
 And ghastly, Earth doth rear ; 
 With direful monsters teems encircling Ocean ; 
 
 Meteors, with threatening sheen, 
 
 Hang heaven and earth between ; 
 The tempest's wrath still raves with wild commotion ; 
 These, and dire winged things, and things that crawl, 
 
 Thou mayst describe them all. 
 
 Strophe. But man's audacious might 
 
 What words can paint aright, 
 Or woman's daring spirit who may tell ? 
 
 Her passion's frenzied throes, 
 
 Co-mates of mortal woes ? 
 
 For love unlovely, when its evil spell 
 'Mong brutes or men the feebler sex befools, 
 
 Conjugal bands o'errules." 
 
 Then they recite the past crimes of women Althaea's, 
 who burnt the brand on which her son Meleager's life 
 depended ; and Scylla, who for a golden necklace sold 
 her father's life ; and, worse than all, of the Lemnian 
 women who slew their husbands, and made the name 
 of Lemnos a byword for atrocity. But justice, they 
 cry, is unerring in her aim, and her throne is im- 
 movable.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 169 
 
 " Firm based is Justice ; Fate of yore 
 
 Forged weapon for the blow ; 
 Deep-souled Erinnys doth restore 
 Th' avenger to his home, and, lo ! 
 He pays the bloody score." 
 
 And now the conspirators are come, Orestes and 
 Py lades, with attendants. Orestes walks straight up 
 to the great palace-gates, and knocks repeatedly. A 
 servant at length appears, and goes into the house to 
 fetch .some one to hear the stranger's application. 
 Orestes had said, 
 
 " Let one in trust, a woman bearing rule, 
 Come forth ; yet more decorous were a man. 
 For when by bashfulness the tongue is swayed 
 Darkened is speech ; boldly man speaks to man, 
 And tells his message forth without reserve." 
 
 It is a woman who comes out to answer, and no less a 
 woman than Clytemnestra. With the same unhesi- 
 tating courage, the same exultant wickedness, with 
 which long ago she boasted of her crime as she stood 
 over her husband's corpse, unchanged she comes out 
 now, and behind her comes Electra. The queen 
 receives the messenger with queenly courtesy. He 
 tells his tale shortly and simply, using the Phocian 
 dialect : 
 
 " Orest. From Phocis I, a Daulian, stranger here. 
 What time my home I left, for Argos bound, 
 Starting on foot, with baggage self-equipped, 
 A man to me unknown, as I to him, 
 Met me, inquired my route and told me his. 
 Strophius, the Phocian, as in talk I learned.
 
 170 &SCHYLVS. 
 
 ' Stranger,' he said, * since Argos is thy goal, 
 
 Say to the parents,' strictly mark my words, 
 
 ' Dead is Orestes ; grave it on thy mind ; 
 
 Whether the counsel of his friends prevail 
 
 To bring him home, or give him sepulture. 
 
 Alien for aye ; bear thou their mandates back ; 
 
 For now the brazen urn doth shroud from sight 
 
 The ashes of the hero duly wept.' 
 
 Such words I heard, and tell thee ; if to those 
 
 Who here bear rule I speak, kin to the dead, 
 
 I know not ; but 'tis meet his sire should know." 
 
 " Tis meet his sire should know " ! did Orestes hope 
 to " wring his mother's heart " ? It was not "made of 
 penetrable stuff." She says nothing about the dead 
 father, who indeed knows well enough, and in his 
 ghostly power is furthering all this act of retribution ; 
 but although the messenger's tidings are, as she pretends 
 to think, not good, yet she admits him with welcome 
 to the house, and goes herself away to tell the news 
 to ^Egisthus. Has she some suspicion ? Does she 
 go to seek for men to help against any violence which 
 the strangers may intend 1 
 
 Again there is a moment of suspense, during which 
 the Chorus sing a chant of eager expectation : 
 
 " Clio, Dear handmaidens ! Sisters dear ! 
 
 When, oh when, full-voiced and clear, 
 Shall we, for Orestes' sake, 
 Loud the joyous psean wake ? " 
 
 The hour is come, they say; now must Persuasion lead 
 the guilty ones to offer themselves to the ruin which 
 Erinnys is preparing. As this chorus ends, there
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 171 
 
 comes out of the palace Cilissa, the old nurse of 
 Orestes ; and for some time we are interested and 
 half amused with her garrulous lamentations. It is 
 one of the very few passages where a Greek tragedian 
 has touched that deepest chord of pathos which is 
 struck when we smile at the weakness of human 
 nature, and yet grieve the more for its sufferings ; the 
 chord which Shakespeare strikes in Lear and Ophelia, 
 in many of the songs of his clowns, and in the story 
 of Falstaff s death-bed. This old nurse, like her in 
 Juliet, runs on with trifling reminiscences of Orestes' 
 childhood, most unworthy of the occasion, except from 
 this point of view. Still the old woman is made to 
 assist in the execution of the plot. Clytemnestra has 
 sent her to summon .<3gisthus, and bid him bring his 
 body-guard with him. This latter message the Chorus 
 bids her not to give, and so it is contrived that the 
 usurper shall offer himself unprotected to Orestes' 
 sword. And so, half guessing from the hints of the 
 Chorus that there is something good going forward, 
 Cilissa goes her way. 
 
 Once more the stage is empty, and the loud prayers 
 of the Chorus are heard, as they confidently pray to 
 Zeus for his assistance, and call on Orestes to consum- 
 mate the deed. Soon ^Egisthus comes, half doubting 
 the news, which he pretends to call unwelcome ; and 
 he asks the Chorus whether it is true. The Chorus 
 reply: 
 
 " We have but heard ; go thou thyself within, 
 Question these strangers ; second-hand reports 
 Avail not as to hear the tale one's self."
 
 172 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 And he replies : 
 
 " Fain would I see the messenger and learn 
 Whether himself was present at the death, 
 Or if from blind report this tale he heard ; 
 A wakeful mind he will not soon deceive." 
 
 He goes into the palace. Suspense is at its height. 
 
 " Cho. Zeus, great Zeus, how frame my cry 
 
 Thine aid to win ? 
 How, invoking thee on high, 
 My strain hegin? 
 
 For anon with murderous blow, 
 
 Either shall the gory blade 
 Atreus' royal house o'erthrow, 
 
 Prone in dust for ever laid, 
 Or in Freedom's sacred name, 
 
 Kindling fire and holy light, 
 Shall the rightful heir reclaim 
 
 Wealth and crown, his twofold right. 
 
 Sole against the tyrant pair, 
 
 To such deadly grapple hies 
 Agamemnon's godlike heir ; 
 
 None to follow if he dies ! 
 Crown, oh crown, the great emprise !" 
 
 A cry is heard; again and again it sounds j and before 
 we have time to doubt, a servant rushes in crying 
 that ^Egisthus is slain; and, battering at the door 
 of the women's part of the palace, he calls loudly for 
 Clytemnestra.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 173 
 
 She comes hastily forth, knowing instinctively that 
 the hour of her retribution is arrived ; but, calling for 
 an axe the weapon with which she killed Agamemnon 
 is determined to defend herself to the last. But 
 when Orestes appears, she assumes the guise of ten- 
 derness. The avenger says : 
 
 " Dost love this man ? With him, in the same tomb, 
 Then shalt thou lie ; still faithful found in death." 
 
 " Hold! hold! my son;" she cries : 
 
 " Revere, my child, this breast 
 From which, a sleeping infant, thou full oft, 
 With toothless gums, thy nurture-milk hast sucked." 
 
 For one moment Orestes wavers and turns to Py- 
 lades, but his friend reminds him of Apollo's command 
 and his own vows, and bids him " choose all for foe- 
 men rather than the gods." His momentary hesitation 
 is dispelled. He gives short replies to his mother's 
 pretences of affection, and rejects her excuse with the 
 most solemn answer. She pleads that Fate compelled 
 her to her crime ; and Fate, he replies, now ordains 
 her death. He is at least as much the instrument 
 of heaven as she was. Then he drags her into the 
 palace. 
 
 While the terrible deed is being done, according 
 to the decorous taste of the Greek theatre, out of 
 sight, the Chorus sings a hymn of unmixed exulta- 
 tion :
 
 174 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 " Reft was I of the sun whose sudden ray 
 Did with new joy illume 
 These halls, long sunk in gloom ; 
 It gleamed, then died away. 
 
 Anon, the cheering light, 
 New-kindled, in these halls shall shine once more, 
 
 What time, with lustral rite, 
 From the polluted hearth is purged the gore, 
 And Ate" put to flight. With form benign, 
 Fortune, long time an alien, conies to claim 
 
 Her home, redeemed from shame. 
 
 Clearly the light doth shine !" 
 
 ~No cries are heard this time. The agonies of a mother 
 slain by her own son are too horrible to be even 
 heard. We know the deed is done, and this silence 
 makes the act of solemn justice still more tremendous. 
 It is done, and the scene is opened ; and as we saw 
 Clytemnestra standing in her wicked triumph over the 
 body of her husband, holding in her hand the bloody 
 axe, and pointing to the robe in which her victim had 
 been entangled to be slain, so now we see Orestes, 
 unhappy but not guilty, standing over his mother's 
 corpse, with his drawn sword in his hand, and point- 
 ing to the same robe of Agamemnon in testimony of 
 her guilt. Servants grouped behind him display the 
 long folds of the fatal garment, while Orestes, inspired 
 by the divine justice of which he has been the agent, 
 speaks these solemn words : 
 
 " Behold the tyrants of this land, the twain 
 My sire who murdered, and this palace reaved.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 175 
 
 Majestic once sat they upon their thrones, 
 
 United now, as by their fate appears, 
 
 And faithful to their pledges e'en in death. 
 
 To slay my wretched sire conjoined they swore, 
 
 Conjoined to die ; well have they kept their oath. 
 
 But further, ye who hearken to these woes, 
 
 Mark this device, my wretched father's snare, 
 
 His hands which fettered and his feet which yoked. 
 
 Unfold it, form a ring, and, standing near, 
 
 Display the Hero's death-robe, that the Sire, 
 
 Not mine, but He who all these woes surveys, 
 
 Helios, my mother's impious deeds may mark ; 
 
 So in my trial, at some future time, 
 
 He by my side may stand, and witness bear 
 
 That justly I did prosecute to death 
 
 My mother ; for of base ^Egisthus' doom 
 
 Eecketh me not ; he, as adulterer, 
 
 The lawful forfeit of his crime hath paid." 
 
 But calamities are not at an end, as the short cries 
 of the Chorus prophesy : 
 
 " Alas for doings fraught with doom ! 
 Slaughtered he found a gory tomb. 
 
 Woe! Woe! 
 To the survivor grief is but in ,bloom." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Alas ! no son of mortal race, 
 Unscathed the path of life may trace ! 
 
 Woe! Woe! 
 Fadeth one grief, another comes apace." 
 
 Already Orestes begins to feel the Furies of his mother 
 coming upon him :
 
 176 ^SCHYLUS. 
 
 "As charioteer 
 
 With steeds ungoverned, from the course I swerve ; 
 Thoughts past control are whirling me along, 
 Their captive slave ; while terror in my heart 
 Her psean and her frenzied dance prepares." 
 
 But while Eeason yet holds her seat lie asserts his 
 righteousness, and pleads the injunction of Apollo. 
 Taking in his hands a suppliant's olive-branch with 
 its festoons of white wool, he turns to go to Delphi, 
 a"n exile and a wanderer, to seek there the protection 
 of the god he has obeyed. And now he sees the 
 Furies. They rise in the background : 
 
 " Gorgon-like they come, 
 Vested with sable stoles, their locks entwined 
 With clustering snakes. No longer may I bide." 
 
 And though the Chorus cannot see them, they press 
 round him more closely and more hideous ; his frenzy 
 grows, and covering his face with his hands he rushes 
 in madness from the place. 
 
 The Chorus still bless him, and pray that he may 
 obtain protection, and march back up the steps across 
 the stage, and through the palace-gates, chanting this 
 song : 
 
 " Thrice the Atridan storm hath burst 
 
 O'er Mycenae's halls. 
 Child-devouring horror first 
 
 Brooded o'er these walls. 
 Next a king's disaster came, 
 
 When the chief who led 
 Hellas' warriors, known to fame, 
 
 In the bath lay dead.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 177 
 
 Now, behold a third is come, 
 Saviour, shall I say, or doom ? 
 From what quarter sped ? 
 Full-accomplished, when shall Fate, 
 Lulled to rest, her stormy ire abate?" 
 
 In our sympathy for Orestes thus suffering for his 
 piety, we cannot but look forward with eager expecta- 
 tion to the next Play, in which we are to see him de- 
 livered from the Furies. But there is another reason, 
 even more powerful, to make the Athenian citizen 
 wait impatiently for the " Eumenides." A rumour has 
 got abroad that ^Eschylus is going to use all the in- 
 terest which his great Trilogy must awaken to support 
 a political cause. The leaders of the popular party, 
 Pericles and Ephialtes, are proposing to reform, if not 
 to abolish, the high court of Areopagus. This vener- 
 able court has been hitherto in the hands mainly of the 
 nobility, and wields an authority all the more exten- 
 sive because it is undefined ; it is the highest tribunal 
 in cases of murder and sacrilege, and a peculiar sanc- 
 tity is attached to its decisions. Some, however, of 
 the citizens think, it seems, that it is old-fashioned and 
 unwieldy; and perhaps even that it may become the 
 stronghold of a selfish nobility, who, by straining to 
 the utmost its undefined prerogatives, may make it 
 the means of a formidable opposition to the system of 
 reform which is in progress. Others regard it with 
 the reverence which they conceive to be due to an 
 institution founded by the gods, and intimately con- 
 
 A. o. vol. viL M
 
 178 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 nected with the greatness of the city j and among 
 these, we need hardly say, is yEschylus. He intends, 
 by representing the court of Areopagus as the scene 
 of the trial and liberation of Orestes, and as having 
 been founded at that time by Pallas and not only for 
 that occasion, but for ever to enlist the sympathy of 
 every pious Athenian on the side of the ancient assem- 
 bly, and against Ephialtes and Pericles, and the demo- 
 cratic movement which they represent. 
 
 Such is the expectation which makes our neighbours 
 in the theatre particularly impatient for the " Eumen- 
 ides" ; though little can be needed to heighten the en- 
 thusiasm with which the climax of so deeply interest- 
 ing a Trilogy will be received. We have seen the 
 crime committed against the father of Orestes, we have 
 seen his solemn act of vengeance, and we have seen 
 that even the righteousness of his cause could not de- 
 liver him from the Furies of a mother slain. These 
 Furies have pursued him through many lands, and 
 made his life a misery, until at last he has reached 
 Apollo's shrine in Delphi, and even thither his tor- 
 turers have pursued him. 
 
 But suspense is at an end : the curtain falls, and we 
 are in Delphi, the centre of the world, the very home 
 and source of sanctity and truth. Before us rises the 
 high temple-front, and outside it stand statues of all 
 those Powers which, according to old mythology, have 
 held sway in turn in this most holy place. In prayer 
 before these statues is seen the priestess of the temple; 
 she whose utterances are oracles; she who awards to the 
 whole Grecian world yes, and to barbarians too all
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 179 
 
 that they have of revelation. First in her prayer is men- 
 tioned Earth, the primeval prophetess ; then Themis, 
 who next held the sacred seat ; then Phoebe, another 
 daughter of Earth, who gave to Phoebus Apollo his office 
 and his name. Having done due honour to the local 
 deities, the priestess calls on Pallas, and Bacchus, and 
 Poseidon, and on Zeus, and then enters to take her seat 
 upon the inspiring tripod, that she may give responses 
 to any who may consult the god. And so she goes 
 through the great folding - doors into the temple. 
 Very few of mankind have entered that sacred 
 chapel : there hang the offerings of great kings and 
 sages, who have, during ages past, gained answers 
 from Apollo ; there the bright god himself vouchsafes 
 his special presence ; there is the Omphalos, or navel- 
 stone, which is believed to be the very centre of the 
 earth. 
 
 But the priestess rushes forth again in an agony of 
 terror. She has seen a portentous sight, for at the 
 Omphalos itself a man is sitting in suppliant guise; 
 
 " His hands still dripping gore, 
 His sword new-drawn, his lofty olive-branch 
 With ample fillets piously enwreathed, 
 White bands of wool;" 
 
 and behind him is a wondrous company of women 
 sleeping or rather, women they cannot be called, for 
 no gorgons nor harpies are so hideous. The sound of 
 their breathing, the loathsome aspect of their faces, and 
 the filthiness of their dress, all combine to make their 
 very presence a pollution to a temple, or even to the
 
 180 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 roofs of men. As soon as the terrified priestess has 
 described all this, the scene opens and we see it for 
 ourselves. In the inner sanctuary of the temple is 
 Orestes sitting on the Omphalos, and by him stands 
 Apollo; while behind them, in a semicircle, the Furies 
 are asleep, and quite in the background stands Mercury 
 or Hermes, the escorter of the dead. Apollo speaks : 
 
 " Never will I betray thee : to the end 
 I guard thee, standing near, or far aloof ; 
 Nor will be gracious ever to thy foes. 
 And captured now this maddened crew thou seest. 
 By sleep the loathsome virgins are o'erpowered, 
 Hoary primeval progeny, with whom 
 Nor god, nor man, nor beast, will e'er consort. 
 For Evil's sake brought forth, in evil gloom 
 Of subterranean Tartarus they dwell, 
 Abhorred of men and of the Olympian gods. 
 But hie thee hence, nor e'er relax thy speed, 
 For as thou tread'st the wand'rer-trampled earth, 
 They'll track thee o'er the ample continent, 
 O'er the wide ocean and the citied isles ; 
 And thou, faint not too early, o'er thy grief 
 Brooding alone ; but haste to Pallas' walls, 
 And suppliant, her ancient image clasp. 
 There judges we shall have to try this cause, 
 And soothing words : so means we shall devise 
 For evermore to free thee from these toils ; 
 For at my bidding was thy mother slain." 
 
 Orestes prays his patron to hold to his promise; and 
 Apollo bids him not to fear, and intrusts him to 
 Hermes to be escorted to Athens, the city of Pallas. 
 The victim is gone, and the pursuers are still asleep,
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 181 
 
 for indeed in the halls of Apollo such angry powers 
 cannot easily be awake. But are they to remain in- 
 different 1 Is a mother slain to lose the satisfaction 
 which her murderer owes 1 Rather than this, she 
 comes herself to stir up the executors of her vengeance. 
 From the inner part of the temple, clad in dark robes, 
 with her bare neck still showing the wound that her 
 son inflicted, arises the ghost of Clytemnestra ; and 
 with bitter reproaches she urges the Furies, by grati- 
 tude for the gifts she has offered them, by their own 
 honour lost if he escape, to pursue the matricide. Her 
 words are not unheard. They wake slowly with hide- 
 ous groans and mutterings; and at length, crying like 
 hounds to one another, the savage note running round 
 the semicircle, they rouse them gradually to their task. 
 As they awake, the ghost again and constantly repeats 
 her exhortations, till, when they are thoroughly excited 
 to renew their chase, she vanishes away. Thus it is 
 that the energy of these cruel powers may always, by 
 the will of those on whose behalf they act, be quick- 
 ened against the guilty or the representative of a guilty 
 race; just as conscience, ever and anon calling up re- 
 membrance of a crime, stirs in a sinner's breast the tor- 
 tures of remorse. At last, each waking her neighbour, 
 they all start up, and, ranging themselves in chorus- 
 fashion on the stage, utter their angry expressions of 
 baffled rage and disappointment; especially complain- 
 ing of the arrogance of Apollo, who has dared, an up- 
 start god, to trample on their ancient prerogatives. But 
 Apollo stands up, wrathful and beautiful, his silver 
 bow bent in his hand, as when he slew the Python,
 
 182 
 
 and bids them, as they fear his arrows, carry their de- 
 tested presence from his hallowed temple. 
 
 They rejoin with accusations of Apollo, for that he 
 is the sole cause of all the trouble, having urged 
 Orestes to the act of matricide and promised him pro- 
 tection ; while they plead the righteousness of their 
 own position as the appointed pursuers of all who 
 have done such deeds. When it is shown that the 
 mother, whom Orestes killed, was herself the murderess 
 of her husband, the Furies answer that that guilt is 
 less, because a husband's blood is not the blood of 
 kindred. The god replies that by such a theory all 
 marriage right is set aside; Jove and Juno, the wedded 
 king and queen of heaven, are dishonoured; and the 
 goddess of love is set at nought. But they cannot be 
 convinced, and the pursuers and the protector part 
 with mutual defiance. 
 
 A short interval ensues, during which the scene is 
 ohanged. Instead of the Delphian sanc-tuary of Apollo, 
 the high front of Minerva's temple on the Acropolis forms 
 the background. We are in Athens itself at last : no 
 less a city can be the place for the great consummation. 
 Clasping the sacred image of the goddess, Orestes sits 
 and calls on her to grant him her protection, since the 
 pollution of his crime, if such it be, has been worn off 
 by many sacrifices and many prayers, and now with 
 clean hands, at Apollo's bidding, he comes to abide at 
 her decision the issue of his cause. But his foes are 
 close upon his track. They enter now from beneath 
 the stage in front, and rank themselves in the orches-
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 183 
 
 tra; and as they come, looking about for their victim, 
 their leader says, 
 
 " 'Tis well ; sure token this, the man is here. 
 Follow the leading of this voiceless guide ; 
 For still we track, as hound the wounded fawn, 
 By blood and reeking drops, our destined prey; 
 With many a toilsome man-outwearing gasp 
 Pant my deep vitals, for on every spot 
 Of the wide earth my charge I shepherded, 
 And now, in hot pursuit, with wingless flight, 
 Swift as swift galley o'er the sea I course ; 
 Here in some nook ensconced the game must lie ; 
 With keenest joy I snuff the scent of blood." 
 
 Then in lyric strains they exhort one another to the 
 search, and when they see the suppliant at the god- 
 dess's side, they repeat their threats of vengeance. 
 Again Orestes speaks, and a noble calmness and confi- 
 dence pervades his words. " Pale now," he says, 
 
 " Pale now, and dim, the blood-mark on my hand ; 
 Washed clean away the matricidal stain ; " 
 
 and now with pure lips I pray to Pallas to come from, 
 her distant dwelling by the Lybian Lake of Trito, or 
 from whatever spot may hold her, " and be my saviour 
 from those miseries." The Chorus of Furies defy his 
 prayers. He is their victim, and no god shall save 
 him, and they sing their Binding Hymn which will 
 make him fully theirs. Anything more terrible than 
 the intense malignity of this ode it is difficult to ima- 
 gine. The witches in Macbeth around the fatal cal-
 
 184 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 dron are awful from their weird grotesqueness ; these 
 Furies, as they dance with every gesture of greedy 
 hatred, are even more awful in their solemn deter- 
 mination. 
 
 Choral Hymn. 
 
 " Haste we now the dance to wind, 
 Since beseems in dread refrain, 
 To utter how our bodeful train 
 Deal the lots to mortal kind. 
 Loyal are we to the Right, 
 Hence clean hands whoso extendeth, 
 Scathless still through life he wendeth, 
 Nor on him our wrath may light. 
 But who guilty hands doth hide, 
 Stained with blood, as yonder wight, 
 Lurketh ever at his side, 
 Witness true, this Brood of Night. 
 Blood-avengers we appear, 
 Stern-purposed to achieve our doom severe. 
 
 Full Chorus. 
 
 Oh mother, hear me, Mother Night, 
 Who brought me forth, a living dread, 
 To scare the living and the dead, 
 Latona's son does me despite ; 
 Stealing away my trembling prey, 
 Destined a mother's murder to requite. 
 
 Now o'er the victim lift the dread refrain, 
 
 The Furies' death-hymn, madness-fraught ; 
 Torch of the brain, from Hades brought, 
 
 Soul-binding, lyreless, mortal-blighting strain.
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 185 
 
 Antistrophe. 
 For Fate supreme ordains that we 
 
 This office hold for evermore : 
 
 Mortals imbrued with kindred gore 
 We scathe, till under earth they flee ; 
 
 And when in death 
 
 They yield their breath, 
 In Hades still our thralls they be. 
 
 Now o'er the victim lift the dread refrain, 
 
 The Furies' death-hymn, madness-fraught ; 
 Torch of the brain, from Hades brought, 
 
 Soul-binding, lyreless, mortal-blighting strain." 
 
 In answering stanzas they acknowledge and exult in 
 the hatefulness of their office, asserting it with, a 
 diabolical confidence which reminds one if human 
 malice can so nearly approach the hate of deities of 
 Shylock's deliberate atrocity. And if they remind us 
 of the Jew, so the pure bright "being who now appears 
 must remind us of the merciful wisdom, gentle yet 
 determined, of Portia. Minerva comes, like Portia, to 
 defend the righteous man from the apparently legal 
 claims of his cruel enemies. She comes in her warlike 
 beauty, and alights from her chariot, and, holding the 
 long spear in her hand, as the sailor sees her from the 
 far point of Sunium shining in the sunlight on the sum- 
 mit of her temple, stands in the front and speaks : 
 
 " A voice I heard from far Scamander's banks 
 Invoking me." 
 
 And now what do I see ? Who are ye, whose forms 
 are not like mortals nor yet like goddesses ? and who
 
 186 &SCHYLUS. 
 
 is the man who sits as suppliant at my image ? The 
 Chorus explain their titles and office; the goddess 
 listens to them all with marked respect, but condemns 
 their unfair attempt to deny Orestes his defence. At 
 last they leave the issue in her hands, and she turns 
 to the defendant : 
 
 " What wilt answer in thy turn, 
 O stranger ? Tell thy country and thy race, 
 And thy misfortunes, then ward off this blame ; 
 If, trusting in the right, thou thus dost sit 
 Clasping mine image, near my sacred shrine, 
 Ixion-like, a suppliant revered, 
 To all of these make answer clear to me." 
 
 His answer is dignified and clear : 
 
 " Athena, queen ! matter of grave import 
 First will I from thy words last-uttered purge. 
 Not blood-polluted am I, nor doth stain 
 Cleave to thine image from thy suppliant's hand. 
 Sure proof of this I will adduce ; 'tis law 
 That voiceless lives the man denied by blood, 
 Till purifier's hand hath him besprent 
 With victim's blood, slain in life's budding prime. 
 Long since at other shrines have been performed, 
 With victims and with streams, these lustral rites. 
 Thus then this care, as cancelled, I dismiss. 
 My lineage, what it is, thou soon shalt hear. 
 Argive am I, my sire thou knewest well, 
 Marshal of naval heroes, Agamemnon, 
 In league with whom thou madest Ilion, 
 Troya's proud city, an uncitied waste. 
 The hero home returned, and basely fell ; 
 For him, entangled in a subtle net,
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 187 
 
 My mother, black of soul, did reave of life ; 
 The bath bore witness to the deed of blood. 
 Myself, long time an exile, coming home, 
 Slew her who bare me, I deny it not, 
 Avenging my dear father, blood for blood. 
 But Loxias* is sharer in my guilt 
 Who goads of anguish to my heart announced, 
 Unless the guilty found from me their due. 
 My deed, or just, or unjust, do thou judge ; 
 Whate'er thy verdict, I shall be content." 
 
 Minerva shrinks from taking on herself the weight of 
 the decision, fearing to enrage the Furies against her 
 land if she reject their suit, fearing to wrong a suppliant 
 if she grant their claim ; and so she founds a court : 
 
 " But since this weighty cause hath lighted here, 
 Judges of murder, bound by oath, I'll choose, 
 Solemn tribunal for all future time. 
 But for yourselves call witnesses and proofs, 
 Sworn evidence collect to aid your suit ; 
 Myself the noblest of my citizens, 
 To whom is dear the sanctity of oaths, 
 Will cull ; then hither come to judge this cause." 
 
 The Chorus now renew their chant, and set forth at 
 length the evils that will ensue if in this case their 
 victim escapes. No crime will then be restrained ; then 
 men will call in vain on Justice or Erinnys, the only 
 powers who can keep men guiltless and happy. If 
 Awe dwells in the heart, the man may live well, safe 
 from excesses ; but he who is careless and knows not 
 
 * Apollo so named from the ambignity of his oracles.
 
 188 &SCHYLVS. 
 
 Fear will spurn with atheist foot the altar of Justice, 
 and meet with certain retribution 
 
 Strophe. 
 
 " But who unforced, with spirit free 
 Dares to be just, is ne'er unblest ; 
 Whelmed utterly he cannot be : 
 But for the wretch with lawless breast, 
 Bold seizer of promiscuous prey, 
 I warn you, he, perforce, his sail 
 Shall strike amid the conquering gale, 
 When shrouds and yards dismasted own its sway." 
 
 AntistropJie. 
 
 " He cries, but 'mid the whirlpool's roar 
 None heeds him ; for the gods deride 
 Eyeing the boaster, proud no more, 
 Struggling amid the surging tide ; 
 Shorn of his strength he yields to Fate ; 
 The cape he weathers not, but thrown 
 On Justice' reef, with precious freight, 
 He perisheth for aye, unwept, unknown." 
 
 As this ode is ended the scene is changed again, and 
 we are on Mars Hill, the Areopagus itself; and Pallas 
 enters at the head of twelve Athenian citizens, the 
 judges of the new tribunal. In that vacant space 
 upon the floor of the theatre, in the centre of which 
 the altar stands, these Areopagites take their places, 
 sitting in semicircle just inside that lowest range of 
 the spectators' seats on which are the magistrates of 
 Athens. They are not separated far from the specta- 
 tors ; for in this grand final scene the whole Athenian
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 189 
 
 people are to be taken into the action, and act as 
 judges with the Areopagites. Before them is the 
 altar, on which two urns now stand to receive their 
 votes, and between the altar and the stage the Chorus 
 of Furies is drawn up. Pallas stands on the stage, 
 and by her side a herald ; and just as the trumpet's 
 note, when "the king drinks to Hamlet," quickens 
 our senses for the Shakespearian catastrophe, so now 
 the trumpet rings through the Theatre of Bacchus, 
 and summons all, spectators as well as actors, to take 
 their share in the trial of Orestes. The goddess 
 cries, 
 
 " Herald, proclaim ! Hold back the multitude, 
 Let Tuscan trumpet, filled with mortal breath. 
 Piercing the welkin with sonorous blast, 
 Ring out its brazen summons to the crowd : 
 For, this tribunal seated, it befits 
 Silence should reign ; so this assembled town 
 Shall learn the laws I sanction for all time, 
 So may this stranger's cause be fairly judged." 
 
 So now Apollo enters, and the pleading begins. 
 The Furies examine Orestes closely, and he admits the 
 crime, but justifies it, and ends by calling on Apollo. 
 The god pleads his suppliant's cause, and shows, in 
 answer to the Chorus, that the tie which binds a man 
 to his father is even closer than the mother's, since a 
 child can be born without a mother, as Pallas was her- 
 self, who sprang full-armed from the head of Olympian 
 Zeus. Before the votes are given Pallas charges the 
 court, and her words are meant for the assembled 
 citizens of Athens :
 
 190 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 " Hear ye my statute, men of Attica, 
 Ye who of bloodshed judge this primal cause ; 
 Kay, and in future aye shall jEgeus' host 
 Kevere this great tribunal. This the hill 
 Of Ares, seat of Amazons, their tent, 
 What time 'gainst Theseus, breathing hate, they came, 
 "Waging fierce battle, and their towers upreared, 
 A counter-fortress to Acropolis ; 
 To Ares they did sacrifice, and hence 
 This rock is titled Areopagus. 
 Here then shall sacred Awe, to Fear allied, 
 By day and night my lieges hold from wrong, 
 Save if themselves do innovate my laws. 
 If thou with mud, or influx base, bedim 
 The sparkling water, nought thou'lt find to drink. 
 Nor Anarchy, nor Tyrant's lawless rule 
 Commend I to my people's reverence ; 
 Nor let them banish from their city Fear ; 
 For who 'mong men, uncurbed by Fear, is just ? 
 Thus holding Awe in seemly reverence, 
 A bulwark for your state shall ye possess, 
 A safeguard to protect your city-walls, 
 Such as no mortals otherwhere can boast, 
 Neither in Scythia nor in Pelops' realm. 
 Behold ! This court august, untouched by bribes, 
 Sharp to avenge, wakeful for those who sleep, 
 Establish I, a bulwark to this land. 
 These warnings to my lieges I address, 
 To unborn ages reaching. Judges, rise, 
 Assume the pebbles, and decide the cause, 
 Your oath revering. All hath now been said." 
 
 Now one by one the judges rise and drop their votes 
 alternately into each, urn, while between each Apollo 
 and the Chorus utter in turn two lines of warning and
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 191 
 
 appeal. When the last judge has resumed his seat, 
 Pallas herself, still standing on the stage, holds up a 
 voting-pebble and speaks thus : 
 
 " With me it rests to give the casting-vote, 
 And to Orestes I my suffrage pledge. 
 For to no mother do I owe my birth ; 
 But I, in all save wedlock, praise the male. 
 In very truth I am my father's child, 
 Nor care I to avenge a woman's death 
 Who slew her husband, guardian of the house. 
 Orestes, judged by equal votes, prevails, 
 The pebbles now pour quickly from the urns, 
 Judges, to whom this office is assigned." 
 
 While the votes are counted Orestes and the 
 Chorus express in turn their anxiety and suspense. 
 At last the goddess thus declares the verdict : 
 
 " Orestes has escaped the doom of blood, 
 For equal are the numbers of the votes." * 
 
 With eager eloquence Orestes pours out his thanks to 
 Pallas, and promises the eternal friendship of his city 
 to Athens. He promises this not only in the fiction of 
 the play, but in real earnest, to Athens, here gathered 
 in the theatre ; for just now, when this play is being 
 presented, an alliance has been contracted between 
 Argos and Athens. Loud, therefore, is the applause 
 with which his words are greeted : 
 
 * She thus gives her casting-vote, and establishes that prin- 
 ciple of Athenian law by which, when the votes were equal, 
 the decision was always declared in favour of acquittal. The 
 casting-vote thus given on the side of mercy was called the 
 "Calculus Minervse," or " Minerva's pebble."
 
 192 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 " Now homeward I depart, 
 Pledged to thy country and thy lieges here 
 By oath, to be revered for evermore, 
 That never helmsman of the Argive State 
 Shall hither hear the well-appointed spear. 
 For we, ourselves, though couching in the grave, 
 On those who violate these present oaths 
 By sore perplexities will work, and send 
 Distressful marches, and, with omens dire, 
 Crossings of streams, till they repent their toil. 
 But unto those who keep this pledge, and honour 
 Athena's city with confederate spear, 
 To them we will be gracious evermore. 
 Hail, goddess, and these city- wardens, hail ! 
 Still may your gripe be fatal to your foes, 
 While victory and safety crown your spear." 
 
 With this Orestes departs, and the main action of the 
 play is over. The curse is removed, and the house of 
 Pelops is free. But just as we have seen that each 
 sad catastrophe is accompanied with intimations of 
 fresh trouble to come, so this happy ending brings 
 with it a train of blessings. 
 
 The Chorus are at first furious with indignation that 
 their ancient power is thus trampled under foot by the 
 younger deities, but gradually, by the mild eloquence 
 of Pallas, they are appeased, and consent to accept a 
 temple and worship in her city ; and instead of the 
 curses with which they were threatening the land, to 
 shed forth upon it every blessing. The goddess bids 
 them send good gifts: 
 
 " Such as, with gracious influence, from earth, 
 From dew of ocean, and from heaven, attend
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 193 
 
 On conquest not ignoble. That soft gales, 
 With sunshine blowing, wander o'er the land ; 
 That earth's fair fruit, rich increase of the flocks 
 Fail not my citizens for evermore, 
 With safety of the precious human seed ; 
 But, for the impious, weed them promptly out, 
 For I, like one who tendeth plants, do love 
 This race of righteous men, by grief unscathed : 
 Such be thy charge. Be mine not to endure 
 That, among mortals, in war's mighty game, 
 Athena's city be not conquest-crowned." 
 
 And in a new strain they sing : 
 
 " Pallas, thy chosen seat be henceforth mine ! 
 
 No more the city I despise 
 Which Zeus omnipotent and Ares prize, 
 Altar of refuge, glorious shrine, 
 Stronghold of Grecian deities, 
 For which, propitious, now I pray, 
 
 Pouring my sacred lay ; 
 Springing to light from earth's dark womb, 
 May life's fair germs prolific bloom, 
 
 Lured by the solar ray. 
 
 Here may no tree-destroying mildew sweep, 
 
 (So show I forth my grace,) 
 May no fierce heat within these bounds alight, 
 Blasting the tender buds ; no sterile blight, 
 
 Disastrous, onward creep. 
 But in due season here may flocks of worth 
 Twin yeanlings bear ; and may this race, 
 Enriched with treasures of the earth, 
 
 Honour the Heaven-sent grace !" 
 A. c. vol. vii. N
 
 194 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 Converted thus into kind deities,* Eumenides hence- 
 forth instead of Furies, they are led forth in cheer- 
 ful procession to their temples under the Acropolis. 
 Pallas goes in front to show them to their dwelling ; 
 behind them the twelve judges follow, and last a 
 train of women march with blazing torches. Up the 
 broad steps that lead from the orchestra to the stage, 
 along the whole front of the theatre, the stately proces- 
 sion moves, and passes slowly out of sight to go to the 
 crypts in whose gloomy sanctity these daughters of the 
 night are worshipped. And as they go, the escort- 
 hymn is sung : 
 
 Chorus of the Escort. 
 
 " Night's hoary children, venerable train, 
 With friendly escort leave the hallowed fane. 
 
 All. Rustics, glad shouts of triumph raise. 
 
 Cho. In ancient crypts remote from light, 
 
 Victims await you and the hallowed rite. 
 
 AIL People, ring out your notes of praise. 
 
 Cho. With promise to this land of blessings rare , 
 Down the steep path ye awful beings wend, 
 Rejoicing in the torch light's dazzling glare. 
 
 A II. Your cries of jubilee ring out amain. 
 
 * The title is really due to that dislike of the Greeks to call- 
 ing unpleasant things by their true names, which made them 
 call the Black Sea the Euxine, or ' ' Hospitable Sea. "
 
 THE STORY OF ORESTES. 195 
 
 Cho. Let torch-lights and libations close the rear. 
 Thus Zeus, all-seeing, and the Fates descend, 
 To bless these citizens to Pallas dear. 
 
 All. Your cry of jubilee ring out amain." 
 
 And so it is all over. Very dimly and scantily the 
 scenes have been represented here : we have had but 
 half the play, even in this meagre English ; and we 
 have lost altogether the beauty of colouring, the 
 grandeur of the music, and, above all, the sympathy of 
 assembled Athens. But even thus we can hardly 
 wonder if the consent of posterity has given the 
 palm for artistic greatness to the Trilogy of Orestes. 
 
 Let us look back for a moment at the scenes that 
 have passed before us, from the watchman on his 
 tower in the lonely darkness, to the blaze of torches 
 that has just parted from our gaze. Let us see 
 Agamemnon coming home in pride, Cassandra in the 
 storm of her wild emotion, Clytemnestra defying the 
 elders of her country; watch, again, Electra with her 
 train of captives bringing their offerings to the dead 
 hero's tomb ; Orestes in his unswerving course of ven- 
 geance not Hamlet-like, pondering and regretting, 
 but going straight though sadly to his task; see him 
 driven in madness forth ; recall Apollo standing angry 
 with his "bow, the hideous Furies chanting their 
 Binding Hymn, bright Pallas holding up the acquit- 
 ting pebble, Orestes going forth freed and rejoicing;
 
 196 AESCHYLUS. 
 
 has it been so dry and lifeless after all, this Greek 
 story ? 
 
 And if we could see it as they saw it, under the 
 Athenian sky, and feel as they felt then, to whom its 
 religious meaning was a creed, to whom the Argive 
 alliance was a real interest, and the Areopagus a cause 
 to fight for, should we have needed any apology for 
 ^Eschylus ? 
 
 END OF .ESCHYLUS 
 
 rillNTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
 
 Ancient Classics for English Readers 
 
 EDITED BY THE 
 
 REV. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 SOPHOCLES
 
 The Volumes published of this Series contain 
 
 HOMER: THE ILIAD, BY THE EDITOR. 
 HOMER: THE ODYSSEY, BY THE SAME. 
 HERODOTUS, BY GEORGE C. SWAYNE, M.A. 
 CAESAR, BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 VIRGIL, BY THE EDITOR. 
 HORACE, BY THEODORE MARTIN. 
 AESCHYLUS, BY REGINALD S. COPLESTON, M.A. 
 XENOPHON, BY SIR ALEX. GRANT, BART., LL.D. 
 CICERO, BY THE EDITOR. 
 SOPHOCLES, BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A. 
 PLINY, BY A. CHURCH, M.A., AND W. J. 
 
 BRODRIBB, M.A. 
 
 EURIPIDES, BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 JUVENAL, BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. 
 ARISTOPHANES, BY THE EDITOR. 
 HESIOD & THEOGNIS, BY JAMES DAVIES, M.A. 
 PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, BY THE EDITOR. 
 TACITUS, BY WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 LUCIAN, BY THE EDITOR. 
 PLATO, BY CLIFTON W. COLLINS. 
 THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, BY LORD 
 
 N EAVES.
 
 SOPHOCLES 
 
 BY 
 
 CLIFTON -W. COLLINS, M.A. 
 
 H.M. INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXXI
 
 THE "VVriter desires to express his acknowledgments 
 to Professor Plurnptre for permission to make use of 
 his translation of these tragedies ; and to Mr D'Arcy 
 Thompson for a similar courtesy in the case of his 
 Sales Attici.' 
 
 Use has also teen made of M. Patin's ' Studies on 
 Sophocles,' Mr Jebb's edition of the 'Ajax and Electra,' 
 and the last chapter of Lord Lytton's ' Athens.' 
 
 Of the translations, those marked (A.) are by the 
 late Professor Anstice ; those marked (D.) are by 
 Dale ; and those distinguished by (P.) are from Pro- 
 fessor Plumptre's translation, to which reference has 
 been made above.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION, 1 
 
 ii II. (EDIPUS THE KING, 20 
 
 n III. (EDIPUS AT COLONUS 45 
 
 n IV. ANTIGONE, 70 
 
 n V. THE DEATH OF AJAX 98 
 
 n VI. THE MAIDENS OF TRACHIS, .... 123 
 
 n VII. PHILOCTETES, ... ... 136 
 
 it VIII. ELECTRA 162
 
 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE materials for our poet's life are few and untrust- 
 worthy. The real biographies have perished ; and all that 
 we have in. their place is a brief anonymous memoir, 
 some notices in Suidas, and a few anecdotes retailed to 
 us from different sources by Athenseus, the great col- 
 lector of the scandal and gossip of his day and these 
 last probably belong to the mock pearls of history. 
 The mere attempt, then, to compile a detailed life of 
 Sophocles out of this " rubbish heap of tradition," is 
 (to use Professor Plumptre's illustration) like " making 
 bricks without straw." As in the case of Shakspeare, 
 we know little of the man except what we can glean 
 from his writings. Some few facts, however, rest on 
 higher testimony; and these may be shortly noticed. 
 
 Colonus, a small village about a mile to the north of 
 Athens, was the birthplace of Sophocles ; and every 
 feature of its scenery has been vividly described by 
 him in a famous choral ode, to be hereafter noticed. 
 
 A. c. vol. x. A
 
 2 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 The landscape must have been strikingly picturesque, 
 with its white limestone cliffs, its dark grove sacred to 
 " the gentle goddesses," and echoing with " all throats 
 that gurgle sweet," .with the pure clear stream of the 
 Cephisus, never failing in the hottest summer, and 
 watering this garden of Attica. 
 
 Whatever may have been his father's calling, Sopho- 
 cles was himself a gentleman. " His natural gifts," 
 says Lord Lytton, "were the rarest that nature be- 
 stows on man, genius and beauty." Body and mind 
 were carefully trained under the best masters ; and he 
 received the complete liberal education of his age. 
 We can imagine how the boy grew up to manhood, 
 feeding his poetic fancy with those ancient founts of 
 inspiration, the adventures of the Argonauts or the 
 " tale of Troy divine ; " just as the genius of Spenser and 
 Milton was nourished on the old romances of our 
 country. We can imagine, too, how he must have 
 been inspired with the eternal ideas of truth and 
 beauty wafted, as in Plato's State, "like gales of 
 health blowing fresh from salubrious lands," * by the 
 constant sight and presence of that noble city, robed 
 in her " imperial mantle of architecture," adorned by 
 the paintings of Panaenus and by the sculpture of 
 Phidias, her streets crowded with strangers from all 
 lands, and her harbours filled with the masts of a 
 thousand triremes. 
 
 Sophocles made an early entrance on public life. At 
 the age of sixteen his grace and beauty were such that 
 he was selected from the youth of Attica to lead the 
 * Kepubl. iii. 401.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 choral dance around the altar which had been raised 
 in honour of the victory of Salamis. Ten years later, 
 we find him coming forward as the rival of ^Eschylus 
 at the great festival of Bacchus, at which the prizes for 
 tragedy were awarded. Cimon and his nine colleagues 
 had just returned from Samos, bringing with them the 
 bones of Theseus, which were to serve as a talisman 
 against plague and pestilence. The generals entered 
 the theatre just before the commencement of the per- 
 formances, and the Archon, estimating rightly the 
 greatness of the occasion, swore them in to judge the 
 case between the rival dramatists. They unanimously 
 awarded the first prize to Sophocles ; and ^Eschylus, 
 it is said, in deep resentment of their verdict, left 
 Athens, and retired to the court of Hiero at Syracuse. 
 
 A first success is everything in literature ; and So- 
 phocles, like others, found himself famous in a day. 
 For more than forty years he continued to exhibit 
 plays sometimes winning the first prize, sometimes 
 defeated in his turn by some younger candidate for 
 fame, but never once degraded to the third place. So 
 prolific was his genius, that he is said to have composed 
 upwards of a hundred tragedies. Of these but seven 
 are extant. 
 
 He had inherited a moderate income, and it is said 
 this independence was necessary to the poet, for custom 
 and etiquette prevented him from making money by 
 his plays. " The crown of wild olive " was the only 
 stimulus to genius ; for the " two obols " paid by each 
 citizen for admission went to the lessees of the theatre, 
 and served to defray the necessary expense of scenery
 
 4 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 and decorations, as well as to pay the actors. The 
 Greek would have regarded with the same disfavour 
 the tragedian who made a profit on his plays, as the 
 Sophist who might (as many of them in fact did) take 
 money for his lectures, or the statesman who should 
 accept salary or pension for what should have heen a 
 labour of love.* All such sordid gains, they held, 
 should be left to the base-born mechanic ; no gentle- 
 man should degrade his profession to the level of a 
 trade. In the case of the poet, who was supposed 
 to receive his inspiration direct from heaven, it would 
 have been simple profanation to sell, as it were, the 
 very bread of life. It was sufficient glory and recom- 
 pense for him if the State or some rich citizen repre- 
 senting the State should defray the expenses of a 
 Chorus, that he might " see his poetry put into action 
 assisted with all the pomp of spectacle and music, 
 hallowed by the solemnity of a religious festival, and 
 breathed, by artists elaborately trained to heighten 
 the eloquence of words, into the ear of assembled 
 Greece, "t 
 
 Like every other Athenian, Sophocles was a poli- 
 tician, and he took his part in the stirring scenes of 
 
 * We may judge how mercenary, in a Greek point of view, 
 would have seemed such an exhibition as that of the Royal 
 Academy, from the analogous case of Zeuxis, the Millais of his 
 day, who exhibited his picture of Helen, and took money at the 
 doors. Crowds flocked to see the painting, and the painter 
 cleared a large sum but the name of ' Helen ' was changed by 
 a satirical public to ' The Courtesan. ' (See St John, Manners 
 and Customs of Ancient Greece, i. 303.) 
 
 t Lord Lytton's Athens, ii. 516.
 
 INTR OD UCTIOX. 5 
 
 public life, personally serving in more than one cam- 
 paign. But public life palled upon him, as it palls 
 on every ardent and enthusiastic character. His 
 temper was too gentle and his principles too chivalrous 
 for him to grapple with the unscrupulous party spirit 
 of the times. Kot even the charm of a friendship 
 with Pericles, or the honour of a statesman's position, 
 could console him for the loss of literary ease ; and 
 we can understand how gladly he must have left the 
 restless and busy Athens for the peaceful and lovely 
 scenery of Colonus. There, like Pope on his lawn 
 at Twickenham, like Wordsworth in the solitude of 
 Grasmere, or, to use a more classical illustration, like 
 Horace at his Sabine farm, he was free to follow the 
 bent of his genius, and to draw from nature his purest 
 and most perfect picture of a Greek landscape. 
 
 Yet the scenes which he had left might well have 
 attracted a more ambitious spirit 
 
 " To scorn delights, and live laborious days." 
 
 Athens was then teeming with all the exuberant life 
 which marked the renaissance in modern times. 
 Thought found its utterance in action, in the passion 
 for Avar and in the restless spirit of enterprise, in alt 
 that many-sided energy which marked the Athenians 
 a people of whom their own historian speaks as 
 " never quiet themselves, and never allowing others 
 to be so." * Assuredly Sophocles was born under a 
 lucky star ; for his life was coeval with the greatness 
 of his country, and he did not live to see the Long 
 * Thucydides, i. 70.
 
 6 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Walls the symbol of that greatness levelled in the 
 dust to the sound of Spartan music. He lived in an 
 age of heroes. All round him were the very men who 
 had made his country what it was, and with most of 
 these men he was on terms of the most familiar inter- 
 course. Doors we're not then, as now, " barred with 
 gold ; " and Athenian society opened its arms to the 
 graceful and engaging poet, so genial in his temper, so 
 lively in conversation, so true a friend, so pleasant a 
 guest. We can imagine Sophocles in his old age recal- 
 ling the memories of his youth ; recounting to his chil- 
 dren, with pardonable pride, the historic names and 
 scenes with which he had been so familiar : he would 
 tell them how he had listened to the thunder of 
 " Olympian Pericles ; " how he had been startled by 
 the chorus of Furies in the play of ^Eschylus ; how 
 he had talked with the garrulous and open-hearted 
 Herodotus ; how he had followed Anaxagoras, the 
 great Sceptic, in the cool of the day among a throng 
 of his disciples ; how he had walked with Phidias, 
 and supped with Aspasia. 
 
 Sophocles enjoyed a rare popularity in Athens. 
 Even that prince of satirists, Aristophanes, can find 
 neither flaw nor blemish in his moral armour against 
 which to launch an arrow. He directs unsparing 
 raillery against the bombast of ^Eschylus and the 
 sophistry of Euripides ; but he has nothing to say 
 against this " good easy man " " as gentle below the 
 earth as he was gentle in his lifetime." * The scan- 
 dalous anecdotes of Athenaeus may be taken for what 
 * Aristoph. Ranse, 82.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 they are worth ; and it is difficult for any one who has 
 read his plays, with all their purity of passion, their 
 delicacy of feeling, their chivalrous principles of hon- 
 our, to helieve them, with Lord Lytton, to have been 
 written by a " profligate " or a " renegade." * 
 
 He died full of years and honour, loved (as his 
 biographer tells us) in every way by all men; and 
 his fellow-citizens paid due reverence to the tomb of 
 him who was truly " the prince of poets in his time." 
 The god Bacchus, himself, the divine patron of the 
 tragic drama, was said to have appeared to Lysander, 
 whose armies were then beleaguering Athens, and to 
 have demanded that a safe-conduct should be given 
 to the poet's friends to bear his body beyond the 
 city walls to Decelea, and there bury it in the sepul- 
 chre of his fathers. 
 
 Sacrifices were offered to his Manes, and a statue of 
 bronze was erected to his memory; but "more endur- 
 ing than brass or marble " has been the epitaph com- 
 posed in his honour by Simmias of Thebes, thus 
 gracefully translated by Professor Plumptre : 
 
 " Creep gently, ivy, ever gently creep, 
 
 Where Sophocles sleeps on in calm repose ; 
 Thy pale green tresses o'er the marble sweep, 
 
 While all around shall bloom the purpling rose. 
 There let the vine with rich full clusters hang, 
 
 Its fair young tendrils fling around the stone ; 
 Due meed for that sweet wisdom which he sang, 
 
 By Muses and by Graces called their own." 
 
 We now pass to the inner life of Sophocles to his 
 * Athens, ii. 520, note.
 
 8 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 character and work. It is but a step from ^Eschylus 
 to him, yet the step involves an immensity of change, 
 not only in the man, but in the age. Instead of the 
 rough son of Mars the hero of Marathon who (as 
 Sophocles himself said) " did what was right with- 
 out knowing it," we have the graceful and artistic 
 poet, skilled in weaving plots and in delineating char- 
 acters. The change is like passing from storm to sun- 
 shine. The wild imagery, the unearthly conceptions, 
 the heroes and the heroines, human indeed, but with 
 the human image dilated to colossal proportions, like 
 the spectre of the Brocken, and with the passions of 
 the Titans who scaled Olympus the " ox-horned lo," 
 the blood-stained Furies, and the " wild Cassandra," 
 all these have disappeared. In their stead the scene 
 is occupied by creations of flesh and blood, with 
 human sympathies and affections, true and real in 
 character, because their types were taken from the 
 gallery of life. The serenity which marked the poet 
 seems to influence his readers and spectators. So true 
 is he to nature, so gradual is his development of each 
 legend, however wonderful or monstrous it may be, 
 that we have no alternative but to believe and sympa- 
 thise. It is with Sophocles as with Spenser. " Au plus 
 fort de 1'invention il reste serein. Sa bonne foi nous 
 gagne ; sa serenite devient la n6tre. Nous devenons 
 credules et heureux par contagion. . . . 'C'est une 
 fantasmagorie,' dira-t-on ? Qu'importe ? si nous la 
 voyons, et nous la voyons, car ' Sophocle ' la voit." * 
 
 * Taine (Hist, de la Litterature Anglaise, i. 334), who thus 
 speaks of Spenser.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 The poet fell in with the change that had come over 
 the spirit of his time. The generation of ^Eschylus 
 stout warriors who had fought at Marathon, and sturdy 
 seamen who " knew nothing " (as Aristophanes said) 
 " except to call for barley-cake, and shout ' yo-heave- 
 ho ' " had been content to believe implicitly all 
 that Homer and their poets had taught them; and 
 seeing around them traces of some mysterious force 
 whose agency and purpose they were powerless to 
 explain, they made a god of this Necessity or Des- 
 tiny, and called it Nemesis. She was, in truth, a 
 jealous deity, causing the rich and prosperous to foun- 
 der like a vessel on a sunken reef,* and in one short 
 day changing their joy to sorrow, striking them piti- 
 lessly down in the plenitude of their grandeur, as a 
 child in mere wantonness strikes down the tallest 
 poppies in the corn-field. It was in vain to attempt 
 to coax or cajole this capricious power by tears or 
 offerings. History had taught men the futility of 
 such bribes. Polycrates had thrown his precious ring 
 into the sea ; Croesus had filled the treasury of Delphi 
 with his gold; but "no sacrifice or libation could 
 save a man's soul from Death," and " on Death alone, 
 of all divinities, Persuasion had no power." t And 
 Herodotus, the most pious of historians, draws the 
 obvious moral from the downfall of kings and the 
 collapse of empires. "Envy," he says, "clings to 
 all that mortal is. ... Even a god cannot escape 
 from Destiny." | 
 
 * JEscb., Eumen. 565. t -<Esch., Fra^m. of Niobe. 
 Hist. i. 35, 91 ; vii. 46.
 
 10 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Such was the " tremendous creed " of which ^Eschy- 
 lus was a fitting exponent ; with him the Furies are 
 the satellites of Fate, and it is their eternal duty 
 to pursue the murderer till death and after death. 
 The complaint which Corneille puts into the mouth of 
 Theseus, in his ' QEdipe,' might have been more truly 
 uttered by Eteocles in the ' Seven against Thebes,' as 
 he feels the blast of his father's curse which is wafting 
 him to Hades : 
 
 " Quoi ! la necessity des vertus et des vices 
 D'un astre imperieux doit suivre les caprices, 
 Et Delphes malgrfe nous conduit nos actions 
 Au plus bizarre effet de ses predictions ? 
 , E'ame est done toute esclave ; une loi souveraine 
 Vers le bien ou le mal incessament 1'entraine ; 
 Et nous ne recevons ni crainte, ni desir, 
 De cette liberte qui n'a rien a choisir ; 
 Attaches sans relache & cet ordre sublime, 
 Vertueux sans merite, et vicieux sans crime." * 
 
 ' (Edipe/ Act iii. sc. 5. 
 
 It is true that in the 'Prometheus' we have the 
 spectacle of an indomitable will, proof against all 
 suffering; yet it is in this very play that ^Eschylus 
 most insists on the " invincible might of Necessity," 
 
 * Eeaders of Shakspeare may remember Edmund's descrip- 
 tion of the " excellent foppery of the world, that when we are 
 sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we 
 make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars ; 
 as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compul- 
 sion, knaves and thieves by spherical predominance, . . . and 
 all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on." King Lear, 
 act i. sc. 2.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 to which wise men pay homage, and which is "a 
 higher power than Jove." Prometheus defies the 
 lightning, but he bows to Destiny, as the gladiators 
 bowed to the autocrat in the imperial box, with their 
 chant of morituri te salutant, knowing themselves to 
 be doomed men, but dying with a good grace, and 
 scorning to ask for quarter. 
 
 Gradually the Greek mind expanded. The seas 
 were opened, commerce increased, men travelled far 
 and saw much ; and thus the same stimulus was given 
 to national thought and feeling by maritime enterprise 
 as to the Jews under Solomon, and to the English 
 under Elizabeth.* And as the Athenians grew adven- 
 turous, so they grew self-reliant. They doubted and 
 questioned where they had before been content to 
 shudder and believe. They attributed more to them- 
 selves and less to the blind agency of Destiny ; and 
 thus, in this progress of rationalism, there ensued that 
 momentous change in thought represented by the 
 transition in history from Herodotus to Thucydides, 
 and in poetry from ^Eschylus to Sophocles. 
 
 "With this new generation, man is no longer bound 
 hand and foot, powerless to move against his inevitable 
 doom. He has liberty of choice in action, and by his 
 knowledge or his ignorance, by his virtues or his vices, 
 has made himself what he is. It is not so much a 
 malignant power tormenting men in sheer envy at 
 their wealth or happiness ; but it is men themselves, 
 who " play the fool with the times, while the spirits of 
 
 * See Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 185; 
 Fronde's History of England, viii. 426.
 
 12 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 the wise sit in the clouds and mock them." A long 
 train of disastrous consequences often follows from a 
 single impious speech or guilty deed nay, even from 
 a hot word or a hasty blow. Thus the idea of Destiny 
 passes into that of retribution. Punishment surely 
 follows sin, if not in a man's own day, yet descending, 
 like an heirloom of misery, upon his children. 
 
 " In life there is a seesaw ; if we shape 
 Our actions to our humours, other hands 
 May shape their consequences to our pain." * 
 
 In fact, Sophocles seems to have asked himself the 
 question put by Nisus to Euryalus in the ^Eneid, 
 and to have answered it in his treatment of men in 
 their relations to God : 
 
 " Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, 
 Euryale ? an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido ?"f 
 
 In each of his plays he shows how passion works out 
 its own end whether it be the pride of CEdipus, the 
 stubbornness of Creon, the insane fury of Ajax, or the 
 
 * So says Sophocles, Ajax, 1085 (translated in Mr D'Arcy 
 Thompson's ' Sales Attici '), anticipating the well-known words 
 of Shakspeare : 
 
 " The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to scourge us. " 
 
 King Lear, Act v. sc. 3. 
 
 t "Virgil, JEn. ix. 184. Professor Conington translates the 
 passage thus : 
 
 ' Can it be Heaven,' said Nisus then, 
 
 ' That lends such warmth to hearts of men T 
 
 ' Or passion surging past control 
 
 ' That plays the god to each man's soul ? '
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 jealousy of Dejanira. All these passions are simple 
 and natural ; there are no eccentricities of genius, no 
 abnormal mental states, such as furnish the material of 
 the modern drama. The Greek would not have under- 
 stood the melancholy of Hamlet or the madness of 
 Lear ; still less would he have entered into the spirit 
 of Timon's declaration, 
 
 u I am misanthropes, and hate mankind." 
 
 The Athenian audience, with the joyous instincts of 
 children ever ready to " make believe " gave them- 
 selves up to all the illusions of the scene and story, 
 delighting, and freely expressing their delight, in the 
 picturesque and ever-shifting series of graceful tableaux, 
 so different from the still life of a statue or a painting. 
 They were " as gods," knowing all the good and evil 
 in the future of the play such knowledge only increas- 
 ing the expectancy with which they looked forward to 
 CEdipus blinding himself, or Ajax falling on his sword. 
 The manner in which the poet treated each old familiar 
 tale was the test of his art, just as a modern preacher 
 might discuss and illustrate, after his own proper taste 
 and fashion, some well-known text. If we want a 
 modern example of the keen interest and sympathy 
 which may be excited in a large and intelligent audi- 
 ence by the lifelike representation of a history familiar 
 to them from their childhood, we have not to go far to 
 seek. The Passion-Play now acted at Ober-Ammer- 
 gau has many points of resemblance to the Greek 
 drama. In both there is the same reality and majestic 
 slowness in the acting, the same rhythmical dialogue,
 
 14 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 the same melodious choral songs, the same large stage, 
 with architectural scenery half-open to the sky, and, 
 above all, the same intensity of religious feeling, which 
 thrills the actor, and passes from him, like an electric 
 current, to an enthusiastic audience. And if this 
 resemblance is apparent now, how much stronger must 
 it have been in the middle ages, when the Bible was 
 a sealed book to the poorer classes, while the Passion- 
 Play embodied for them to the life the personages and 
 scenes of Scripture when, as a German critic describes 
 it, " cloister and church were the first theatres, priests 
 the first actors, the first dramatic matter was the Pas- 
 sion, and the first dramas the Mysteries."* 
 
 Sophocles developed this religious aspect of the 
 drama ; and no Athenian citizen could have seen his 
 'Ajax' or 'Antigone' without feeling their hearts 
 burn within them, or without being touched and ele- 
 vated by the mingled sweetness and purity and pathos 
 which earned for the poet the title of the " Attic Bee." 
 From his pages can be gleaned sentences which read 
 like fragments from the inspired writings, and which 
 might have furnished texts for a hundred sermons. 
 With him the Deity is a personal and omnipresent 
 being, far removed from that sombre and vindictive 
 Nemesis which haunted ^Eschylus, " neither sleeping 
 nor waxing faint in the lapse of years, but reigning 
 for ever in the splendour of Olympus," "speaking 
 in riddles to the wise, but leaving the foolish in their 
 own conceits." "Nothing is impossible with Him." 
 " His works may perish, but He lives for all eter- 
 * Gervinus, Comment, on Shakspeare, L 66.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 nity." "Happiness is a fruit that grows in His 
 garden only." "To honour Him is the first and 
 greatest of commandments." * Here are lines which 
 might have been written by a Christian divine : 
 
 " Speak thou no word of pride, nor raise 
 A swelling thought against the gods on high ; 
 For Time uplifteth and Time layeth low 
 All human things ; and the great gods above 
 Abhor the wicked as the good they love. 
 
 Be blameless in all duties towards the gods ; 
 For God the Father in compare with this 
 Lightly esteemeth all things else ; and so 
 Thy righteousness shall with thee to the end 
 Endure, and follow thee beyond the grave." f 
 
 These sentiments pervade every play. It is only 
 when unmanned by despair that his heroes are tempted, 
 like Job, in the anguish of their hearts, to " curse God 
 and die." Even then such impiety meets with its own 
 reward. Well, therefore, might his unknown bio- 
 grapher declare Sophocles to have been " dear to the 
 gods as no other man was;" and with equal truth 
 may Professor Plumptre hail him as one of those 
 who were, in their degree, "schoolmasters unto 
 Christ." 
 
 Mingled with this strong religious feeling in Sopho- 
 cles was that melancholy supposed to be engendered 
 only in the poets of the north. He is oppressed by 
 
 * Fragments of lost plays of Sophocles, 
 t Philoctetes, 1441. This and the preceding translations 
 are mainly taken from 'Sales Attici.'
 
 16 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 his sense of the feebleness of human intellect and 
 the impotence of human foresight, as compared with 
 the omnipotent wisdom of an eternal being. Like 
 some master-spirit, he views the actions and passions 
 of the characters which he has created with a half- 
 contemptuous pity. He heaps upon mankind every 
 epithet of scorn "phantoms," "shadows," "creatures 
 of a day," " born to misery as the sparks fly upwards." 
 Hence springs what has been called his " Irony," so 
 admirably illustrated in Bishop Thirlwall's well-known 
 essay. " Men promise much and perform little. They 
 think they are marching onward to fame and greatness, 
 when the ground is opening beneath their feet, and 
 they are sinking to destruction. They boast of their 
 strength when they are really displaying their weak- 
 ness. Like (Edipus, they solve the riddle of the 
 Sphinx, and are blind to the riddle of their own 
 lives." * And there had been sufficient historical ex- 
 amples, even within his own experience, to point the 
 moral of this Irony. Scarcely one of those great 
 statesmen whom he had personally known, command- 
 ing the armies or guiding the councils of his country, 
 had either lived long or had seen good days. Defeat, 
 disaster, or dishonour, had been the lot of all. Them- 
 istocles had died in a strange land, a pensioner on the 
 Great King's bounty ; Pericles had fallen a victim to 
 the plague which was decimating his besieged country- 
 men ; his nephew, the gay and gallant Alcibiades, was a 
 traitor in the Spartan camp ; while Nicias had perished 
 * Plumptre's Introd. to Sophocles, IxxxviiL
 
 INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 miserably, with the flower of his army, after the fatal 
 night-march from Syracuse. 
 
 Many improvements are said to have been intro- 
 duced by Sophocles on the Athenian stage. We are 
 told that he raised the number of actors present at 
 once upon the scene from two to three ; that he attired 
 them in splendid dresses robes of saffron and purple, 
 falling in long and graceful folds, jewelled chaplets, 
 and broad embroidered girdles. But above all, he 
 increased the number of the Chorus, and gave a new 
 form and spirit to the music which accompanied their 
 odes. We, in our cold climate, can hardly appreciate 
 the effect which music produced on the enthusiastic 
 Greek temperament. The French are more susceptible 
 to such influence ; and few who have ever heard it can 
 forget the sublime effect of the Marseillaise thundered 
 out by a vast revolutionary throng. To the Greek, 
 music was a passion and a necessity. Even now, a 
 modern traveller compares their life to an opera, where 
 men sing from birth to death ; and perhaps the case 
 was even stronger in the days of Sophocles, when 
 " song rose from an Hellenic village as naturally as 
 from a brake in spring." Whether the peasant might 
 be watching by the cradle, working in the vineyard, 
 or toiling at the oar, the labour was in each case 
 lightened by some appropriate song. Their bards 
 told how Arion charmed the dolphin, how the walls 
 of Troy rose to the sound of Apollo's flute, as those of 
 Jericho fell before the trumpets of the priests, and 
 
 A. c. vol. x. B
 
 18 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 
 
 how trees and rocks followed Orpheus as he sang. 
 Even philosophers recognised this all-pervading influ- 
 ence. Aristotle has devoted a long and learned 
 chapter of his Politics to the " moral influence of 
 music ; " and it was in music also (as most likely to 
 be corrupted by innovation) that Plato, in his ideal 
 State, places the watch-tower of his "guardians." The 
 marriage hymn, the funeral dirge, the incantation of 
 the witch, the chant of the physician, the solemn 
 and melodious invocation of the priest, merely illus- 
 trate this universal passion. Ion, the rhapsodist, 
 describes the strong emotion produced in himself and 
 in his hearers' by the recitation of Homer. " When 
 that which I recite is pathetic," he says, " my eyes 
 are filled with tears ; when it is awful or terrible, my 
 hair stands on end and my heart leaps. Moreover, I. 
 see the spectators also weeping in sympathy with my 
 emotion, and looking aghast with terror." * If the mere 
 recitation of hexameter verse could produce this effect, 
 far more powerfully must the simple but passionate 
 music of the Tragic Chorus, sung in unison by well- 
 trained singers, have impressed the audience in the 
 theatre, where the masks of perfect beauty, the grace- 
 ful robes, and the majestic stature of the actors gave a 
 solemn and almost unearthly character to the scene. 
 Though Sophocles had a weak voice, he was himself 
 a skilled musician ; and in his choral odes (purposely 
 shortened by him that they might not interrupt the 
 current of the story) we can faintly trace the echo of 
 that sweet and majestic melody which must once have 
 * Crete's Plato (Ion).
 
 INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 entranced all hearers we can almost hear the harmony 
 of voices, now rising loud and clear as they hail a 
 prince or victor, and then dying away with a solemn 
 Memnonian cadence as 
 
 " They mourn the bridegroom early torn 
 
 From his young bride, and set on high 
 Strength, courage, virtue's golden morn, 
 Too good to die." * 
 
 * Horace. Od. iv. 2 (Conington's Transl.)
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 (EDIPUS THE KING. 
 
 No tragedy in history or in fiction can equal the 
 horror of the tale of QEdipus. The plot is so simple 
 as to be told in a sentence. An oracle foretells that 
 (Edipus shall slay his father and be married to his 
 mother ; and, against his own will and knowledge, he 
 fulfils his destiny. By a sudden revolution of fortune 
 we see a man, to all appearance as wise as Solomon and 
 as blameless as Job, hurled into an abyss of misery 
 and despair ; and this by a chain of circumstances of 
 whose real import he is himself unconscious until the 
 final catastrophe. It is a case where the punishment 
 seems out of all proportion to the crime. Even when 
 we take into account the passion, the pride, and the 
 curiosity of (Edipus, we still feel that the criminal has 
 been in a measure " the victim of a mistake " that he 
 is a mere puppet in the hands of some superior and 
 relentless power. And yet this Fatality, to which 
 (Edipus is subject, is not so great or capricious as at 
 first sight it seems to be. It is true that chance and 
 misfortune are the means which it makes use of for
 
 CEDIPUS THE KING. 21 
 
 the accomplishment of its purpose, but it uses them 
 for the ends of Justice. " The real instruments," says 
 M. Girardin, " by which Fate works, are men's un- 
 bridled passions ; it strikes down the murderer by the 
 murderer, and punishes the crime by the crime. But 
 Justice appears beyond and above these furious im- 
 pulses, and directs them, in spite of themselves, to that 
 mysterious goal towards which it tends." * To the 
 audience, who knew the story well, no suspense could 
 have been so agonising as to watch the misguided 
 king rushing headlong to his doom to see him weav- 
 ing himself the fatal chain of evidence which was to 
 convict him of murder and incest, and this without 
 their being able to raise a voice to warn, or to stretch 
 out a hand to save. And mingled with this feeling 
 was that indefinable sympathetic fear always strongly 
 excited by the sight of sufferings to which we may be 
 ourselves exposed the dread which haunted each 
 man among the audience lest he might himself some 
 day prove an (Edipus. No one would have disclaimed 
 the idea of his committing such monstrous sins with a 
 more fervent sincerity than the criminal in this tragedy. 
 " Is thy servant a dog, that he should do these things ?" 
 he would have asked ; and yet, influenced by some 
 mysterious impulse, he had done them all. And, 
 lastly, the spectators must have felt that natural but 
 selfish pleasure of looking down, like the gods of Epi- 
 curus, from the vantage-ground of their tiers of seats, 
 on the storm of conflicting passions, the love and the 
 rage, the hatred and the despair, which convulsed the 
 * Cours de Lit. Dramat., L 189.
 
 22 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 actors on the stage. Lucretius describes this common- 
 est of all feelings in well-known lines : " Sweet it is," 
 says he, " when on the great sea winds are troubling 
 the waters, to behold from land another's deep distress. 
 . . . Tis sweet again to look upon armies battling on 
 the plains without sharing in the danger." * 
 
 It was the skilful manner in which all these emo- 
 tions are worked up by Sophocles in this play that 
 caused Aristotle, the great critic, to select ' CEdipus the 
 King ' as the model and masterpiece of Tragedy. 
 
 We are carried back by the poet to the same 
 mythic period, with no pretence to historical date, 
 to which Shakspeare carries us back in his kindred 
 play of ' King Lear ' t an age of giants, when men's 
 passions were at blood-heat, when atrocious crimes 
 were followed by atrocious vengeance, and when the 
 general violence and brutality of manners is only re- 
 lieved by brighter touches in such characters as Theseus 
 and Kent, Cordelia and Antigone. CEdipus hirnseli 
 might well say with Lear, that " the best and soundest 
 of his time had been but rashness." 
 
 Laius, king of Thebes, took for his wife Jocasta, 
 " daughter of the wise Menoeceus," but she bore him 
 no children. Then in his distress he asked help of 
 the god of Delphi ; and the god declared that a son 
 should be born to him, but by the hands of this son 
 he should surely die. As soon as the child, the hero 
 of this tragedy, is born, his mother intrusts him to a 
 servant, with strict charge that he should be left to 
 
 * Lucretius, ii. 1 (Munro's Transl.) 
 
 J- Gervinus, Comment, on Shakspeare, ii. 204.
 
 (EDIPUS THE KINO. 23 
 
 die in the wilderness. This cruel command is obeyed. 
 The child's feet are pierced, cords are passed through 
 them, and it is left hanging from a tree in the wildest 
 pass of Mount Cithaeron. There a shepherd finds it, 
 and, moved with pity, carries it to his master Polybus, 
 king of Corinth. The wife of Polybus, being child- 
 less, resolves to adopt the foundling as her own son, 
 and thus the stranger is received into the palace, and 
 is given the name of CEdipus " Swell-foot." He grows 
 up to manhood, never doubting that he is the son and 
 heir of Polybus. 
 
 In the mean time King Laius had grown old, and 
 thirty years after his child had been thus exposed, 
 he made a second pilgrimage to consult the god of 
 Delphi. From this pilgrimage he never returned, for 
 on his way home he was attacked and slain by some 
 unknown hand, at the spot where the road from 
 Delphi branches off to Phocis and Bceotia. Creon 
 succeeds him; but his reign is brief, for a monster, 
 with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and 
 the tail and claws of a lion, was bringing desolation 
 on the city of Thebes. The Sphinx (as this monster 
 was called) proposed a riddle which no Theban could 
 solve ; and the life of a citizen was the penalty for 
 every failure. So terrible was the visitation, that 
 Creon, in despair, offered the crown of Thebes and the 
 hand of his sister Jocasta to any who could unravel 
 the enigma and save the state. 
 
 At this crisis CEdipus, like the " fated fairy prince," 
 comes to the rescue. He had left the court of 
 Polybus, indignant at an insult offered him on the
 
 24 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 score of his unknown birth, and chance or destiny had 
 brought him to Thebes. Corneille makes him tell his 
 own story how on his arrival at the foot of the fatal 
 rock he sees the ground covered with the mangled 
 limbs of former unlucky interpreters how, in their 
 despair, the perishing citizens make large proffers to 
 the man who shall deliver them : 
 
 "Le peuple ofire le sceptre, et la reine son lit; 
 De cent cruelles morts cette offre est tot suivie ; 
 J'arrive, je 1'apprens, j'y hazarde ma vie. 
 Au pied du roc affreux seme d'os blanchissants, 
 Je demande 1'enigme, et j'en cherche la sens ; 
 Et ce qu'aucun mortel n'avait encore pu faire, 
 J'en devoile 1'image, et perce le niystere. 
 Le monstre, furieux de se voir entendu, 
 Venge aussitot sur lui tout de sang xepandu, 
 Du roc se lance en bas, et s'ecrase lui-meme, 
 La reine tint parole, et j'eus le diademe." 
 
 QEdipe, Act i. sc. 4. 
 
 Both the riddle and the answer given have become 
 matter of popular and well-known story ; and it is 
 difficult to understand the perplexity of the Thebans, 
 for the enigma was of the simplest kind : " A being 
 with four feet has two feet and three feet and only 
 one voice; but its feet vary, and, when it has most, 
 it is weakest." Professor Plumptre has thus trans- 
 lated the answer of (Edipus : 
 
 " Hear thou against thy will, thou dark-winged Muse of 
 
 the slaughtered ; 
 
 Hear from my lips the end bringing a close to thy crime : 
 MAN is it thou hast described, who, when on earth he 
 
 appeareth,
 
 (EDI PUS THE KING. 25 
 
 First as a babe from the womb, four-footed creeps on his 
 
 way, 
 Then when old age cometh on, and the burden of years 
 
 weighs full heavy, 
 Bending his shoulders and neck, as a third foot useth his 
 
 staff."* (P.) 
 
 And so the successful adventurer is made king, and 
 takes for his wife Jocasta, who had been the wife of 
 Laius, and by her he has both sons and daughters. 
 For some years all went well with CEdipus. He had 
 children, and lands, and wealth, and honour, and 
 all that helps to make life precious. He was happy in 
 the affections of his family and in the loyalty of his 
 subjects. " Heaven and earth are silent for a gener- 
 ation; one might fancy that they are treacherously 
 silent, in order that CEdipus may have time for build- 
 ing up to the clouds the pyramid of his mysterious 
 offences. His four children incestuously born sons 
 that are his brothers, daughters that are his sisters 
 have grown up to be men and women before the first 
 mutterings are becoming audible of that great tide 
 slowly coming up from the sea, which is to sweep 
 away himself and the foundations of his house. Hea- 
 
 * De Quincey ingeniously suggests that, after all, the truer 
 answer to the riddle lay in the word CEdipus, since he more 
 than any other fulfilled the conditions of these three ages of 
 man, first crawling helplessly on Ms swollen feet ; then 
 " walking upright at noonday " in the vigour of manhood, van- 
 quishing the Sphinx, and winning crown and bride by his own 
 unaided natural powers ; then, in the closing scene, thrust forth 
 from home and country, guided by his devoted daughter, "the 
 third foot that should support his steps when the deep shadows 
 of his sunset were gathering and settling about his grave."
 
 26 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 ven and earth, must now bear joint witness against 
 him. Heaven spoke first." * For some cause un- 
 known to the inhabitants, the wrath of the gods fell 
 upon the state, and every source of life was blasted 
 with that curse which was believed to follow upon 
 crime. Thebes groaned under the worst plagues which 
 sinote the land of Egypt. Pestilence came upon the 
 cattle ; mildew blighted the fruits of the earth ; the 
 first-born of women were swept away by some fatal 
 and mysterious malady. The whole city and those 
 among the poet's audience who had been in Athens 
 during the Great Plague could realise the description 
 was "full of the dead and dying." It was to no 
 purpose that unceasing prayers were offered, and that 
 incense steamed upon the altars. The gods remained 
 deaf and dumb to all entreaties. The citizens in the 
 first chorus tell the tale of their sufferings thus : 
 
 " The nurslings of the genial earth 
 
 Wane fast away ; 
 The children, blighted ere the birth, 
 
 See not the day, 
 
 And the sad mother bows her head, 
 And, with her treasure lost, sleeps 'mid the crowded dead. 
 
 One upon another driven, 
 Fleeter than the birds of heaven, 
 Fleeter than the fire-flood's might, 
 Rush they to the realms of night, 
 Where, beyond the western sea, 
 Broods the infernal Deity, 
 While our city makes her moan 
 O'er her countless children gone." (A) 
 
 * De Quincey, The Theban Sphinx (Works, ix. 249).
 
 (E DIP US THE EIXG. 27 
 
 Then at last the people, in their sorrow and despair, 
 turn as the plague - stricken Athenians turned to 
 Pericles to him who seemed to be the favourite of 
 fortune, to the prince whose sagacity had once rescued 
 them from the talons of the Sphinx ; and in the opening 
 scene of the play, a throng of citizens young men and 
 elders, priests and boys are seated before the palace- 
 doors of (Edipus, with boughs of laurel and olive, the 
 emblems of supplication, in their hands. When the 
 prince asks them the reason of their coming, they tell 
 him of the plague and pestilence which " desolate the 
 house of Cadmus," and implore him to lend his aid 
 in this hour of their dire distress. Whether he be 
 inspired by heaven, or trust to the " might of unas- 
 sisted genius," let him repeat his former good work, 
 and earn a second time the title of " Saviour of the 
 State." 
 
 The answer of (Edipus is generous and dignified, 
 and has all the complacency of gratified patriotism. 
 Upon none (he says) have these evil days weighed 
 more heavily than on himself : they have caused him 
 many tearful and restless hours. He has long pon- 
 dered over all possible modes of deliverance ; and he 
 has done what piety suggested has laid his case before 
 the gods, and is hourly expecting an answer from 
 Delphi, whither Creon had been sent. Even as he 
 speaks, Creon is seen approaching, with joy beaming 
 from his eyes, and with his brows bound with a wreath 
 of " Apollo's bays " a badge which then bore the 
 same sacred import as the palm-branch in the middle 
 ages, for it marked the happy return of the pilgrim
 
 28 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 from the shrine of Delphi, believed by the Greek to 
 be the centre of the earth, just as Jerusalem was by 
 medieval Christendom. 
 
 For once (Creon avers) Apollo has spoken plainly. 
 It is the guilt of innocent blood which troubles the 
 land. Laius had been foully murdered by unknown 
 hands ; and until the murderer was banished, or blood 
 was repaid by blood, there should be neither peace nor 
 rest for the people of Cadmus. CEdipus then asks a 
 train of questions, which (as critics remark) show a 
 strange ignorance of circumstances which must have 
 been well known to every Theban. Creon tells him 
 how, when, and where the murder had taken place, as 
 far as rumour went. One eyewitness had escaped, 
 who talked of a "band of robbers" falling on the 
 king; but these, like Falstaffs "men in buckram," 
 were afterwards shown to have been invented to screen 
 his own cowardice. CEdipus then reproaches the 
 Thebans for their previous neglect, and announces 
 that he will take upon himself the office of discover- 
 ing and punishing the unknown criminal : 
 
 " Right well hath Thebes, and right well hast thou 
 Shown for the dead your care, and ye shall find, 
 As is most meet, in me a helper true, 
 Aiding at once my country and my God." (P.) 
 
 Then the deputation of citizens, having secured a 
 champion, withdraws in procession from the stage, and 
 CEdipus is left alone. " During this pause," says one 
 of the most acute of modern critics, "the spectator 
 has leisure to reflect how diiferent all is from what it
 
 CEDIPUS THE KINO. 29 
 
 secins. The wrath of heaven has been pointed against 
 the devoted city only that it might fall with concen- 
 trated force on the head of a single man ; and he, who 
 is its object, stands alone calm and serene. Uncon- 
 scious of his own misery, he can afford pity for the 
 unfortunate; and, as if in the plenitude of wisdom 
 and power, he undertakes to trace the evil, of which 
 he is himself the sole author, to its secret source." * 
 
 The Chorus of Theban citizens now enters, and, as in 
 every chorus in Sophocles, their first ode is a solemn 
 prayer. They draw a piteous picture of the miseries 
 of Thebes, and they invoke its guardian gods to stay 
 the plague which is wasting the inhabitants. Let 
 them rise in defence of the city which has honoured 
 them so well, and drive far away to the gloomy shores 
 of Thrace the destroying angel who rides on the 
 wings of pestilence. 
 
 " Lord of the starry heaven, 
 Grasping the terrors of the burning levin ! 
 Let thy fierce bolt descend, 
 
 Scathe the Destroyer's might, and suffering Thebes be- 
 friend. 
 
 Speed thou here, Lycamn king, 
 Archer, from whose golden string 
 Light the unerring arrows spring 
 
 Apollo, lend thine aid ! 
 And come, ye beams of wreathed light, 
 Glancing on the silent night, 
 In mazy dance, on Lycia's height, 
 When roves the huntress maid. 
 
 * Bishop Thirlwall, "On the Irony of Sophocles," Philol. 
 Museum, ii. 496.
 
 30 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Thou, the golden chaplet fair 
 Braiding 'mid thy clustering hair, 
 To thy native haunts repair, 
 
 Thy name that gave ; 
 Thou, whose brow the vine-lees stain, 
 Thou, to whom on star-lit plain 
 ' Evoe ! ' sing the frenzied train, 
 
 Bacchus the brave ! 
 With thy torch of pine defy 
 (Hated by the powers on high) 
 War's unhallowed deity : 
 
 Haste thee to save ! " (A.) 
 
 Then CEdipus addresses the Chorus, as representing 
 the people of Thebes ; and to the audience, who knew 
 the story well, every word in his speech must have 
 sounded like the "bitterest irony, as they listened to the 
 speaker unconsciously invoking upon Ms own head a 
 curse as solemn and emphatic as that of Kehama. 
 
 He speaks as one of themselves a citizen to citizens 
 " a stranger to the tale, a stranger to the deed." 
 Should the murderer confess at once, banishment shall 
 be his only punishment. Should any give a clue to 
 his discovery, the informant shall have a reward and 
 thanks. But if, after this gracious offer, the criminal 
 or accomplice hold their peace 
 
 " That man I banish, whosoe'er he be, 
 From out the land whose power and throne are mine ; 
 And none may give him shelter, none speak to him, 
 Nor join with him in prayers and sacrifice, 
 Nor give him share in holy lustral stream ; 
 But all shall thrust him from their homes, declared 
 Our curse and our pollution." (P.) 
 
 All things conspire, continues CEdipus, to make
 
 (ED I PUS THE KING. 31 
 
 him stand forth as the champion of the state, and " a 
 helper to the god and to the dead." An illustrious 
 prince has fallen, the land is smitten by the wrath of 
 heaven ; " and therefore," says the king and his 
 words carry with them a terrible significance 
 
 " And therefore will I strive my best for him, 
 As for my father, and will go all lengths 
 To seek and find the murderer ; and for me, 
 If in my house, I knowing it, lie dwells, 
 May every curse I spake 011 my head fall ! " 
 
 The Chorus at once protest their innocence and ignor- 
 ance. They " neither slew, nor knew who slew." 
 
 Besides sending Creon to Delphi, (Edipus had also 
 summoned Teiresias, the great Theban seer, who, like 
 Calchas in the ' Iliad,' 
 
 " Knew all that is, and was, and is to be." 
 
 He had been deprived of his eyesight by Minerva for 
 some offence, but the goddess, by way of atonement, 
 had gifted him with such acute powers of hearing that 
 he understood the language of all the birds of heaven. 
 Even after death he retained his prophetic powers, and 
 Ulysses himself sought the lower world to learn from 
 his lips the secrets of the future, being, as the Chorus 
 describe him here, ' 
 
 " The seer inspired of God, 
 With whom alone of all men truth abides." 
 
 Teiresias is led in by a boy, bearing the golden 
 staff which was the badge of his augurial office. 
 (Edipus addresses him with dignified courtesy, speak-
 
 32 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 ing " as a king to a king." The Theban seer (he 
 declares) is the only saviour to whom they can look 
 in their hour of need. Let him therefore use all his 
 powers of prophecy, and rescue the city from the curse 
 which troubles it, by pointing out the murderer of 
 Laius. But Teiresias, who knows but too well the 
 horror of the actual truth, refuses to answer. CEdipus 
 vainly protests and implores ; and at last, imputing his 
 silence to conscious guilt, angrily charges him with 
 having himself instigated or actually committed the 
 crime. Then the prophet is in his turn roused to 
 anger; the fire kindles, and he speaks with his tongue. 
 It is Nathan's denunciation of David : " Thou art the 
 man." CEdipus is not only incredulous, but furious, 
 to think that an augur can be at once so old and so 
 vile a slanderer, since he can neither see the brightness 
 of earthly sunshine nor the pure light of inward truth, 
 and is blind at once in mind and body. And then 
 he moralises on the envy that haunts greatness. It 
 must be Creon, his own familiar friend, who has con- 
 spired with this "juggling mountebank," and has 
 hired him thus to prophesy deceit.* His very art of 
 
 * Seneca, in his tragedy of ' CEdipus,' introduces a wild 
 scene of incantation, in which both Creon and Teiresias take 
 part. They repair at midnight to a valley outside the walls of 
 Thebes, where a grove of oak and cypress overhangs a stagnant 
 pool of water. There the prince and the prophet dig a trench, 
 light a fire, and offer a libation of wine and blood, accompanied 
 by a solemn prayer, to Hecate and the Queen of Night. Then, 
 amid the howling of dogs and the rolling of thunder, the earth 
 heaves and is rent asunder, and the spirits of the legendary 
 heroes of the house of Labdacus (father of Laius) rise from the
 
 (EDIPUS THE KING. 33 
 
 augury is a lie ; for it was CEdipus, and not Teiresias, 
 who had expounded the fatal riddle of the Sphinx. 
 If it were not for his hoary hairs (such is the 
 king's last threat), he should have had such a bitter 
 lesson as would have taught him the peril of false- 
 hood. 
 
 Then Teiresias, " strong in the might of truth," de- 
 nounces that infatuation and "blindness of heart which 
 is far worse than the loss of eyesight. His own mind 
 and reason are clairvoyant, while CEdipus is ignorant 
 of his own birth, ignorant of the sin in which he is 
 living. Fatal continues the prophet, using a bold 
 metaphor is the harbour in which the king has moored 
 his barque, lulled by a vain security, and terrible is 
 the storm which shall soon break upon himself and 
 on his children. A light shall be thrown on this 
 mysterious murder ; but 
 
 " No delight to him 
 
 Shall that discovery bring. Blind, having seen 
 Poor, having rolled in wealth, he, with a staff 
 Feeling his way, to a strange land shall go." (P.) 
 
 And with this terrible prediction of the truth echoing 
 in the ears of his audience, the prophet is led from the 
 stage. Even CEdipus, scoffer and sceptic though he 
 be, is struck by the reality of the augur's manner, and 
 remains silent and perplexed, pondering over the last 
 
 lower world. Among this shadowy throng is the ghost of Laius, 
 his grey hair still dabbled with blood ; and, being conjured by 
 Teiresias to declare the truth, he denounces CEdipus as his 
 murderer. 
 
 A. C. VOL X. C
 
 34 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 mysterious words relating to his birth, which Voltaire 
 has well rendered 
 
 " Ce jour va vous donner la naissance et la mort " 
 
 while the Chorus cannot restrain their terrible an- 
 xiety. 
 
 " Who," they ask, " can this unknown criminal be, 
 that has dared deeds of such unutterable horror ? It 
 is high time for him to fly, swifter than the swiftest 
 steed; for the god of prophecy is already on his 
 track with the tardy but resistless power of doom. 
 Though he lurks in some lonely cave or mountain glen, 
 the living curse will haunt him." 
 
 It is hard (they conclude) to disbelieve the prophet 
 of truth harder still to believe that their king, the 
 wise and good, is a guilty and polluted wretch ; and 
 so, until he be convicted by the clearest proofs, they 
 will remember only the good deeds of (Edipus. 
 
 Creon now enters, and protests his innocence of 
 the charge of conspiracy which (Edipus had brought 
 against liim ; but hardly has he made his protest to 
 the Chorus, when (Edipus appears, and angrily upbraids 
 him with treasonable schemes. Creon rests his defence 
 on grounds of common-sense much in the style of 
 Henry IV.'s famous speech to his son. Who could be 
 so foolish (Creon asks) as to prefer 
 
 " To reign with fears than sleep untroubled sleep " ? 
 As things are, he shares with Jocasta the counsels of
 
 (EDIPUS THE KING. 35 
 
 the king. All men court and flatter him ; why should 
 he barter his ease and pleasure for 
 
 " The polished perturbation, golden care, 
 That keeps the ports of slumber open wide 
 To many a sleepless night " ? * 
 
 He has no motive for acting a traitor's part, or Ibr 
 conspiring with Teiresias 
 
 " Then charge me not with crime on shadowy proof ; 
 For to thrust out a friend of noble heart 
 Is like the parting with the life we love." (P.) 
 
 But, as Voltaire t observes with regard to this pas- 
 sage, if a courtier accused of conspiracy should defend 
 himself by such a commonplace, he would stand in 
 great need of the clemency of his master. Certainly 
 (Edipus is neither convinced nor reassured. Creon's 
 skilful pleading only seems to him to prove that he 
 can show equal skill in weaving plots; and he is 
 proceeding to further accusations, when Jocasta her- 
 self enters, and strives to act the peacemaker between 
 her husband and her brother. The Chorus join with 
 her in urging (Edipus to forego his unjust suspicions. 
 This is not the first time, says the queen, wishing to 
 reassure her husband, that oracles have played men 
 false. Laius had been warned that he should perish 
 by the hands of his son 
 
 " And yet, as rumour tells, where three ways meet, 
 By foreign ruffians was the monarch slam ; " (D.) 
 
 * King Henry IV., P. I. Act iv. sc. 4. 
 t Lettres sur (Edipe, quoted by M. Patin, Etudes sur 
 Sophocle.
 
 36 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 while the son who was to have killed his father was 
 left to die in the wilderness. 
 
 Up to this moment we may suppose QEdipus to have 
 been fully assured of his own innocence, and to have 
 regarded the denunciation of Teiresias as the words of 
 a madman or a traitor ; but suddenly a chance expres- 
 sion of Jocasta causes a gleam of the real truth to 
 flash across his mind. Where (he asks hurriedly and 
 anxiously) was this spot " where three ways meet " ? 
 And the fatal answer comes 
 
 " They call the country Phocis, and the roads 
 From Delphi and from Daulia there converge." 
 
 Then CEdipus, his suspicions being thus confirmed, 
 in an agony of doubt asks question after question of 
 the queen. Time, place, circumstances, all agree. 
 Link after link in the fatal chain of evidence is closed 
 about him, and each answer only makes it clearer that 
 the words of Teiresias have been all too true. The king 
 in his turn recounts his flight from Corinth, in dismay 
 at the hideous destiny foretold to him by the Delphic 
 god. He tells how on his journey he came to a place 
 where three roads met; how he had been pushed 
 from the road by an old grey-haired man, riding in a 
 chariot, attended by a herald and servants; how blows 
 had followed the insult ; and how he had " slain 
 them all." And, oh ! the mockery of fate the fearful 
 " irony " of his threatened vengeance ! It is on his 
 own head that he has invoked that binding and irre- 
 vocable curse, which would be executed to the full by
 
 (EDIPUS THE KING. 37 
 
 the relentless powers of destiny. What man upon 
 earth can be more utterly miserable ? 
 
 " Am I not born to evil, all unclean ? 
 If I must flee, yet still in flight my doom 
 Is never more to see the friends I love, 
 Nor tread my country's soil ; or else to bear 
 The guilt of incest, and my father slay ; 
 Yea, Polybus, who brought me up. 
 
 May I ne'er look 
 
 On such a day as that, but far away 
 Depart unseen from all the haunts of men." (I?.) 
 
 There is still a faint chance that, after all, (Edipus 
 may be innocent ; but it rests upon the chance expres- 
 sion of the slave, who had talked of " a band of rob- 
 bers." Jocasta, indeed, is still incredulous, and is 
 confident that this oracle will be proved as idle as 
 the others ; but, at any rate, the slave shall be sum- 
 moned and examined. 
 
 In the pause of the action of the drama, the Chorus, 
 left alone in possession of the stage, draw the same 
 moral from the tale of CEdipus which the Chorus in 
 ' Samson Agonistes ' draws from him who had been 
 
 " The glory late of Israel, now the grief." 
 
 "Woe to the man who walks proudly, fearing neither 
 justice nor the eternal laws of a God who grows not 
 old who neither keeps his life from impious speech, 
 nor his hands from profaning holy things. His down- 
 fall must be speedy and inevitable
 
 38 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Climbing oft, Pride seeks to dwell 
 Throned on Fortune's pinnacle ; 
 Hurried from the summit straight 
 Down the vast abrupt of Fate ; 
 Hurled from realms of highest bliss, 
 Sinks she in the dark abyss. 
 
 God, in whom for aye I'll trust, 
 
 Holds His shield before the just ! 
 
 But for the man whose heart is known 
 
 By haughty deed and lofty tone, 
 
 Spurning Heaven, and wrapt in self, 
 
 Led by sordid lust of pelf, 
 
 Unto them may Fate dispense 
 
 Pride's unfailing recompense. 
 
 Conscience ! thou to such canst deal 
 
 Heavier stroke than blade of steel ; 
 
 Else, if man may Heaven defy, 
 
 If sleeps the vengeance of the sky 
 
 Why this idle chant prolong ? 
 
 Still be the dance, and hushed the song ! " (A.) 
 
 At this point begins the denouement or disentangle- 
 ment of the plot, in which. Sophocles was thought espe- 
 cially to excel. 
 
 A messenger arrives from Corinth, bringing what 
 he conceives to be good news. Polybus is dead, and 
 QEdipus has been elected by acclamation king of " the 
 city on two seas." Jocasta who, with a woman's 
 fickleness, is on her way bearing flowers and incense 
 to the altars of the god whom she had just insulted 
 meets the messenger, and is wild with joy when she 
 hears her own opinion of the falsity of oracles, as she 
 believes, thus undoubtedly confirmed ; and she sum-
 
 (EDIPUS THE KING. 39 
 
 mons her husband, who, like her, exults at the tidings. 
 Who need now believe that there is any truth in the 
 Delphic god 1 Chance rules all ; human foresight 
 avails nothing ; and oracles do but oppress the mind 
 like a hideous dream. 
 
 But it is a false joy and a short-lived triumph. 
 (Edipus himself is still haunted by a misgiving that 
 the latter part of the prophecy may yet prove true ; for 
 Meropa, his reputed mother, is yet alive. Then the 
 messenger, wishing to relieve him from this remaining 
 dread, tells him the whole story of his birth how he 
 was in reality no son of Polybus, but a foundling ex- 
 posed on Mount Cithaeron ; how he had been delivered 
 by a shepherd of Laius to the very witness who now 
 tells the tale ; and how he in his turn had carried the 
 child to Polybus. 
 
 There is one question still to be answered one link 
 still requisite to complete the chain of circumstantial 
 evidence : " Who was the mother, and from whom 
 had the shepherd received the child ? " 
 
 Jocasta, who had at once realised the truth from the 
 story of the Corinthian messenger, and who knows but 
 too well what the answer of the shepherd must be, 
 vainly tries to dissuade her husband from inquiring 
 farther; and then, finding him obstinately bent on 
 discovering the fatal secret of his birth, she can endure 
 her grief no longer, but rushes from the stage in a 
 silent agony of despair. 
 
 After a short interval of what must have been tor- 
 turing suspense to CEdipus an interval occupied by 
 the Chorus in idle guesses as to what nymph or god-
 
 40 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 dess could have nursed this " child of fortune " the 
 last fatal witness, the aged shepherd who, half a cen- 
 tury before, had received the child of Laius from its 
 mother, is led before the king. Forced to give his 
 evidence on pain of death and torture, slowly and re- 
 luctantly for he realises the horrible import of his 
 words he reveals all that he knows. And then 
 (Edipus utters a wail of agony (and even across the 
 lapse of years that loud and bitter cry pierces us with 
 terrible reality) 
 
 " Woe ! woe ! woe ! woe ! all cometh clear at last." (P.) 
 
 Then he too flies in horror from the stage. 
 
 Again the Chorus mourn over the vanity of life, and 
 again their lament is like that of the sons of Dan in 
 ' Samson Agonistes ' 
 
 " mirror of our fickle state, 
 Since man on earth unparalleled ! 
 The rarer thy example stands, 
 By how much from the top of wondrous glory, 
 To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen." 
 
 Their king, who had once proved a tower of defence 
 to his country in her hour of need, is now beset him- 
 self by countless sorrows. Would that the sin and 
 death could be forgotten, and those guilty nuptials ! 
 
 True to the principle of the Greek tragic drama, 
 that horrors should not be acted in. the presence of the 
 audience, the rest of this miserable story is narrated 
 by messengers. Jocasta, as we have seen, had left 
 the scene suddenly and in ominous silence : she had
 
 (EDI PUS THE KINO. 41 
 
 dashed open the doors of the fatal bridal chamber ; and 
 when (Edipus had followed her, raging for a sword to 
 slay her who had been the innocent cause of his misfor- 
 tunes, he finds her, his wife and mother, hanging by a 
 noose from the ceiling, already dead. Then he tears 
 the body down with a wild cry, and wrenching the 
 golden buckle from her dress, he dashes the point into 
 the pupils of his eyes thus condemning himself to 
 that perpetual darkness with which he had taunted 
 Teiresias. " His feeling," says Bishop Thirlwall, " is 
 not horror of the light and of all the objects it can 
 present to him, but indignation at his own previous 
 blindness. The eyes which have served him so ill, 
 which have seen without discerning what it was most 
 important for him to knoAV, shall be extinguished for 
 ever." 
 
 Well might the messenger say, at the close of his 
 speech, that in the tragedy which he had just re- 
 counted, 
 
 " "Wailing and woe, and death and shame, all forms 
 That man can name of evil, none have failed." (P.) 
 
 All the rivers of the earth could not wash away the 
 pollution which clings to the house and family. 
 
 The palace-doors are now rolled back, and (Edipus 
 comes forward with wild gestures, the gore still stream- 
 ing from eyes that are " irrecoverably dark amid the 
 blaze of noon." The Chorus, horror-stricken, cannot 
 endure the sight, and hide their faces in their robes. 
 Pity and consolation are out of place in the pre- 
 sence of such misery as his. They can only utter
 
 42 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 broken exclamations of sorrow and dismay. " What," 
 they ask, "has prompted such an outrage? "Why 
 has he thus doomed himself to blindness " 
 
 " As in the land of darkness, yet in light, 
 To live a life half-dead, a living death " 1* 
 
 No man's hand has smitten him, replies CEdipus, save 
 his own ; but he has been fast bound to the wheels of 
 a cruel necessity, and it is Apollo who has prompted 
 such grim handiwork. Corneille gives the spirit of 
 his justification : 
 
 " Aux crimes malgrfc moi 1'ordre du ciel m'attache, 
 Pour m'y faire tomber a moi-meme il me cache ; 
 II offre, en m'aveuglant sur ce qu'il a predit, 
 Mon pere a mon epee et ma mere a mon lit. 
 Helas ! qu'il est bien vrai qu'en vain on s'imagine 
 Derober notre vie a ce qu'il nous destine ! " 
 
 CEdipe, Act v. sc. 7. 
 
 Then he breaks out into passionate self-reproach, as he 
 recalls with remorseful tenderness those old familiar 
 scenes of his youth 
 
 " All fair outside, all rotten at the core ; " 
 
 the woodlands of Cithaeron, the court of Polybus, and 
 that "narrow pass where three ways met." No 
 guilt or misery, he declares, can be like his. 'Let 
 them then drive him forth from the city of his fathers, 
 and let them hide him for ever from the sight of men, 
 and from the light of day. 
 
 Creon now enters, and, with a nobility alien to his 
 * Samson Agon., L 99.
 
 CEDIPUS THE KINO. 43 
 
 character in the succeeding play, refrains from casting 
 either scorn or reproach on the fallen greatness of the 
 king ; and (Edipus, grateful for this kindness, makes 
 his last request. Let them bury her who lies dead 
 within the palace as becomes a king's daughter; for 
 himself he prays he may be allowed a " lodge in some 
 vast wilderness," far removed from the scenes of his 
 misery : his sons can take good care of themselves ; 
 but let pity be shown to his two daughters, who are 
 left desolate, and to whom he wishes to bid farewell. 
 
 Creon had anticipated this wish, and Antigone and 
 Ismene now enter. (Edipus is touched by this fresh 
 kindness, and shows it : 
 
 " A blessing on thee ! May the Powers on high 
 Guard thy path better than they guarded mine ! " (P.) 
 
 Then, embracing his children, he mournfully dwells 
 upon the dreary life that must await them, uncheered 
 either by a parent's love or by a husband's affection; for 
 the shame of their birth must mar all possible happi- 
 ness. It lies in Creon's power to act a noble part, and 
 prove himself a father to these fatherless children. 
 
 Then the Chorus, turning to the spectators, bid them 
 learn a lesson from the tale of CEdipus, who more than 
 any other prince had 
 
 " Trod the paths of greatness, 
 And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour." 
 
 Let them mark how the favourite of fortune, the 
 spoiled child of destiny, had fallen miserably from his 
 high estate :
 
 44 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Mark him now dismayed, degraded, tossed on seas of 
 wildest woes ; 
 
 Think on this, short-sighted mortal, and, till life's decid- 
 ing close, 
 
 Dare not to pronounce thy fellow truly happy, truly blest, 
 
 Till, the bounds of life passed over, still unharmed he 
 sinks to rest." (D.) 
 
 Here ends ' CEdipus the King,' as Sophocles has pre- 
 sented it to us. Its "sensational" character caused it 
 to be frequently imitated. Julius Caesar, Lucullus, 
 and Seneca all wrote plays "bearing the same name. 
 Corneille adapted it to suit a French audience, intro- 
 ducing a host of minor characters, and improving the 
 plot, according to his own ideas, by " the pleasing epi- 
 sode of the loves of Theseus and of Dirce " the latter 
 of whom he supposes to be the daughter and heiress of 
 Laius. Dryden and Lee again adapted it for the Eng- 
 lish stage, with the inevitable ghost and " confidant ; " 
 and it was so performed at Drury Lane, when Mr 
 Kemble took the part of CEdipus. But of all these 
 translations and adaptations, none comes near the majes- 
 tic simplicity of the story as told by Sophocles.
 
 CHAPTEE IIL 
 
 (EDIPUS AT COLONUS. 
 
 YEARS are supposed to have passed away since the 
 curtain fell on the horrors of the preceding tragedy. 
 In the first burst of his despair, the one wish of CEdi- 
 pus had been to leave Thebes with all its associations 
 of guilt and misery, and to bury himself far from the 
 haunts of men in the solitude of the desert. But an 
 oracle forced him to remain on the scene of his crimes. 
 Time gradually cooled his passion, and taught bim 
 resignation. Life once more gave him a taste of plea- 
 sure in the tender affection of his daughters ; and it 
 seemed as if the gods themselves had relented, and 
 would allow him to die in peace. But Creon (his 
 successor on the throne), with the consent, if not at 
 the suggestion, of his own sons, Eteocles and Polynices, 
 drove the aged king forth from Thebes, to be a wan- 
 derer on the face of the earth. Their excuse for this 
 unnatural cruelty was, that they feared lest he should 
 bring pollution on the land ; but why (as (Edipus him- 
 self asks) had they waited these many years before 
 they discovered the danger 1
 
 46 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 And so it came to pass that CEdipus left Thebes, 
 bitterly denouncing the ingratitude of his sons, and 
 praying that sooner or later they might feel the weight 
 of a father's curse. (In the " Seven against Thebes " 
 of ^Eschylus, it has already been told how terribly this 
 curse was fulfilled.*) The daughters proved kinder 
 than the sons. Ismene indeed stayed at Thebes, but 
 her heart was with her father in his exile; while 
 Antigone, with unflinching affection, had guided his 
 steps in his wanderings from city to city. CEdipus 
 himself, in this play, describes how her tender affection 
 for him knew no rest, and how she, 
 
 " Still wandering sadly with me evermore, 
 Leads the old man through many a wild wood's paths, 
 Hungry and footsore, threading on her way. 
 And many a storm, and many a scorching sun, 
 Bravely she bears, and little recks of home, 
 So that her father find his daily bread." (P.) 
 
 The reader of Dickens and the modern novelist is not 
 unworthy, perhaps, of comparison with the Athenian 
 poet will remember the picture of " little Nell." 
 
 But, in spite of all these hardships, we can well 
 imagine the delight it must have been to escape from 
 the polluted city to the fresh pure breezes of Cithaeron 
 or Hymettus, and how 
 
 " The pair 
 
 Wholly forgot their first sad life, and home, 
 And all that Theban woe, and ever stray 
 Through sunny glens, or on the warm sea-shore, 
 
 * See vol. vii. of this Series, '^Eschylus,' p. 104.
 
 (EDIPUS AT COLON US. 47 
 
 In breathless quiet after all their ills ; 
 
 Nor do they see their country, nor the place 
 
 Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, 
 
 Nor the unhappy palace of their race, 
 
 Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more." * 
 
 For many months the father, led by the child, had 
 roamed, dependent on the chance liberality of stran- 
 gers, until they reach the spot where the play opens, 
 the village of Colonus, a mile to the north of Athens, 
 the birthplace of the poet. 
 
 And here let us notice the contrast, shown even in 
 the first few lines of the play, between CEdipus the 
 king and CEdipus the exile. It is as great as that 
 between Lear in his palace and Lear in the hovel on 
 the heath. The hot and furious temper has been 
 chastened ; the proud heart has been humbled in the 
 dust ; the spirit which had been so impatient of the 
 advice of Creon and of the warnings of Teiresias which 
 had thrown impious doubt on the truth of heaven 
 has been taught a lesson of patience and contentment, 
 as CEdipus says himself, "by his afflictions, by the 
 hand of time, by the force of a noble nature." " CEdi- 
 pus the Great," as he had proudly termed himself to 
 the admiring Thebans, is no more ; and we see instead 
 an aged and sightless exile, clothed in rags, leaning on 
 the arm of his helpless daughter. But he has gained 
 more than he has lost. Those powers of destiny which 
 had tried him, as he thought, with such wanton and 
 relentless cruelty in former days, are changed to benefi- 
 
 * Matthew Arnold's 'Empedocles on Etna.' The liberty 
 has been taken of slightly altering the first few lines.
 
 48 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 cent spirits who guide him by the hand to the bourne 
 of his earthly pilgrimage. Though stripped of his 
 kingdom, he has acquired peace and serenity of mind. 
 " The storm of passion has subsided, and left him calm 
 and firm. He is conscious of a charmed life, safe 
 from the malice of men and the accidents of nature, 
 and reserved by the gods for the accomplishment of 
 high purposes." * Ducis, in his play of ' CEdipe,' makes 
 the king himself describe the change which had come 
 over his troubled spirit in some eloquent lines : 
 
 " Sur mon front, cependant, dis-moi, reconnais-tu 
 I/inalterable paix qui reste a la vertu ? 
 Je marche sans remords vers mon dernier asile : 
 CEdipe est malheureux, mais (Edipe est tranquille." 
 
 Acte iii., sc. 5. 
 
 The scenery of Colonus has scarcely changed since 
 the days when Sophocles described his birthplace. 
 The landscape has that enduring beauty which Byron 
 noticed as characteristic of Greece in a well-known 
 
 " Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild, 
 Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, 
 Thine olive ripe, as when Minerva smiled, 
 And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields." t 
 
 A modern traveller| has in the same way described 
 the rich contrast of colours which pervades this spot 
 the sombre green of the bay and myrtle relieved by 
 the golden orange -bloom, the red pomegranate, and 
 
 * Bishop Thirlwall. t Childe Harold, ii. 87. 
 
 J Hughes's Travels in Greece.
 
 (EDIPUS A T COLONUS. 49 
 
 the purple clusters of the vine. Colonus was, besides, 
 rich in sacred associations ; all around it lay " holy 
 ground." Not only had Poseidon, the god of horses, 
 and the Titan Prometheus, made the place their own, 
 "but there was here also a grove dedicated to the 
 " Gentle Goddesses" (as those whom we otherwise 
 know as the Furies were called, by one of those pious 
 euphemisms common in Greek speech), within whose 
 precincts no profane foot might tread, whose awful 
 name no mortal might presume to utter, and by whose 
 shrine their very worshippers pass "in silence and 
 with averted eyes." 
 
 Eut CEdipus and his daughter know nothing of the 
 sacred character of the spot to which they have wan- 
 dered ; and Antigone cannot even tell her father the 
 name of the stately city, whose " diadem of towers " is 
 seen in the distance. The aged king, wearied by his 
 journey, sits down to rest his limbs on a rough un- 
 hewn stone within the sacred precinct of the god- 
 desses. Then there enters a wayfarer from Athens, 
 who, horror-struck at the apparent profanation, bids 
 him leave a spot where "man neither comes nor 
 dwells." But CEdipus, who has caught the name of 
 the dread goddesses, recognises the " sign of his fate," 
 and will not move; and at length the Athenian, 
 impressed by the dignified earnestness of his tone and 
 manner, leaves the stage to summon his townsmen of 
 Colonus. 
 
 Then CEdipus, left alone with his daughter, ad- 
 dresses a solemn prayer to the dread powers at whose 
 shrine he is a suppliant : 
 
 A. c. voL x. D
 
 50 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " dread and awful beings, since to halt 
 On your ground first I bent my wearied limbs, 
 Be ye not harsh to Pho3bus and to me ! 
 For he, when he proclaimed my many woes, 
 Told of this respite after many years, 
 That I should claim a stranger's place, and sit 
 A suppliant at the shrine of dreaded gods, 
 And then should near the goal of woe-worn life, 
 To those who should receive me bringing gain ; 
 To those who sent me yea, who drove me evil ; 
 And that sure signs should give me pledge of this, 
 Earthquake, or thunder, or the flash of Zeus. 
 
 Come, ye sweet daughters of the Darkness old ! 
 Come, thou city bearing Pallas' name, 
 O Athens, of all cities most renowned ! 
 Have pity on this wasted spectral form 
 That once was CEdipus." (P.) 
 
 The aged citizens of Colonus, who form the Chorus, 
 now enter, in a fever of indignation that any stranger 
 should have ventured to set foot within the holy grove 
 of the "Virgin Goddesses;" and at last CEdipus, 
 taught by his adversity not to " war with fate " or to 
 offend pious scruples, allows Antigone to lead him from 
 the precinct. The Chorus, with an undignified curi- 
 osity which contrasts with the simple yet refined 
 courtesy of the Homeric times, ask a string of questions 
 as to the stranger's name and birth. When CEdipus 
 reluctantly confesses that he is "the son of Laius," 
 they bid him instantly depart from their coasts, lest 
 he bring the same pollution upon Attica which he had 
 brought on Thebes; and not even the piteous entreaties 
 of Antigone can prevail on them to change this decision.
 
 (ED1PUS AT COLONUS. 51 
 
 CEdipus indignantly protests against such churlish 
 denial of hospitality. What will -become, he says, of 
 the " fame and fair report " which Athens has earned 
 as the chivalrous protector of the helpless and op- 
 pressed, if they refuse shelter to a poor outcast like 
 himself, who, after all, has been " more sinned against 
 than sinning"? Let them not bring shame upon a 
 city which boasts itself to be especially favoured by 
 the gods, by dishonouring a suppliant whom these very 
 gods protect, and who brings with him blessing and 
 profit to the land. And then CEdipus wisely " appeals 
 to Caesar." Theseus, their king, shall hear his story, 
 and his subjects must bow to his decision. 
 
 At this point a fresh channel is given to the current 
 of the action by the sudden advent of a woman, who is 
 seen riding towards Colonus mounted on a horse of Sicil- 
 ian breed ; and almost before Antigone has recognised 
 her for certain, she is in the arms of her " own dear sister 
 Ismene." She brings news from Thebes. The curse 
 of the father is already being fulfilled to the destruc- 
 tion of his sons. An "evil spirit from the gods," 
 working upon their own vile passions, has driven them 
 into open war for the crown of Thebes. Polynices, 
 exiled by his younger brother, has 
 
 " Fled to the vales of Argos, and contracts 
 A new alliance, arms his martial friends, 
 And vaunts that Argos shall requite his wrongs 
 On guilty Thebes, and raise his name to heaven." (D.) 
 
 Moreover, continues Ismene, an oracle has declared 
 that the issue of the struggle depends on CEdipus.
 
 52 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Dead or living," his body will decide the fortunes of 
 the war ; and Creon is even now on his way to take 
 possession of his person, and to bring him near the 
 borders of the Theban land, intending to keep him a 
 prisoner there until his death, when his tomb would 
 serve as a fortress against the enemies of Thebes. 
 
 CEdipus is more bitterly incensed than ever at the 
 heartless and selfish conduct of his sons. They had 
 acquiesced in the sentence which had doomed him to 
 poverty and exile ; they had suffered him to be cast 
 forth from his home and country, when "one small 
 word," spoken by them in his defence, would have 
 saved him from such dishonour; they had rioted in 
 luxury while he wandered a miserable outcast, de- 
 pendent on his daughter's aid ; and now, to suit their 
 own ambitious purposes, they would force him to re- 
 turn to Thebes. Never will he so return, he emphati- 
 cally declares so help him those dread powers who 
 are now his guardians. He will remain on the spot to 
 which his destinies have brought him, and prove him- 
 self in very truth the " great deliverer " of Athens, the 
 city which has given him refuge. 
 
 The Chorus now instruct him that, if he really 
 wishes to befriend their city, he must first make his 
 peace with the Avengers of the dead, and offer liba- 
 tions in their honour according to a solemn and mys- 
 terious ritual. From a vase crowned with " a wreath 
 of snow-white lamb's-wool " he must pour streams of 
 pure water mingled with honey, turning to the east, 
 and strew on either side of him " thrice nine olive- 
 branches." Then he may utter a whispered prayer
 
 (EDIPUS AT COLONUS. 53 
 
 to the goddesses, and so obtain at their hands rest and 
 pardon. 
 
 But (Edipus has not the strength for this ceremonial, 
 and he deputes his daughters to pour the libations in 
 his stead giving as his reason what seems an uncon- 
 scious prophecy of One whose life was offered as " a 
 ransom for many" 
 
 " For one soul working in the strength of love 
 Is mightier than ten thousand to atone." * 
 
 Perhaps, too, there was mingled with this reluctance the 
 same feeling which made David shrink from consecrat- 
 ing the Temple. The offering to the Virgin Goddesses 
 would surely be more acceptable from the pure hands of 
 his daughters than from his, who had been " a man of war 
 from his youth." So Horace afterwards declared that 
 the flowers and meal-cakes of his village maiden had a 
 sweeter savour than all the burnt-offerings of the rich. 
 
 " The costliest sacrifice that wealth can make, 
 From the incensed Penates less commands 
 A soft response, than doth the poorest cake, 
 If on the altar laid with spotless hands." t 
 
 Scarcely have Antigone and Ismene left the scene to 
 make the offering in their father's stead, when Theseus, 
 the king of Athens, enters, and his chivalrous demean- 
 our strikingly contrasts with the garrulous importu- 
 nities of the Chorus. 
 
 He will not cause fresh pain to (Edipus, he says, by 
 recalling his sorrows. This " abject garb and aspect of 
 
 * Plumptre's Introd., Ixxxv. 
 t Ode iii. 23 (Martin's TransL)
 
 54 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 despair " tell their own tale. An exile's misfortunes 
 touch him keenly, for he has himself been schooled in 
 adversity 
 
 " I know that I am man, and I can count 
 No more than thou on what to-morrow brings." (P.) 
 
 CEdipus, grateful for this generous forbearance, tells 
 the king that, though outwardly it is but "a sorry 
 gift " that he brings namely, his own feeble body, in 
 bitter truth a " heritage of woe " to its master yet its 
 possession should bring no small gain to the land of 
 his refuge ; and not small either (he adds, with a touch 
 of his ancient pride) will be the conflict waged for it 
 between his own sons and the citizens of Athens. 
 Truly, as Ismene says, 
 
 " The gods now raise the head they once laid low." 
 
 It was with his body as with the bones of Orestes 
 another so-called victim of Fate which an oracle had 
 declared would bring success to the arms of Sparta.* 
 " Such is the force attached to expiation and the expia- 
 tory victim. In his lifetime men pitilessly strike him 
 in the name of God, as the scapegoat of the evil which 
 his death is destined to abolish ; and in his death all 
 men revere him as the symbol of re-established justice." t 
 Theseus doubts if any strife can spring up between 
 himself and his trusty allies of Thebes ; but CEdipus 
 knows better, from sad experience, the uncertainty of 
 earthly friendship, and how soon there arise "un- 
 
 * Herod., i. 67. 
 
 t Girardin, Cours de Literature Dramat., i. 189.
 
 CEDIPUS AT COLONUS. 55 
 
 naturalness between the child and the parent ; death, 
 dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities."* 
 
 " son of JSgeus, unto Gods alone 
 Nor age can come, nor destined hour of death ; 
 All else the almighty ruler Time sweeps on. 
 Earth's strength shall wither, wither strength of limb, 
 And trust decays, and mistrust grows apace ; 
 And the same spirit lasts not among them 
 That once were friends, nor joineth state with state. 
 To these at once, to those in after-years 
 Sweet things grow hitter, then turn sweet again. 
 And what, if now at Thebes all things run smooth, 
 And well towards thee, Time, in myriad change, 
 A myriad nights and days brings forth ; and thus 
 In these, for some slight cause, they yet may spurn 
 In battle all their pledge of faithfulness. 
 And then this body, sleeping in the grave, 
 All cold and stiff shall drink warm blood of men, 
 If Zeus be Zeus, and his son Phoebus true." (P.) 
 
 Theseus is convinced by the sincerity of CEdipus, and 
 declares that he will never give up a suppliant guest, 
 bound to him by ancient friendship so rich in the 
 present favour of the gods, and in the future blessings 
 which will flow from his presence in the land. He 
 will not give him up, despite of the threats of Creon 
 and all his host ; " for," he adds, with all the pride of a 
 Bayard, " my heart knows no fear " 
 
 " My very name will guard thee from all harm." 
 
 The famous chorus which follows is associated with 
 a personal anecdote of the old age of Sophocles. It is 
 
 * King Lear, Act i. sc. 2.
 
 56 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 said that Ariston, his eldest son, had in a fit of jealous 
 suspicion brought an action against his father, as being 
 imbecile and incapable of managing his own affairs. 
 The poet, then, as tradition tells us, in his hundredth 
 year, entered the court, leaning on his favourite grand- 
 child (who probably suggested the filial devotion of 
 Antigone's character), and, scorning to otherwise defend 
 himself against the insult offered to his mental powers, 
 recited the passage from his then unfinished play 
 which describes the glories of Colonus. And the story 
 goes on to say that, before Sophocles had finished reciting 
 these noble lines, the Athenian jury, always susceptible 
 to an " appeal to their feelings," broke into irrepres- 
 sible applause. " A dotard cannot have written this," 
 was their verdict ; and the case was dismissed we will 
 hope "with costs." 
 
 Anstice gives as far as can be given in English 
 the spirit of the original ; and we make no excuse for 
 borrowing largely from his version (too little known) 
 of this ode : 
 
 " Stranger, thou art standing now 
 On Colonus' sparry brow ; 
 All the haunts of Attic ground, 
 Where the matchless coursers bound, 
 Boast not, through their realms of bliss, 
 Other spot as fair as this. 
 
 Frequent down this greenwood dale 
 Mourns the warbling nightingale, 
 Nestling 'mid the thickest screen 
 Of the ivy's darksome green.
 
 (EDIPUS AT COLONUS. 57 
 
 Here Narcissus, day by day, 
 Buds in clustering beauty gay : 
 
 Here the golden Crocus gleams, 
 Murmur here unfailing streams, 
 Sleep the bubbling fountains never, 
 Feeding pure Cephiseus' river, 
 Whose prolific waters daily 
 Bid the pastures blossom gaily, 
 With the showers of spring-tide blending, 
 On the lap of earth descending." 
 
 Then, after paying a tribute to the olive, a tree peculi- 
 arly sacred in Attica, and the especial care of " Morian 
 Jove " and " blue-eyed Pallas," the chorus concludes : 
 
 " Swell the song of praise again ; 
 Other boons demand my strain, 
 Other blessings we inherit, 
 Granted by the mighty Spirit ; 
 On the sea and on the shore, 
 Ours the bridle and the oar. 
 
 Son of Saturn old, whose sway 
 Stormy winds and waves obey, 
 Thine be honour's well-earned meed, 
 Tamer of the champing steed ; 
 First he wore on Attic plain 
 Bit of steel and curbing rein. 
 Oft too, o'er the waters blue, 
 Athens, strain thy labouring crew ; 
 Practised hands the bark are plying, 
 Oars are bending, spray is flying, 
 Sunny waves beneath them glancing, 
 Sportive Nereids round them dancing, 
 With their hundred feet in motion, 
 Twinkling 'mid the foam of ocean." 
 
 The praises lavished on Athenian chivalry are now
 
 58 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 put to the proof; for Creon, whom Ismene had de- 
 scribed as already on his way to seize and carry off 
 CEdipus to Thebes, enters in person at the head of an 
 armed force. As the Chorus shrink back from him in 
 alarmed surprise, he deprecates their fears in a speech 
 masterly, whether we regard the purpose of the orator 
 or the policy of the statesman. He compliments the 
 citizens on their noble city; he condoles with the 
 sightless king on his many sorrows ; he commiserates 
 the forlorn condition of the maidens. All may yet be 
 well, he argues, if CEdipus will take heart of grace, 
 and accept the proffered invitation of the Thebans to 
 return. But CEdipus is not to be easily convinced. 
 He sees through the polished insincerity of Creon's 
 speech, and denounces those specious promises made 
 with "feigned lips" 
 
 " Goodly in show, but mischievous in act." 
 
 As to his returning to Thebes, merely that he may 
 bring profit to his ungrateful country and his unnat- 
 ural kindred 
 
 " That shall not be ; but this shall be thy lot, 
 My stern Avenger dwelling with thee still ; 
 And these my sons shall gain of that my land 
 Enough to die in ; that and nothing more." (P.) 
 
 Then Creon throws off the mask : since fair words 
 have failed him, he will use force; and in spite 
 of the indignation of the Chorus, the outcry of the 
 maidens, and the feeble resistance of CEdipus, the 
 Theban guards drag off Antigone and Ismene as host- 
 ages for their father ; and Creon even threatens that
 
 CEDIPUS AT COLONUS. 59 
 
 he will lay hands on CEdipus himself. The aged king's 
 wrath boils over at this last outrage, and he reiterates 
 his curse upon the robber of his children : 
 
 " May these Goddess Powers 
 Not smite me speechless till I speak my curse 
 On thee, thou vile one, robbing me by force 
 Of that last light when other lights were quenched. 
 For this may yon bright Sun-god, scanning all, 
 Grant thee thyself, and all thy race with thee, 
 To wear thy life in dreary age like mine." 
 
 Just as Creon is actually about to force CEdipus 
 along with him, Theseus enters. On hearing what 
 has passed, he at once gives orders to summon horse 
 and foot, who may rescue the maidens from the Theban 
 guards before they cross the borders. He then addres- 
 ses Creon with a dignified rebuke for his violence and 
 lawless conduct, outraging the sacred character of sup- 
 pliants, and wronging a state which " without laws 
 does nothing : " 
 
 " Thou must have deemed my city void of men, 
 Slave-like, submissive, and myself as nought. 
 
 Thou tramplest on my rights, deftest Gods, 
 And rudely seizest these poor suppliants." 
 
 Creon, by way of justification, insults Theseus and 
 CEdipus in the same sentence. He had never supposed 
 that the holy city, with its supreme tribunal on the 
 Hill of Mars, would give shelter to a parricide, " whose 
 marriage had been incest." The curse of CEdipus had 
 provoked his anger 
 
 " For headstrong wrath knows no old age but death."
 
 60 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 QEdipus in his turn recriminates the foul reproaches 
 which the brother had uttered against the sister. 
 The shame in such a case rested more on the re- 
 viler than on the unwilling victim of an evil destiny. 
 Even his father's spirit, if it could return from 
 Hades, would hardly upbraid him for crimes which 
 had been wrought so unwittingly. 
 
 But Theseus breaks off this angry dialogue. They 
 are standing idle, he says, while the captive maidens 
 are being hurried across the Athenian borders; and 
 then, with a parting promise to CEdipus that he will 
 restore his children or die in the attempt, the chiv- 
 alrous king starts in pursuit, taking with him his 
 Athenian attendants, and Creon to serve as an unwill- 
 ing guide. 
 
 The Chorus fill up the interval by a bold flight of 
 song, in which they picture to themselves the pursuit, 
 the battle, and the recovery of the maidens. The 
 following again is Anstice's spirited translation of the 
 ode: 
 
 " Waft me hence, and set me down 
 Where the lines of battle frown ; 
 Waft me, where the brazen shout 
 Of the Lord of War rings out 
 On the Pythian coast, or where 
 Flickering torches wildly glare, 
 Where on mystic rites have smiled 
 Ceres and her honoured child. 
 Many a priest attends their shrine, 
 Sprung of old Eumolpus' line, 
 While discretion's golden key 
 Locks their lips in secrecy.
 
 (EDIPUS AT COLONUS. 61 
 
 Round the virgin sisters twain 
 Soon shall fall the crowded slain, 
 Theseus soon in mailed might 
 Wake the terrors of the fight. 
 
 Now I ween in haste they glide 
 CEa's snowy rocks beside ; 
 There beneath the western sky, 
 Swift their straining coursers fly ; 
 Rapid roll their whirling cars ; 
 Fleeter speeds pursuing Mars ; 
 Theseus' train is on its way, 
 Keen to grasp the destined prey ; 
 Every bit like lightning glancing, 
 Every mailed knight advancing, 
 Every charger's arching neck 
 Princely spoils and trappings deck, 
 Yours the vow for victory won, 
 Hippian Pallas ! Rhea's son ! 
 Thou who, throned in coral caves, 
 Claspest earth, and rulest waves ! 
 
 Is the awful stillness past ? 
 Have they closed in fight at last ? 
 Answer, my prophetic soul ! 
 Thou canst secret fate unroll. 
 Soon I ween shall warrior sword, 
 Wielded by Athena's lord, 
 Free the maid by sorrow bowed, 
 Mocked and scorned by brethren proud : 
 
 So across my spirit's dreams 
 Joy anticipated gleams. 
 Might I, like the soaring dove, 
 Roam the aerial fields above, 
 Her who borne on tempest wings 
 Forth with nestling pinion springs.
 
 62 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Sweet it were from clouds on high 
 Battle's changeful tide to spy. 
 Jove ! whose everlasting sway 
 Heaven's unchanging gods obey, 
 Grant to Athens' champions brave 
 Might to vanquish, strength to save. 
 Pallas ! Jove's majestic child ; 
 Phoebus ! hunter of the wild ; 
 Dian ! still the woodland wooing, 
 Still the dappled stag pursuing, 
 Archer lord, and mountain maid, 
 Haste ye, haste ye to our aid ! " 
 
 These triumphal strains are not premature, for 
 Theseus is now seen returning, having, like a true 
 knight - errant, rescued the maidens by his feats of 
 arms. Great is the father's joy at the restoration of 
 his daughters, and fervent are his expressions of grati- 
 tude to their deliverer. But Theseus modestly cuts 
 short his thanks, being, as he says, "given more to 
 deeds than words ; " and then he tells QEdipus that 
 there is a suppliant sitting at the altar of Poseidon 
 craving an audience with him. (Edipus knows too 
 well that this nameless suppliant must be Polynices, 
 the elder of his sons, and is unwilling even to listen 
 to his voice. But Antigone joins her gentle pleading 
 to the request of Theseus, and (Edipus can gainsay 
 nothing to his daughter's arguments 
 
 " He is thy child ; 
 
 And therefore, O my father, 'tis not right, 
 Although his deeds to thee be basest, vilest, 
 To render ill for ill. But let him come." (P.) 
 
 While Polynices is being summoned, the Chorus
 
 (ED1PUS AT COLONUS. 63 
 
 again moralise on the vanity of life ; and, like the 
 preacher, they "praise the dead, which are already 
 dead, more than the living, which are yet alive." 
 Who would pray for length of days, which can "bring 
 nothing but sorrow? Death, after all, is man's last 
 and test friend : 
 
 " Of all the dreams of bliss that are, 
 Not to be born is best by far ; 
 Next best, by far the next, for man 
 To speed as fast as speed he can, 
 Soon as his eyes have glanced on earth, 
 To where he was before his birth." 
 
 And then they point their moral by the fate of 
 (Edipus, thus stricken with age and misery ; and pos- 
 sibly, in writing the last lines of the chorus, the poet 
 may have been thinking of his own approaching end : 
 
 " As billows, by the tempest tossed, 
 Burst on some wintry northern coast, 
 So toppling o'er his aged form, 
 Descends the fury of the storm ; 
 The troublous breakers never rest ; 
 Some from the chambers of the west, 
 Some from the orient sun, or where 
 At noon he sheds his angry glare, 
 Or where the stars, faint twinkling, light 
 The gloomy length of Arctic night." (A.) 
 
 Then, with faltering steps and shrinking gesture, 
 Polynices enters ; and if eloquent self-reproach and 
 protestations of sorrow could have atoned for years of 
 unfilial insult and neglect, he might have gained his 
 end. He throws himself at his father's feet, and appeals
 
 64 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 to him, in the name of that divine mercy which " is 
 the attribute of God Himself," to forego his just resent- 
 ment : 
 
 " But since there, 
 
 Sharing the throne of Zeus, compassion dwells, 
 Regarding all our deeds ; so let it come 
 And dwell with thee, my father ; more we cannot add. 
 Why art thou silent 1 Speak, my father, speak ! 
 Turn not away." (P.) 
 
 But CEdipus answers him not a word. Then Poly- 
 nices tells the story of the wrong done him by his 
 brother, of his flight to Argos, of his fresh alliance, 
 and, trembling with martial ardour, he describes 
 
 " The seven great armies, by seven captains led, 
 That gird the plain of Thebes;" 
 
 and he implores his father, in the name of these chief- 
 tains, to forget his ancient wrongs, and to join his 
 strength with theirs, that so they may break the might 
 of " the despot lord at home." 
 
 CEdipus has listened with brows bent and lips close 
 set to this passionate appeal, and at last he breaks his 
 silence. The repentance of Polynices has come too 
 late. He has sown the wind, and must reap the whirl- 
 wind. Then the sightless king, with all the passion 
 of Lear, reiterates those awful curses which he had 
 before pronounced. Euin and disaster await the host 
 that is marshalled against Thebes. Polynices shall 
 never return again to " Argos in the vale," but shall slay 
 his brother, and be slain by his brother's sword, and 
 no man shall bury him :
 
 (EDIPUS AT COLONUS. 65 
 
 " Yea, curses shall possess thy seat and throne, 
 If ancient justice o'er the laws of earth 
 Eeign with the Thunder-god. March on to ruin ! 
 Spurned and disowned, the basest of the base, 
 And with thee bear this burden ; o'er thine head 
 I pour a prophet's doom ; nor throne nor home 
 Waits on the sharpness of thy levelled spear : 
 Thy very land of refuge hath no welcome ; 
 Thine eyes have looked their last on hollow Argos." * 
 
 Heartless renegade though, he is, Polynices is not 
 without some touch of a nobler spirit. He has learned 
 his fate, and must return ; but he will not discourage 
 his friends by imparting to them the old man's words 
 of doom. And so he tears himself from the embraces 
 of his sisters, rejecting almost angrily the advice of 
 Antigone, that he should lead his army back to Argos. 
 " How," he asks, " can he 
 
 " Lead back an army that could deem I trembled ? " 
 
 He makes a last request of his sisters that they 
 Avill give his body seemly burial ; the next play will 
 show how faithfully this charge was kept by one of 
 them. And then, with, a blessing on his lips, and a 
 prayer that the gods will keep them at least from all 
 harm, he goes forth as Saul went forth to Gilboa, as 
 Otho headed his legions at Bedriacum knowing him- 
 self to be a doomed man. So touching is the heroism, 
 that (as a French critic observes) we know not whether 
 we ought to condemn Polynices with CEdipus, to pity 
 him with Theseus, or to love him with Antigone, t 
 
 * Lord Lytton's Athens, ii. 542. 
 t Patin, Etudes sur Sophocle, p. 243. 
 A. C. vol. X. E
 
 66 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 The father, in the modern drama, however justly 
 incensed he might have been, would have relented at 
 the sight of so much real sorrow. Accordingly, in the 
 play of Ducis, (Edipus and Polynices mutually embrace 
 in the French fashion. With us, Christianity transfers 
 the penalty for sin to a future life. But if CEdipus 
 had pardoned Polynices, he would in a Greek point 
 of view have destroyed the very principle of filial 
 piety. With them, the expiation for impious wrongs 
 must be made by the actual criminal in his own person, 
 and in this world.* 
 
 Suddenly the sky grows black with storm-clouds, 
 the lightning flashes, and peals of thunder, in quicker 
 and louder succession, denote that the end which 
 CEdipus had prayed for at last draws nigh. The 
 Chorus, terrified by "the fire from heaven" and the 
 incessant roll of thunder, call loudly upon Theseus ; 
 and the Athenian king, amazed at the tumult, enters 
 hurriedly, in obedience to the summons. CEdipus 
 bids him follow where he leads ; for to his eyes alone 
 shall be revealed that secret grave which should prove 
 a bulwark against his foes " stronger than many 
 shields " and to his ears alone shall those mystic 
 words be uttered, which shall be transmitted at the 
 hour of death to his son, and to his son's sons after 
 him. " Follow me," he cries to his daughters ; " fol- 
 low me, who have so often followed you but touch 
 me not. Let me find for myself the sepulchre, where 
 the gods have willed that I shall rest in peace. Fol- 
 
 * Girardin, Lit. Dramat, i. 195.
 
 CEDJPUS AT C'OLONUS. 67 
 
 low me, my children, whither Mercury and the Queen 
 of Night are leading me." Then, directed by some 
 mysterious agency, (Edipus moves slowly onwards and 
 upwards along the sloping ridge, towards the " steps 
 of brass," followed at a little distance by Theseus and 
 by his daughters, and at last he disappears from view. 
 Then the Chorus utter a solemn requiem for his 
 soul, addressed to the Dark King and his bride, who 
 rule the lower world : 
 
 " If to thee, eternal queen, 
 Empress of the worlds unseen ; 
 Mighty Pluto, if to thee, 
 Hell's terrific deity, 
 Lips of mortal mould may dare 
 Breathe the solemn suppliant prayer, 
 Grant the stranger swift release, 
 Bid the mourner part in peace ; 
 Guide him, where in silence deep 
 All that once were mortal sleep. 
 Since relentless Fate hath shed 
 Sorrows o'er thy guiltless head, 
 In thy pangs let mercy stay thee, 
 In the grave let rest repay thee ! " (D.) 
 
 A messenger, who had followed as near as he might 
 the small company that had attended (Edipus, tells 
 the sequel of this mysterious drama. They had 
 reached the brazen steps, and there, near " the Thori- 
 cian rock and the hollow pear-tree" (both probably 
 consecrated by tradition), CEdipus had sat down; 
 and after bathing his limbs in pure water from the 
 stream, had doffed the mean rags of his exile, and 
 clothed himself in a clean white robe, " meet for the
 
 68 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 sepulchre." Then came the sound of subterranean 
 thunder ; and the wanderer, recognising the sign, had 
 clasped his daughters in a last passionate embrace, as 
 they clung to him, wailing in grief and terror : 
 
 " But when their piercing cries an instant ceased, 
 And the first thrill was hushed, silence ensued 
 A silence, oh, how awful ! From beneath, 
 With deep mysterious voice, called one unseen. 
 Again and yet again the god exclaimed : 
 ' Come, GEdipus, why pause we to depart ? 
 Come, CEdipus, for thou hast tarried long.' " (D.) 
 
 Then CEdipus bids all leave the spot, save Theseus 
 only; and when, after a short interval, they return, 
 the Athenian king is found alone, shading his eyes as 
 if dazzled by some unearthly vision, and then prostrat- 
 ing himself in fervent prayer to the gods of light and 
 day. He alone has seen and knows the manner of the 
 death of CEdipus 
 
 " For neither was it thunderbolt from God, 
 With flashing fire that slew him, nor the blast 
 Of whirlwind sweeping o'er the sea's dark waves ; 
 But either some one whom the gods had sent 
 To guide his steps, or gentleness of mood 
 Had moved the Powers beneath to ope the way 
 To earth's deep centre painlessly. He died 
 No death to mourn for did not leave the world 
 Worn out with pain and sickness ; but his end, 
 If any ever was, was wonderful." (P.) * 
 
 * The following is De Quincey's eloquent description of this 
 " call," like nothing else in history or fiction. " What lan- 
 guage of earth or trumpet of heaven could decipher the woe of 
 that unfathomable call, when from the depth of the ancient
 
 CBDIPUS AT COLON US. . 69 
 
 woods a voice, that drew like gravitation, that sucked in like a 
 vortex, far off, yet near in some distant world, yet close at 
 hand cried, ' Hark, (Edipus ! King (Edipus ! come hither ; 
 thou art wanted! ' Wanted/ for what? Was it for death ? 
 was it for judgment ? was it for some wilderness of pariah eter- 
 nities ? No man ever knew. Chasms opened in the earth ; 
 dark gigantic arms stretched out to receive the king ; clouds 
 and vapour settled over the penal abyss ; and of him only, 
 though the neighbourhood of his disappearance was known, no 
 trace or visible record survived neither bones, nor grave, nor 
 dust, nor epitaph." The Theban Sphinx (Works, ix. 250).
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANTIGONE. 
 
 OF all the plays of Sophocles, this has had the most 
 long-lived popularity. Not only was it frequently 
 acted on the Athenian stage, but it has teen translated, 
 imitated, and " adapted " by successive generations of 
 dramatists, from Seneca to Racine. The plot has been 
 illustrated by Alfieri, and the choruses have been set 
 to music by Mendelssohn ; and only so recently as 
 1845, the play was actually represented on the boards 
 of Covent Garden Theatre, with all the accessories of 
 classical costume and scenery, and with Helen Faucit 
 as the heroine. 
 
 It is not hard to discover the secret of the enduring 
 favour with which the ' Antigone ' has been regarded. 
 The heroine, who absorbs the interest of the piece, is 
 the purest and noblest idea of womanhood that ever 
 inspired a poet. In reading the play we have some- 
 thing of the same feeling as when we look at Dela- 
 roche's famous picture of Marie Antoinette. All else 
 in the painting whether judges, guards, or spectators 
 sinks into shade and insignificance before the one
 
 ANTIGONE. 71 
 
 grand central figure, standing out in bold relief against 
 the darkness of the canvas 
 
 " Death's purpose flashing in her face."* 
 
 ' Antigone ' has been said to be the poetry of what 
 Socrates is the prose ; that is, she is in fiction what he 
 is in history a martyr in the cause of truth. The 
 death of both was as truly a martyrdom as that of 
 any Christian who suffered for his faith in the perse- 
 cutions of Nero or Diocletian. Both chose to obey 
 God rather than man. Both appealed from the law 
 of the land, and from the sentence of an earthly judge, 
 to those laws which are "neither written on tablets 
 nor proclaimed by heralds," but engraven in the heart 
 of man. More than two thousand five hundred years 
 have passed since the day when Antigone made her 
 noble protest; but time has only justified her cause, 
 and her voice still speaks to us across the lapse of 
 years : 
 
 " No ordinance of Man shall override 
 The settled laws of Nature and of God ; 
 Not written these in pages of a book, 
 Nor were they framed to-day, nor yesterday ; 
 We know not whence they are ; but this we know, 
 That they from all eternity have been, 
 And shall to all eternity endure." f 
 
 It was outraged nature which made this appeal 
 through the mouth of Antigone. Creon had, by his 
 
 * Conington's translation of Horace's "deliberata morte 
 fcrodor," applied to Cleopatra, 
 t Thompson's Sales Attici, 65.
 
 72 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 exposure of the body of Polynices, violated the first 
 great law of humanity, and had committed an act 
 which was at once impious and barbarous, detestable 
 alike in the eyes of gods and men. To the Greek, 
 reverence for the dead was the most sacred of all 
 duties. In his national creed, the ghosts of Hades 
 seem more than disembodied spirits ; they retain their 
 bodily senses ; they remember the joys and brood over 
 the sorrows of their former life ; they carry traces of 
 the mortal wounds or mutilation which caused their 
 death ; and so, in the Odyssey, we find them crowd- 
 ing to drink the blood which, like an elixir of life, 
 seems to reanimate their veins, and give them speech 
 and utterance. To the Greek the grave was not a 
 barrier across which there was no return. Hercules 
 had wrestled bodily with Death for the possession of 
 Alcestis ; Orpheus had almost regained his Eurydice ; 
 and Hesiod tells us how the spirits of the just revisit 
 the loved scenes of their lifetime, like guardian 
 angels 
 
 " Earth haunting, beneficent, holy." * 
 
 But nothing could compensate to the dead for their 
 cruel deprivation of a tomb. Not only was the spirit 
 in such a case condemned to wander restlessly for a 
 hundred years on the banks of Styx a belief of which 
 Lord Lytton has made such skilful use in his tale of 
 ' Sisyphus ' but the laws of the gods in the lower 
 world were violated, and the majesty of Proserpine, 
 the queen of Hades, was set at nought. Few would 
 * Op. et D., 122, 252.
 
 ANTIGONE. 73 
 
 take the common-sense view of Socrates in Plato's 
 Dialogue, who told his friends that, do what they 
 would, they could not bury Mm; or of Anchises in 
 the ^Eneid, that 
 
 " He lacks not much who lacks a grave." * 
 
 Tradition unanimously consecrated the importance of 
 sepulture. The fiercest battles in Homer are those 
 waged for the possession of the dead bodies of heroes 
 like Sarpedon or Patroclus. The most cruel insult to 
 the conquered is that of Achilles, when he lashes the 
 corpse of Hector to his chariot, and drags it round the 
 walls of Troy. The most touching scene in all the 
 Iliad is where Priam humbles himself in the dust 
 before the victor to obtain the body of his son for 
 burial. So strong was the feeling even in actual his- 
 tory, that after the battle of Arginusse (fought in the 
 same year that Sophocles died) we find the Athenian 
 people condemning ten victorious generals to death for 
 having allowed the seamen of sinking vessels to be 
 drowned unrescued, and so be deprived of a grave. 
 Hence, without question, the tragedies which must 
 have excited the keenest sympathy in a Greek audi- 
 ence were those in which the interest turned on 
 the violation of funeral rites as in the ' Ajax ' and 
 ' Antigone ' of Sophocles, and in the ' Suppliants ' of 
 Euripides. 
 
 The sisters Antigone and Ismene had returned to 
 
 * " Facilis jactura sepulchri." Virg. Mn.,ii. 646. Compare 
 Lucan (Phars. vi. 809), "ccelo tegitur qui uon habet urnam."
 
 74 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Thebes after the death of CEdipus, and there they 
 lived, under the guardianship of Creon, with their 
 brother Eteocles. Then came the famous siege, of 
 which an account has been given in a preceding volume 
 of this series. For three days the Seven Chieftains 
 had assaulted the seven gates, with varying success, 
 and on the third day the single combat took place 
 which resulted in the death by each other's hands of 
 the two brothers. After their fall, the battle still 
 raged on, until at last Menoeceus, son of Creon, de- 
 voted himself as a sacrifice for his country, and then 
 the Argive host were seized with a sudden panic, and 
 fled in headlong rout. 
 
 It is on the morning after their flight that the play 
 opens. All that scenery can do to heighten the effect 
 has been employed by the poet. In the background 
 rises the palace of the kings of Thebes, and on the 
 walls are hung six suits of armour, taken from the 
 Argive chieftains. One side-scene represents the dis- 
 tant hills of Cithseron ; on the other is depicted the 
 city itself, with its houses and temples, the sacred 
 streams of Dirce and Ismenus, and the " Scaean gates," 
 still bearing traces of the late assault. 
 
 The audience, who have murmured their applause 
 at the fidelity with which the artist has brought before 
 them a well-known locality, are hushed into silence as 
 the two sisters enter. They have come forth from the 
 palace to discuss the new decree which Creon the king 
 has just proclaimed. By his orders, Eteocles has been 
 already buried with all the honours of a soldier's 
 grave ; but the corpse of Polynices is to lie " unwept,
 
 ANTIGONE. 75 
 
 unburied," a prey for the fowls of the air and the 
 "beasts of the field. Whoever disobeys this mandate 
 is to be stoned to death. " K"ow is the time," says 
 Antigone to her sister, " to show 
 
 " Whether thou hast an innate nobleness, 
 Or art the base-born child of noble sires." (P.) 
 
 And here we find at once the same strong contrast 
 between the characters of the two sisters, which in a 
 subsequent tragedy is seen between Electra and Chry- 
 sothemis. Antigone, like Joan of Arc and other 
 enthusiasts, is so absorbed in her own self-sacrifice, 
 inspired with such a lofty sense of what her duty 
 towards her brother demands, that she spurns all other 
 considerations. Death and life, honour and dishonour, 
 happiness and misery, are as nothing compared with 
 the work she has in hand. Ismene, though not less 
 affectionate, is of a softer temper. She has less 
 heroism, but more common - sense. Her advice is 
 that which prudence naturally suggests " Why add 
 another to the countless sorrows of the family 1 Why 
 offend the powers that be, or, offer unavailing resist- 
 ance to the majesty of law?" 
 
 But these prudent counsels only incense Antigone, 
 and she breaks into a tone of lofty scorn : 
 
 " No more will I exhort thee no ! and if 
 Thou wouldst it now, it would not pleasure me 
 To have thee as a partner in the deed. 
 Be what it liketh thee to be, but 7 
 Will bury him ; and shall esteem it honour 
 To die in the attempt ; dying^for him, 
 Loving with one who loves me I shall lie
 
 76 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 After a holy deed of sin ; the time . 
 Of the world's claims upon me may not mate 
 With what the grave demands ; for there my rest 
 Will be for everlasting. 
 
 Come what will, 
 It cannot take from me a noble death." 
 
 (Donaldson.) 
 
 In her "fiery mood," Antigone disdainfully rejects 
 Ismene's offer to keep her counsel, and so the sisters 
 part, Antigone going to prepare the body for burial, 
 and Ismene, broken-hearted at the thought of the 
 coming evil, retreating within the palace. 
 
 The Chorus of "grave and reverend" Theban elders 
 now enter to the sound of music, and burst into a 
 triumphal hymn in honour of the late victory, as they 
 hail the bright sunlight which streams above the 
 eastern gates. For it is the Sun-god himself -that 
 has driven in headlong flight 
 
 " The Argive hero of the argent shield." 
 
 Then, in the figurative style of lyric verse, which 
 recalls to the reader the songs of Miriam and Deborah, 
 they tell how Polynices had swooped down upon his 
 native land, like an eagle thirsting for slaughter : 
 
 " White as the snow were the pinions that clothed him, 
 Many his bucklers, 
 And his helmets crested with horse-hair." 
 
 But ere he could lay the city low in blood and fire, 
 " the dragon " (of Thejbes) " had proved his match in 
 war."
 
 ANTIGONE. 77 
 
 Then they sing of the fall of Capaneus, that impious 
 blasphemer of the gods, who had been dashed from 
 the scaling-ladder, torch in hand, by a thunderbolt 
 from heaven. The gods had fought for the city they 
 loved so well, and the seven chieftains had left their 
 panoplies as trophies for the Theban temples. And 
 now that victory has come with the bright daylight 
 (conclude the Chorus) 
 
 " Forget the wars that now no longer rage, 
 And seek we all the temples of the gods 
 With choirs that last the livelong night." 
 
 Creon now sweeps upon the stage with a long ret- 
 inue of attendants, splendid in royal apparel, and 
 carrying the sceptre which is the symbol of his dignity. 
 He delivers a " speech from the throne," in which he 
 vindicates his past and present policy, and explains 
 the reasons for his different treatment of the bodies of 
 the two brothers in the decree which had roused the 
 indignation of Antigone. But in this elaborate ad- 
 dress we are at once reminded of the proverb, " Qui 
 s 'excuse s'accuse." There is a ring of insincerity in his 
 studious defence of the prerogative which has put in 
 force the late decree. There is a covert dread of 
 opposition in the tone in which he deprecates the 
 forbearance of his "good friends" and "trusty citi- 
 zens " the Chorus. There is ostentation in his asser- 
 tion of the great principle of patriotism, which he 
 assumes to be the mainspring of his conduct, and 
 which he is resolved to carry out, whatever may be the 
 sacrifice of private affections involved :
 
 78 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " There is no man whose soul and will and meaning 
 Stand forth as outward things for all to see, 
 Till he has shown himself by practice versed 
 In ruling under law and making laws. 
 As to myself, it is, and was of old, 
 My fixed belief that he is vile indeed 
 "Who, when the general State his guidance claims, 
 Dares not adhere to wisest policy, 
 But keeps his tongue locked up for fear of somewhat. 
 Him too I reckon nowhere, who esteems 
 A private friend more than his fatherland. 
 
 Nor would I ever count among my friends 
 My country's enemy ; for well I know 
 She is the barque that brings us safe to port : 
 Sailing in her, unswayed by sidelong gales, 
 We make the only friends we ought to make." 
 
 (Donaldson.) 
 
 And then he recites the words of the decree, all the 
 honours of the tomb to the brave champion who had 
 fallen in defence of hearth and home ; but as to the 
 body of the outcast and renegade, who had brought 
 fire and sword against the city of his fathers, it shall 
 lie unburied and dishonoured, to be mangled by dogs 
 and vultures. " Such is my will," concludes the king 
 (and we can fancy the majestic wave of the hand with 
 which a great actor would have accompanied the 
 words); and then he announces that, in order to 
 secure obedience to his mandate, a watch had been 
 already set to guard the body. 
 
 He has scarcely spoken before one of the watchmen 
 enters a personage alien from the general lofty vein 
 of tragedy. He is emphatically " vulgar " a true son
 
 ANTIGONE. 79 
 
 of democracy ; low-bred, half-educated, insolent where 
 he dare be so, but cringing before a superior will, with 
 something of the coarse and garrulous wit of the 
 " Sausage-seller " in the comedy of Aristophanes. His 
 opening speech (which has been well translated by Dr 
 Donaldson) will remind the reader of Lancelot Gobbo's 
 dilemma between the suggestions of " the fiend " and 
 his " conscience," in the ' Merchant of Venice.' The 
 watchman has been divided within himself starting, 
 and returning, and halting by the road. " In fact," he 
 says, " my soul often addressed me with some such tale 
 as this : ' Why goest, simpleton, where to be come is to 
 be punished V Then again, ' What ! wilt not away, poor 
 wretch? and if Creon shall learn these tidings from 
 some one else, how then wilt thou escape the penalty V" 
 There is some excuse for his unwillingness to come, 
 for he has been charged with unwelcome tidings. 
 Early though it is in the day, the recent decree has 
 been already broken. " Some one has entombed the 
 body, and is gone." At daybreak the watchmen had 
 discovered the corpse covered with a light coating of 
 dust sufficient to meet the religious idea of burial * 
 and untouched by bird or beast. Each had accused 
 
 * The casting of three handfuls of dust upon the corpse was 
 enough to avoid the pollution of leaving it unburied. So in 
 Horace we find the ghost of a shipwrecked and unburied man 
 threatening a passing sailor 
 
 " My prayers shall reach the avengers of all wrong ; 
 
 No expiations shall the curse unbind. 
 Great though your haste, I would not task you long ; 
 Thrice sprinkle dust then scud before the wind." 
 
 Ode I. xxviii. (Conington's Transl.)
 
 80 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 his fellow, and each had disclaimed all knowledge of 
 the deed 
 
 " And we were ready in our hands to take 
 Bars of hot iron, and to walk through fire, 
 And call the gods to witness, none of us 
 Were privy to his schemes who planned the deed, 
 Nor his who wrought it." (P.) 
 
 Then they had cast lots to decide who should bear 
 the news to Creon; and the lot had fallen on this 
 unlucky member of the force, who has now actually 
 "brought it no pleasant office, he says ; for 
 
 " Though it be honest, it is never good 
 To bring bad news." 
 
 The Chorus suggest that this " unseen worker " may 
 possibly have been a god ; but the suggestion only in- 
 creases Creon's resentment. "Not so," he angrily replies ; 
 " the gods would scarcely have favoured the man who 
 in his life had threatened their altars with the flames." 
 It is an act of rebellion against his own authority. 
 Some evil-disposed townsmen have tampered with the 
 sentinels; and it is " money" which is at the root of this 
 as of all other evils. If the Chorus cannot or will not 
 discover the traitor so help him Zeus ! they shall 
 be hung themselves ; and then, with a fierce parting 
 threat to the watchman, Creon departs in a rage. The 
 watchman also goes his way, naively confessing his 
 relief at his escape : 
 
 " God send we find him ! If we find him not, 
 As well may be (for this must chance decide), 
 You will not see me coming here again." (P.)
 
 ANTIGONE. 81 
 
 In the choral ode which follows, a noble tribute 
 is paid to the versatility of human genius, and to the 
 dominion of man over the powers of nature, true 
 even then, and far truer now, in these fairy times of 
 modern science, which have eclipsed all the wonders 
 of the " New Atlantis." 
 
 u Many the things that strange and wondrous are, 
 None stranger and more wonderful than Man ; 
 
 He dares to wander far, 
 With stormy blast across the hoary sea, 
 
 Where nought his eye can scan 
 But waves still surging round unceasingly ; 
 
 And Earth, of all the gods 
 Mightiest, unwearied, indestructible, 
 He weareth year by year, and breaks her clods, 
 While the keen ploughshare marks her furrows well, 
 
 Still turning to and fro ; 
 
 And still he bids his steeds 
 
 Through daily task-work go." (P.) 
 
 Man extends his dominion over the fish of the sea, 
 and the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field. 
 He has resources against all dangers, plans by which 
 he overcomes all obstacles, inventions which can solve 
 all difficulties 
 
 " Armed at all points, unarmed he nought shall meet 
 
 That coming time reveals ; 
 Only from Hades finds he no retreat, 
 Though many a hopeless sore disease he heals." (P.) 
 
 Pride is the besetting sin of so gifted a being, and it 
 is pride in the statesman which brings about his speedy 
 
 A. C. Vol. X F
 
 82 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 fall ; and then comes the warning, like Wolsey's to 
 Cromwell, to " guard against ambition " 
 
 " By that sin fell the angels, how can man, then, 
 The image of his Maker, hope to profit by it ? " 
 
 Suddenly the Chorus break off in wonder and dis- 
 may. They can scarcely believe their eyes ; for, bound 
 between two of the watch, Antigone walks in with 
 a stately and defiant bearing. At the same moment 
 Creon comes from the palace - gates, and meets the 
 prisoner. The same watchman who had enraged 
 Creon by his vulgar insolence before, becomes the 
 spokesman now ; and this time his tale is to the point. 
 The guard had returned to their post, and, after clear- 
 ing the corpse from the dust which had been sprinkled 
 on it by the unknown visitor on the previous night, 
 they had sat down on the hillside, at a little distance 
 from the body, to watch for what might happen. The 
 morning had passed without a sign, and the sun had 
 reached mid-heavens, and still they waited, " scorched 
 by the sultry heat." Then came a whirlwind, " rais- 
 ing the dust in clouds, stripping the foliage off the 
 trees, and choking the atmosphere;" and still they 
 watched, with closed eyes and mouths. Then at last 
 the maiden was seen, and she uttered a bitter cry to 
 see her work undone, and the corpse again exposed. 
 And as she was in the act of again sprinkling the dust 
 and pouring a libation, the guards had rushed in and 
 seized her. 
 
 Creon, who has listened intently to the watchman's 
 story, now turns to Antigone, and asks whether she
 
 ANTIGONE. 83 
 
 has dared thus to disobey the laws. "Yes," she 
 proudly replies, 
 
 " Yes, for it was not Zeus who gave them forth, 
 Nor Justice, dwelling with the gods below, 
 Who traced these laws for all the sons of men ; 
 Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough, 
 That thou, a mortal man, shouldst overpass 
 The unwritten laws of God that know no change. 
 They are not of to-day nor yesterday, 
 But live for ever, nor can man assign 
 When first they sprang to being. Not through fear 
 Of any man's resolve was I prepared 
 Before the gods to bear the penalty 
 Of sinning against these. That I should die 
 I knew (how should I not ?) though thy decree 
 Had never spoken. And before my time 
 If I shall die, I reckon this a gain ; 
 For whoso lives, as I, in many woes, 
 How can it be but he shall gain by death ? " (P.) 
 
 This noble appeal of Antigone to a higher law only 
 incenses Creon. This stubbornness of temper, which 
 glories in crime, shall break and shiver like brittle 
 steel. Were she his own sister's child, or more near 
 " than all the kith and kin of household Zeus," she 
 shall not escape her doom. But to his angry de- 
 nunciations Antigone answers shortly and simply, 
 " Does he wish for anything beyond her death?" To 
 his question why she had insulted the dead patriot by 
 honouring the godless renegade, she replies and how 
 faintly can the famous line be reproduced in English 
 
 " My love shall go with thine, but not my hate." * 
 * So the line is rendered by Franklin ; but the German of
 
 84 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Isinene now enters, in obedience to a summons from 
 Creon. She does not defend herself against his charge 
 of having been an accomplice in the deed, but only 
 piteously entreats that she may be allowed to share 
 her sister's fate. But Antigone at once rejects her" 
 offer. " You have chosen life," she says (almost in 
 the last words of Socrates to his judges), "but / 
 have chosen death," 
 
 " Thou dost live. My soul long since 
 Hath died to render service to the dead." 
 
 Creon cuts short their dialogue by bidding his guards 
 lead them both within the palace. 
 
 The Chorus mourn, in the strain which follows, 
 over the doom of ancestral guilt the sorrows upon 
 sorrows which have extinguished the last faint gleam 
 of light which had shone upon the house of Labdacus. 
 Bright delusive hopes, high aspirations, mortal day- 
 dreams, the glory of man and the pride of life what 
 are they, compared with the resistless decree of Zeus ? 
 
 " A potentate through time, which grows not old." 
 
 " Shall judgment be less strong than sin ? 
 Shall man o'er Jove dominion win ? 
 No ! Sleep beneath his leaden sway 
 May hold but things that know decay ; 
 The unwearied months with godlike vigour move, 
 Yet cannot change the might of Jove. 
 
 Schlegel gives more thoroughly the force of the two Greek 
 verbs : 
 
 "Nicht mitzuhassen, mitzulieben bin ich da."
 
 ANTIGONE. 85 
 
 Compassed with dazzling light, 
 Throned" on Olympus' height, 
 His front the eternal god uprears, 
 By toils unwearied, and unaged by years ! 
 Far back through seasons past, 
 
 Far on through times to come, 
 Has been, and still must last, 
 
 Sin's never-failing doom : 
 Doom, whence with countless sorrows rife 
 Is erring man's tumultuous life. 
 Some, heeding hope's beguiling voice, 
 
 From virtue's pathway rove ; 
 And some, deluded, make their choice 
 The levities of love. 
 
 For well and wisely was it said, 
 That all, by Heaven to sorrows led, 
 Perverted by delirious mood, 
 Deem evil wears the shape of good ; 
 Chase the fair phantom, free from fears, 
 And waken to a life of tears." (A.) 
 
 Haemon, Creon's son, betrothed to Antigone and 
 who is perhaps the only "lover" in all ancient tra- 
 gedy, so widely different is the Greek drama from our 
 own comes now to plead for the life of his affianced 
 bride. Then ensues a scene familiar in life and fiction, 
 where two strong wills inevitably clash the son eager 
 and impassioned, the father hardened by that sense of 
 duty never so keenly felt as when stimulated by a pri- 
 vate pique. The first and foremost of all duties in the 
 home and in the state, argues Creon, is obedience. The 
 family must be one united under the patria potestas. 
 The object of men's prayer for children is, according to 
 Creon, much like that of the Hebrew Psalmist, that
 
 86 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 they may "not be ashamed when they speak with 
 their enemies in the gate." Sons are born that 
 
 " They may requite with ill their father's foe, 
 And honour whom their father loves to honour. 
 But when a man's own children help him not, 
 What shall we say he has begotten, but 
 Clogs for himself and laughter for his foes ? " 
 
 Love for a woman already doomed to death should 
 not make shipwreck of a man's understanding. Dis- 
 obedience produces anarchy, and anarchy destroys the 
 state. 
 
 Hsemon eloquently entreats his father to listen to 
 the voice of reason, and not to disregard the public 
 opinion, which had already pronounced in favour of 
 Antigone. Creon, as a sovereign, cannot himself hear 
 the secret whispers of the people, or know 
 
 " How the whole city mourns this maiden's fate 
 As one ' who of all women most unjustly 
 For noblest deed must die the foulest death.' " (P.) 
 
 King though he is, let him beware of straining the 
 reins of government too tightly. He should not act 
 the tyrant by ruling only for himself. 
 
 " That is no city which belongs to one." 
 
 But all Hsemon's arguments and remonstrances are 
 unavailing. Creon's heart is hardened, and he will 
 not let the maiden go. 
 
 " Lead her out 
 
 Whom my soul hates, that she may die forthwith 
 Before mine eyes, and near her bridegroom here." (P.) 
 
 Tliis cruel speech exhausts Hsemon's patience, and he
 
 AN.TIGONE. 87 
 
 hurries from the scene with a parting threat to his 
 father that, come what will, " he shall see his face no 
 more." 
 
 Haemon and Antigone, as we have seen, are lovers, 
 and, even in introducing them at all, Sophocles had 
 gone a step beyond ^scbylus, with whom Love is 
 simply the divine and eternal principle of fecundity 
 a law, and not a passion.* But there is little romance 
 or sentiment about these Greek lovers; and modern 
 criticism at once decides that Sophocles has lost his 
 opportunity, for he does not even once bring them on 
 the stage together. Had it been Romeo and Juliet 
 thus torn asunder what tender farewells, what pas- 
 sionate embraces, there would have been at the last ! 
 what sombre and funereal joy in the contemplated 
 suicide ! t In his dialogue with his father, Hsemon 
 scarcely names his love his appeal is to justice and to 
 public opinion ; while his father simply replies that he 
 is not bound to alter the course of law, to suit either a 
 woman's caprice or " a people's veering will." 
 
 The Chorus, half in awe and half in wonder, cele- 
 brate the power of Love that irresistible and all-per- 
 
 * The only passage in which ^Eschylus dwells upon the in- 
 fluence of love is in a fragment of the Danaidse, where Venus 
 says, "The pure Heavens are enamoured of the Earth; and 
 Love impels Earth to embrace the Heavens ; and Kain falling 
 from the Heavens kisses Earth ; and she brings forth corn and 
 sheep for the sustenance of man ; and from these rainy nuptials 
 the fruits of autumn come to their perfection ; and it is I, Love, 
 who am the cause of all these things." 
 
 t Girardin, ii. 326.
 
 88 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 vading passion, mightier than kings, and, strong as 
 death, levelling all distinctions : 
 
 " Unconquered Love ! whose mystic sway 
 Creation's varied forms obey ; 
 Who watchest long at midnight hour 
 On the soft cheek of beauty's flower : 
 Now inmate of the sylvan cot, 
 Now flitting o'er the waves, 
 Immortal gods escape thee not, 
 Thou rulest man's ephemeral lot, 
 And he who hath thee raves.* 
 
 Thy magic warps the right to wrong, 
 And troubles now the kindred throng ; 
 The look of love yon destined bride 
 
 Darts from her pleading eye, 
 A subtle counsellor, hath vied 
 With mighty laws and princedom's pride, 
 
 And won the victory." (A.) 
 
 "Well might the Chorus now weep, as they express 
 it, " fountains of tears," for they see Antigone led by 
 Creon's guards to be entombed alive in a cavern among 
 the rocks. The horror of no death can equal that of a 
 living grave, the fearful penalty which has been annexed 
 in all ages for certain crimes to the vestal virgin at 
 Rome and to the nun in the middle ages for broken 
 vows of chastity. But Antigone was pure from sin. 
 She had not stained her hands with blood ; much less 
 
 * Scott's imitation conscious or unconscious does not come 
 up to the fire of the Greek original : 
 
 " Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, 
 And men below, and saints above." 
 
 Lay, iii. 1.
 
 ANT1QON*. 89 
 
 had she been guilty of frailty, like Scott's ' Constance 
 of Beverley.' The act for which she suffers was 
 prompted by the holiest affection. Hitherto she 
 has been buoyed up by the sublime enthusiasm 
 which inspires the martyr; but now that the sac- 
 rifice has been consummated, what wonder if the 
 nerves so tightly strung give way, if for a moment 
 nature reasserts herself, and the heroine becomes the 
 woman? Like Jephtha's daughter, she breaks out 
 into a passionate lament mourning for her bright 
 young life so cruelly cut short, for those fair promises 
 of marriage never to be realised. The cold comfort 
 of the Chorus and the consciousness of her own inno- 
 cence can, after all, but slightly lighten the dread of 
 approaching death to her who goes down, "living 
 among the dead, to the strong dungeon of the tomb." 
 Then she tries to steel her fortitude by remembering 
 how others had suffered before her ; and she recalls the 
 fate of Niobe (one of her own race), whose children 
 had been slain by Apollo and Diana, while she herself 
 was changed into stone : 
 
 " And there, hard by the crag of Siphylos, 
 
 As creeping ivy grows, 
 So crept the shoots of rock o'er life and breath ; 
 
 And, as the rumour goes, 
 The showers ne'er leave her wasting in her death, 
 
 Nor yet the drifting snows ; 
 From weeping brows they drip on rocks beneath 
 
 Thus God my life o'erthrows." (P.) * 
 
 * "As a documentary reminiscence of the myths proper to 
 these regions (Lydia), there gleams, even at the present day, at 
 two hours' distance from the ancient Magnesia, in the sunken
 
 90 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Yes," say the Chorus, " and she was immortal, while 
 thou art mortal ; yet for a mortal to obtain the lot of 
 immortality is great glory." 
 
 But this glory is too vague to console Antigone, and 
 her mind reverts to the actual horror of the present. 
 She must tread this last sad journey alone, " unwept, 
 and unwedded." She must look on the bright sun- 
 light, on the streams of Dirce, on the familiar streets 
 of Thebes, 
 
 u This once, but never more ; for Hades vast, 
 
 Drear home of all the dead, 
 Leads me, in life, where Acheron flows fast, 
 
 Sparing no marriage-bed ; 
 No marriage-hymn was mine in all the past, 
 
 But Acheron I wed." (P.) 
 
 Creon roughly breaks in upon the lament of Antig- 
 one; and at sight of him the maiden recovers some- 
 thing of her haughty spirit, and proclaims aloud the 
 justice of her cause and her own innocence, deserted 
 though she seems to be by men and gods. Looking 
 with steady gaze towards the tomb whither she is 
 being led, she utters her last farewell to light and 
 life: 
 
 " tomb, my bridal chamber, vaulted home, 
 Guarded right well for ever, where I go 
 
 depths of the rock, the sitting form of a woman, bending for- 
 ward in her grief, over whom the water drips and flows ceaselessly. 
 This is Niobe, the mother of the Phrygian mountains, who 
 saw her happy offspring, the rivulets, playing round her, till 
 they were all carried away by the day-heat of the sun." 
 Curtius's Hist, of Greece, i. 81.
 
 ANTIGONE. 91 
 
 To join mine own, of whom the greater part 
 Among the dead doth Persephassa * hold ; 
 And I, of all the last and saddest, wend 
 My way below, life's little span unfilled." (P.) 
 
 And then, as Socrates, her antitype, tries to console 
 himself and his friends with the thought that if death 
 be not annihilation or a dreamless sleep, he may pace 
 Elysian fields, and converse with the spirits of the good 
 and wise ; so the maiden dwells upon the hope that 
 in death she too may not be divided from those who 
 were nearest and dearest to her on earth that she may 
 meet her father and her mother, and the brother for 
 whom she has sacrificed everything. But then again 
 there swells up in her heart the remembrance of the 
 pleasant life she is about to leave : 
 
 " Cut off from marriage-bed and marriage-song, 
 
 Untasting wife's true joy or mother's bliss, 
 
 Bereaved of friends, in utter misery, 
 
 Alive I tread the chambers of the dead. 
 
 What law of heaven have I transgressed against ? 
 
 What use for me, ill-starred one, still to look 
 
 To any god for succour, or to call 
 
 On any friend for aid ? For holiest deed 
 
 I bear the charge of rank unholiness. 
 
 If acts like these the gods on high approve, 
 
 We, taught by pain, shall see that we have sinned ; 
 
 But if these sin [looking at Creon], I pray they suffer not 
 
 Worse evils than the wrongs they do to me." (P.) 
 
 And then she passes from the scene. We may pity 
 her indeed who could not 1 but we can hardly real- 
 ise the extent of her self-sacrifice. Like the Decii or 
 * The Greek form of " Proserpine."
 
 92 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 others who devoted themselves for a noble cause, she 
 " surrendered all, and looked forward to nothing but 
 the joyless asphodel meadow, and ' drear Cocytus, with 
 its languid stream.' " * There was not even the expec- 
 tancy of a material happiness, such as consoles the 
 dying Islamite. To the Greek maiden all beyond the 
 Styx was dim, shadowy, and spectral as the ghosts 
 with which Homer peopled Hades. 
 
 Retribution, in the drama, follows closely upon 
 crime. Scarcely has Antigone been led away to death 
 scarcely have the Chorus ended their dirge in her 
 memory, in which they illustrate the law of suffering, 
 from which even gods are not exempt- when Teire- 
 sias, the blind prophet, whose approach is always 
 ominous of woe, confronts Creon, as Elijah confronted 
 Ahab on his return from the vineyard whither he had 
 gone up to take possession. The augur has read signs 
 of coming disaster portended in the heavens above and 
 in the earth beneath. To Teiresias, as to Elijah, " the 
 horizon was darkened with the visions of vultures 
 glutting on the carcases of the dead, and the packs of 
 savage dogs feeding on their remains, or lapping up 
 their blood." t Seated on his " old augurial throne," 
 he has heard a strange clamour of birds battling in the 
 air, and tearing each other's flesh. Instead of the 
 wonted flame rising bright and clear from the altar, 
 the sacred fire had but smoked and spluttered ; the vic- 
 tim's flesh had fallen to the ground and wasted ; every 
 shrine and hearth was full of unclean food. 
 
 * Ecce Homo, ch. xi. 
 
 t Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, ii. 314.
 
 ANTIGONE. 93 
 
 " The gods no more hear prayers of sacrifice, 
 Nor own the flame that burns the victim's limbs ; 
 Nor do the birds give cry of omen good, 
 But feed on carrion of a slaughtered corpse." (P.) 
 
 Let the king, then, concludes the seer, listen to 
 good counsel, and not reverse the common laws of 
 humanity. Let him restore Antigone to the upper air, 
 and bury Polynices. 
 
 But Creon, like (Edipus before him, is deaf to the 
 voice of prophecy, and scorns repentance or atonement 
 till repentance and atonement come too late. Like 
 (Edipus, he adds impiety to crime, and in the stub- 
 bornness of his pride utters blasphemous words which 
 must have outraged the pious sense of the Athenian 
 audience. Teiresias may play his " augur's tricks " on 
 others, and make his gains of amber from Sardis and 
 gold from India ; but 
 
 " That corpse ye shall not hide in any tomb, 
 Not though the eagles, birds of Zeus, should bear 
 Their carrion morsels to the throne of God, 
 Not even fearing this pollution dire, 
 Will I consent to burial." (P.) 
 
 And then, inspired by his evil genius (or, as the 
 Greeks would have put it, infatuated by Ate, the demon- 
 goddess of destruction), Creon adds insult to reproach, 
 until the prophet, sorely vexed, declares the doom 
 which awaits the shedder of innocent blood. Sorrow 
 shall come upon his own house ; few and evil shall be 
 the days that remain of his life. The sun shall not 
 rise and set again before he shall repay blood for 
 blood ; .
 
 94 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " For that thou 
 
 Hast to the ground cast one that walked on earth, 
 And foully placed within the sepulchre 
 A living soul ; and now they wait for thee, 
 The sure though slow avengers of the grave, 
 The dread Erinyes of the mighty gods." (P.) 
 
 There shall be wailing and lamentation in the palace 
 of Thebes, and the cities round shall rise in arms 
 against the polluter of the holiest and most universal 
 law of nature. 
 
 Creon, overawed by the reality of this prediction, 
 is smitten with remorse almost before Teiresias is led 
 from the stage. He will yield to necessity, and he 
 summons his attendants to bring axes that may break 
 open the tomb while there is yet time to release the 
 maiden. 
 
 Then the Chorus utter a fervent prayer to Bacchus, 
 " the god of many names," to come to the rescue of 
 Thebes, the city of his mother, Semele : 
 
 " Prince of each silver star 
 
 That breathes through darkness its celestial light, 
 Lord of the train who on the car of night 
 
 Swell their wild hymns afar, 
 Blest youth ! high offspring of eternal Jove ! 
 
 Haste, and thy fair attendants bring, 
 Those Naxian nymphs the livelong night who rove, 
 
 Dancing around thy throne in festive ring, 
 
 And shout lacchus' name, their leader and their king." 
 
 -(D.) 
 
 Events crowd on one another in rapid succession, as 
 the action hurries on to the catastrophe. In accord-
 
 ANTIGONE. 95 
 
 ance with the usual machinery of Greek tragedy, 
 the messenger of evil tidings enters, and in one line 
 tells his story : 
 
 " Bathed in his blood, all lifeless, Hsemon lies." 
 
 Eurydice, the queen - mother, passing by on her way 
 to the shrine of Minerva, overhears his words, and in 
 an agony of terror demands to be told the whole truth. 
 Then follows the tale of doom. 
 
 Creon had hurried to make what atonement he 
 might to the outraged corpse of Polynices. It still 
 lay upon the plain where the watchmen had left it, 
 torn and mangled by the dogs, holding their carnival 
 around the dead. After prayer had been made to 
 the " Goddess of Pathways,"* Creon's attendants rever- 
 ently wash the body in pure water, burn the remains, 
 and raise a mound of earth. Then they take their 
 way to " death's marriage-chamber," in which Antig- 
 one had been immured. Even before they reach it, a 
 shrill cry of lamentation breaks upon their ears ; and 
 with a heart foreboding the worst, Creon bids his 
 slaves roll away the stones and widen the entrance 
 to the tomb. The sight which meets their eyes, as 
 the set scene in the background opens, is piteous be- 
 yond all expression. The messenger continues : 
 
 " In the farthest corner of the vault 
 We saw her hanging by her neck, with cord 
 Of linen threads entwined, and him we found 
 Clasping her form in passionate embrace." (P.) 
 
 * Proserpine or Hecate the goddess who guarded the high- 
 ways which were polluted by the unburied body of Polynices.
 
 96 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Then Creon, groaning in the bitterness of his heart, 
 entreats his son to leave the body and to come forth 
 from the ill-omened chamber. Haemon answers not, 
 but, glaring with angry eyes, draws his sword ; and 
 as his father, believing his own life to be threatened, 
 starts back in terror, the unfortunate youth buries the 
 blade in his own body, and falls forwards on the earth, 
 still clasping the dead Antigone : 
 
 " Yet ever, while dim sense 
 Struggled within the fast-expiring soul, 
 Feebler and feebler still his stiffening limbs 
 Clung to that virgin form, and every gasp 
 Of his last breath with bloody dews distained 
 The cold white cheek that was his pillow. So 
 Lies death embracing death." (Lord Lytton.) * 
 
 But the doom of the house of CEdipus is not yet 
 consummated. Eurydice had heard to the end the 
 tale of the messenger, and had then rushed into the 
 palace without a word or cry. The Chorus argue the 
 worst from this ominous silence ; and their fears are 
 fulfilled, for hardly has Creon again come upon the 
 stage, bearing the dead body of his son in his arms, 
 when he is met by a second messenger with the news 
 that the queen, his wife, has stabbed herself to the 
 heart with a mortal blow. 
 
 And here the horror culminates. Nothing can be 
 
 * We are at once reminded of the last scene in ' Romeo and 
 Juliet,' where rescue and explanation come too late to save the 
 lovers, and where ,the tomb of the Capulets is, as the Friar 
 says, "a nest 
 
 " Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep."
 
 ANTIGONE. 97 
 
 added to increase the agony and remorse of Creon 
 left living, it is true, but more to be pitied than the 
 dead themselves, crushed and humbled in the dust, 
 all joy in life, all domestic happiness, all peace of 
 mind gone for ever. Above all, he is tormented by 
 the consciousness that it is his own stubborn pride, 
 and not his evil destiny, that has thus made him the 
 murderer of son and wife. " Heaven has sorely smitten 
 me," he says, 
 
 " And I know not 
 
 Which way to look or turn. All near at hand 
 Is turned to evil ; and upon my head 
 There falls a doom, far worse than I can bear." (P.) 
 
 A. c. vol. x.
 
 CHAPTEK V. 
 
 THE DEATH OP AJAX. 
 
 OF all heroic families, perhaps none were more famous 
 than that of the ^Eacidae, to which Ajax, the hero of 
 this tragedy, belonged. ^acus, the founder of the 
 race, was a son of Jove, and he married a daughter of 
 the centaur Chiron, from whom two sons were born to 
 him, Peleus and Telamon. Peleus married the sea- 
 nymph, " silver-footed " Thetis, and by her had Achil- 
 les; while Telamon took to wife Eribcea, who bore 
 him Ajax. The cousins were both mighty warriors, 
 renowned beyond all the other Greeks in the siege of 
 Troy; but in character and appearance they were as 
 different as Athelstane and Ivanhoe. Achilles was the 
 true knight of chivalry, brave, graceful, and courteous, 
 but high-spirited and passionate. Ajax was a man of 
 war, of huge bulk and ponderous strength, taller than all 
 the rest by the head and shoulders. More than once his 
 single right arm had saved the army from destruction, 
 
 " Stemming the war as stems a torrent's force 
 Some wooded cliff far reaching o'er the plain,"* 
 
 * Lord Derby's Homer, II. xvii. 847.
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 99 
 
 keeping his foes at bay, and then slowly retreating, 
 covered by his shield of bull's hide, " huge as a tower." 
 But he had waxed insolent in the pride of his strength, 
 and more than once (as we are told in the play) his 
 arrogant and impious words had provoked the anger of 
 the gods. When he first left Salamis, his father, per- 
 haps foreseeing the trouble Avhich his haughty spirit 
 was doomed to bring upon him, had given him pru- 
 dent advice : 
 
 " Seek, my son, in fight, 
 To conquer, but still conquer through the gods." 
 
 But Ajax, like the old Norseman, " put his trust 
 neither in idols nor demons, but in his own battle- 
 axe," and his reply was, 
 
 " Father, with heavenly aid a coward's hand 
 May grasp the prize of conquest ; I confide 
 To win such trophies e'en without the gods." (D.) 
 
 Again, in the heat of battle, when Minerva herself had 
 urged him to turn his arms where she led the way, 
 he had defiantly rejected her gracious offer of assist- 
 ance : 
 
 " Queen ! to other Argives lend thine aid ; 
 No hostile might shall break where Ajax stands." (D.) 
 
 It would seem as if his sullen and haughty temper 
 had estranged the friendship of men as well as the 
 favour of the gods. He was certainly unpopular 
 among his brothers in arms. To Agamemnon he was 
 "most hateful;" Menelaus bore him no love; and 
 the Ulysses of Homer, like the Ulysses of Shakspeare,
 
 100 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 despised this " beef-witted lord " * for being as stolid as 
 he was arrogant. On the death of Achilles, it was de- 
 cided that the celestial armour forged by Vulcan for the 
 hero at the prayer of Thetis should be given to the 
 bravest warrior in the host. Only two chieftains pre- 
 sumed to lay claim to it on the score of their personal 
 valour, Ajax and Ulysses. But whatever Ajax might 
 have been in the battle-field, in council or debate he 
 was far inferjor to his rival; and the other princes, 
 after listening to the claims urged by the two candi- 
 dates, influenced partly by personal feeling, partly by 
 the eloquence of Ulysses himself, and partly by the in- 
 spiration of Minerva, adjudged the armour to the " king 
 of rocky Ithaca." 
 
 Ajax left the council and retired to his tent, in 
 bitter wrath at what he considered the unjust decision 
 of the judges ; and it is on the following morning that 
 the play opens. 
 
 The scene represents the historic plain of Troy. 
 The sea sparkles in the distance, and the shore is 
 fringed by a line of boats one larger than the others 
 in the centre of the foreground. There is only one 
 person on the stage a chieftain narrowly scanning, as 
 it seems, footprints on the ground. Suddenly there 
 is a flash of light high up in the background of the 
 scene, and the audience see a majestic form in radiant 
 
 * Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 3. M. Taine is even more 
 uncomplimentary. In his classification of Shakspeare's char- 
 acters, he places Ajax between Caliban and Cloten among "les 
 brutes et les imbeciles." (Lit. AngL, ii. 206.)
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 101 
 
 armour ; and by the spear in her hand, the Gorgon's 
 head upon her shield, and, above all, by the clear-cut 
 face and by the "azure eyes," they recognise their 
 own virgin goddess, Pallas Athene, or, as we may call 
 her, Minerva. 
 
 Then, in that musical and sonorous Greek of which we 
 shall never know the true sound or accent, she addresses 
 the warrior on the stage. Why (she asks) why does 
 Ulysses scan these freshly - imprinted footsteps, as 
 though, " like a keen-scented Spartan hound," he were 
 tracking his foe to his lair 1 ? Ulysses recognises the 
 voice, "clear as a Tyrrhenian trumpet," and makes 
 answer. He is on the track of his foe, the hero of the 
 seven-fold shield. In the night just past, the herds 
 and herdsmen have been butchered by some unknown 
 hand, and rumour points to Ajax, who was seen 
 
 " The fields o'erleaping with a blood-stained sword." 
 
 Ulysses has come to spy out the truth, and is now 
 ready to learn it from one whose wisdom he has proved 
 of old. 
 
 Then Minerva tells him all, how Ajax, burning 
 with wrath at the loss of these much-coveted arms, 
 had gone forth sword in hand at the dead of night, 
 and was on the point of bursting into the tent of the 
 Atreidse, thirsting for their blood, when (says the 
 goddess) 
 
 " I held him back from that accursed joy, 
 Casting strange glamour o'er his wandering eyes, 
 And turned him on the flocks, and where with them 
 The herd of captured oxen press in crowds,
 
 102 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Not yet divided. And on these he falls, 
 
 And wrought fell slaughter of the horned kine, 
 
 Smiting all round ; and now it seemed to him 
 
 That he did slay the Atreidse with his hand, 
 
 Now this, now that, of other generals. 
 
 And I still urged the wild and moon-struck man 
 
 With fresh access of madness, and I cast 
 
 An evil net around him. After this, 
 
 When he had ceased that slaughter, binding fast 
 
 The oxen that still lived, and all the flocks, 
 
 He leads them to his dwelling, counting them 
 
 No troop of horned cattle, but of men ; 
 
 And now within he flouts his prisoners." (P.) 
 
 Minerva is not even satisfied with having blinded 
 the eyes and deluded the senses of the rash man who 
 had insulted her. She wishes to humiliate her victim 
 before her favourite hero, and loudly summons Ajax to 
 come forth from the tent. At the second summons he 
 appears, his eyes still glaring with a ferocious joy, 
 carrying the scourge of cords with which he has been 
 lashing his prisoners. No translation can express the 
 bitter mockery with which the goddess humours his 
 fancied triumph, "first gazing on her victim, while the 
 depths of his mental ruin are lighted up by her irony, 
 then turning in more benignant majesty to point the 
 moral for her favourite." * 
 
 Ajax warmly thanks Minerva for her aid. His 
 revenge has been glorious. Not only has he reddened 
 his sword with the blood of the Atreidse, but he has 
 Ulysses, his bitterest foe (it is a ram which to his mad 
 fancy represents him), bound to a pillar within, and 
 
 * Jebb's Ajax, p. 8, note.
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 103 
 
 he intends presently to scourge him to death. Then 
 he re-enters the tent to complete his vengeance. 
 
 The real Ulysses, whom Minerva has hidden in a 
 cloud from his rival's sight, cannot resist expressing 
 his pity that so stout a warrior should have been 
 brought so low ; but the goddess has no such compas- 
 sion. It is his impious pride that has brought these 
 evils on the victim of her wrath. Let his fate be a 
 warning to all, and let Ulysses himself take heed : 
 
 " Do thou, then, seeing this, refrain thy tongue 
 From any lofty speech against the gods, 
 Nor boast thyself, though thou excel in strength 
 Or weight of stored-up wealth. All human things 
 A day lays low, a day lifts up again ; 
 But still the gods love those of ordered soul, 
 And hate the evil." (P.) 
 
 And with these parting words the goddess is borne 
 upwards by some ingenious mechanism, and Ulysses 
 departs, having learnt the object of his quest, and 
 marvelling much at the strange frenzy which had 
 come upon his unsuccessful rival. 
 
 Music in the "Dorian mode" is heard, and the 
 Chorus, here composed of Salaminian sailors, the faith- 
 ful comrades of Ajax, enter in search of their chieftain. 
 They have been much perplexed and disquieted by an 
 evil rumour, tending to the dishonour of their much- 
 loved prince. 
 
 " Tis said that, rushing to the plain, 
 By thee the captured herds were slain 
 To Grecian valour due ;
 
 104 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 All that of martial spoils remain 
 
 Thy hand infuriate slew. 
 Such slanders does Ulysses hear, 
 Such whispers breathe in every ear : 
 
 His calumnies glad credence gain ; 
 As he who speaks, BO they who hear, 
 
 Insulting mock thy pain. 
 He rarely errs who flings on high 
 At gallant souls his contumely ; 
 Whilst I of lowlier lot evade 
 The penalty by greatness paid ; 
 For envy steals with silent aim 
 On nobler birth and loftier fame." (D.) 
 
 Let their chief but come forth from his tent, and he 
 will confound his enemies by his presence ; at sight of 
 him they will scatter " like a flock of birds." 
 
 Then the Chorus pause, waiting for an answer; 
 but no word of response comes from the closed cur- 
 tains of the tent of Ajax. They are alarmed by this 
 strange silence. Can there be, after all, they ask, 
 some truth in this dark rumour ? Can Diana or the 
 god of war have sent this curse of madness on their 
 prince ? Heaven help him, if this be so ! But if 
 Ulysses has invented the story, " Up from thy seat," 
 is their last appeal, "where all too long thou hast 
 been tarrying, while the insolence of thy foes sweeps on 
 like a breeze through wind-swept dells, mocking thee 
 to thy heart's grief and to my abiding sorrow." 
 
 There is still no answer from Ajax, but a woman 
 comes forth from his tent, weeping bitterly. The 
 sailors know her welL It is Tecmessa, a captive of the
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 105 
 
 spear, whom Ajax, according to the existing rules of 
 war, " deigned to take for his bride." She has to tell 
 them of "a sorrow sharp as death." The rumour is 
 all too true, for Ajax, the valiant, the mighty, the broad- 
 shouldered hero (and she dwells fondly on each epithet), 
 is the victim of a heaven-sent frenzy ; and then she 
 tells them all she knows of the wild work of the pre- 
 vious night. When the evening lamps burnt no 
 longer, and all was darkness and silence through the 
 camp, Ajax had taken his sword and gone forth alone, 
 cutting short her remonstrances with a proverb (familiar 
 to the Greeks, but which would find little favour in 
 our days), 
 
 "Silence, woman, is a woman's grace." (D.) 
 
 After a space he had returned, driving before him the 
 sheep and oxen. Some of these he had slain, hacking 
 and mangling them with insensate fury ; others he had 
 bound and lashed with the scourge, laughing madly 
 the while, and threatening his fancied enemies. Then 
 at last reason and remorse came upon him ; 
 
 " And when he saw the tent with slaughter filled, 
 He smote his head and groaned ; and, falling down, 
 He sat among the fallen carcasses 
 Of that great slaughter of the flocks and herds, 
 Tearing his hair by handfuls with his nails. 
 And for a long, long time he speechless sat ; 
 And then with those dread words he threatened me, 
 "Unless I told him all the woeful chance, 
 And asked me of the plight in which he stood ; 
 And I, my friends, in terror told him all, 
 All that I knew of all that he had done.
 
 106 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 And he forthwith sent out a bitter cry, 
 
 Such as till now I never heard from him ; 
 
 For ever did he hold such loud lament 
 
 Sure sign of one with coward heart and base ; 
 
 And holding back from shrill and wailing cries, 
 
 Would groan with deep, low muttering, like a bull ; 
 
 But now, thus fallen on an evil chance, 
 
 Tasting nor food nor drink, among the herds 
 
 Slain with his sword, he sits in silent calm, 
 
 And looks like one on some dire mischief bent." (P.) 
 
 This burst of anguish followed by a sullen despair is, 
 as Tecmessa fears, more dangerous than his first fran- 
 tic state of madness. What help can they, his old 
 and true friends, bring to their king in this extremity 1 
 
 But the Chorus have not time to answer her ; for 
 groan after groan comes from the closed tent, and Ajax 
 is heard piteously calling on his child Eurysaces, and 
 on Teucer his foster-brother, then far away, to come to 
 him. Then Tecmessa can refrain no longer, but throws 
 open the door of the tent, and discovers Ajax seated 
 in gloomy silence, with his head buried in his hands, 
 while all about him lie the carcasses of the slaughtered 
 sheep and oxen. Disturbed by the light entering the 
 tent, he lifts up his head and sees his faithful sailors ; 
 but they can bring him no comfort. His baffled ven- 
 geance, the insulting joy of his foes, more than all, 
 of that wheedling knave Ulysses, whom he pictures to 
 himself as " laughing long and loudly for very joy of 
 heart," all these thoughts rankle in his breast, and 
 render life itself unbearable. How, he asks, can he 
 endure the light of day 1 how can he look on the face 
 of men any longer? Let his own true friends, the
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 107 
 
 sailors of his fleet, corne near and slay him with the 
 sword. The sight of the mangled carcasses around 
 him aggravates this sense of shame ; to think that he, 
 the hero of a hundred fights, should have dyed his 
 sword in the blood of dumb and defenceless beasts ! 
 There is only one escape open to him now ; 
 
 " Fair death it is, to shun more shame, to die." * 
 
 And he welcomes the thought. " darkness," he con- 
 tinues, " my light ! gloom of Erebus, bright as day 
 to such as me ! Take me, take me to dwell with you ; 
 for I am no longer worthy to look on the race of gods 
 or mortals for any profit that I can bring to man, since 
 the warrior-daughter of Jove torments me to my death. 
 Whither, then, can I fly 1 whither can I go and be at 
 rest ? for my glory is gone, my friends, and vengeance 
 presses hard upon me." 
 
 Then he turns (as every hero in Sophocles turns) to 
 Nature to the familiar plains of Troy and bids them 
 all an affectionate farewell. 
 
 " paths by the ocean waves, and caverns on the 
 shore, and grove o'ershadowing the beach, too long, 
 too long have ye held me here a weary while ! but 
 no longer shall ye hold me, while I have breath of 
 life. Let him who is wise know this. streams of 
 Scamander, old friends of mine, never shall ye see me 
 more ; the bravest warrior of all the host that came 
 from Greece ! " 
 
 And then there crowd upon him the sweet and 
 bitter memories of the past, the promises of glory so 
 * Faery Queen, III. v. 45.
 
 108 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 soon cut short, the hopes of vengeance so ruinously 
 frustrated. How can he return to Salamis, and meet 
 the questioning looks of his father Telamon, deprived 
 of the meeds of valour 1 He is hated by the gods ; 
 he is hated by the Greek host ; " yea," he says, " all 
 Troy and these plains hate me." 
 
 " I must seek out some perilous emprise, 
 To show my father that I sprang from him, 
 In nature not faint-hearted. It is shame 
 For any man to wish for length of life, 
 Who, wrapped in troubles, knows no change for good. 
 For what delight brings day still following day, 
 Or bringing on, or putting off our death ? 
 I would not rate that man as worth regard, 
 Whose fervour glows on vain and empty hopes : 
 But either noble life or noble death 
 Becomes the gentle born. My say is said." (P.) 
 
 Then Tecmessa implores him, in the name of all 
 that he regards as dearest and most sacred upon earth, 
 not to leave her and his child desolate, to eat the 
 bread of slavery and bear the bitter insults of his 
 enemies. 
 
 " For very shame, 
 
 Leave not thy father in his sad old age ; 
 For shame, leave not thy mother, feeble grown 
 With many years, who ofttimes prays the gods 
 That thou may'st live, and to thy house return. 
 Pity, O king, thy boy, and think if he, 
 Deprived of childhood's nurture, live bereaved 
 Beneath unfriendly guardians, what sore grief 
 Thou in thy death dost give to him and me ; 
 For I have nothing now on earth save thee 
 To which to look." (P.)
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 109 
 
 The Chorus themselves moved to tears implore 
 Ajax to listen to this touching appeal, and to forego 
 his deadly purpose. But Ajax, if he is touched at 
 all, is too proud to show it. If Tecmessa loves him, 
 let her bring his child Eurysaees, and Eurysaces is 
 brought. Then Ajax, taking the child upon his knee, 
 looks tenderly on him, as Hector looked on Astyanax, 
 so happily unconscious of his father's misery, and 
 scarcely heeding the carnage with which the ground 
 was strewed ; and then addressing the child as though 
 it could understand his words, he pictures it growing 
 up in careless innocence, " as a young plant," sheltered 
 from all rough winds under the guardianship of Teucer, 
 rejoicing its widowed mother's heart, and perhaps 
 hereafter (and the warrior's heart swells at the thought) 
 avenging his father's wrongs. " my child," he says, 
 almost in the words of ^Eneas to the young Ascanius, 
 
 " Learn of your father to be great, 
 Of others to be fortunate." * 
 
 Eurysaces, he concludes, shall inherit the famous 
 shield from which he takes his name : all his other 
 arms shall be buried in his own grave. Then, with a 
 hint that " sore wounds need sharp remedies," he bids 
 her take the child within and fasten the tent-doors. 
 Again Tecmessa implores him to relent "in the 
 name of the gods." " The gods ! " bitterly repeats 
 Ajax what duty or allegiance does he owe the gods, 
 who so plainly hate him 1 and once more he angrily 
 orders her to leave him to himself. 
 
 * Virgil, ^Eneid, xii. 435 (Comngton's Transl.)
 
 110 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 But Tecmessa still lingers finding it, perhaps, im- 
 possible to tear herself from the presence of one whom 
 she loves with all a woman's devoted affection and 
 she stays near the tent-door, clasping the hands of 
 Eurysaces.* Ajax does not look to see whether she has 
 obeyed him ; but, relapsing into profound melancholy, 
 covers his face in his hands. And so the three remain, 
 motionless as statues; while the Chorus, in their song, 
 contrast the peaceful happiness of the island-home which 
 they have left with the weary travail of the siege, and 
 the gloom and dishonour of their king. " Blessed art 
 thou," their chant begins, " glorious Salamis, where 
 thou liest by the beating waves, famous in the sight of 
 all for ever ; " and they deplore the fate which has 
 befallen so noble a warrior doomed to perish in his 
 prime, though sprung from a race in which " prince 
 after prince had lived out his span, and gone to the 
 grave full of years and honours." t 
 
 " Oh ! when the pride of Grsecia's noblest race 
 Wanders, as now, in darkness and disgrace, 
 
 When reason's day 
 Sets rayless joyless quenched in cold decay, 
 
 Better to die, and sleep 
 The never-waking sleep, than linger on, 
 And dare to live, when the soul's life is gone : 
 
 But thou shalt weep, 
 
 Thou wretched father, for thy dearest son, 
 Thy best beloved, by inward furies torn, 
 The deepest, bitterest curse, thine ancient house hath 
 borne!"! 
 
 * Bishop Thirlwall's view of the scene is here followed, 
 f Jebb's Ajax, p. 88. ? Praed's Poems, ii. 349.
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. Ill 
 
 Then Ajax comes forward again. His better nature 
 has been touched perhaps more by the allusions to 
 his beloved island than by any awakened tenderness 
 for Tecmessa. He addresses the Chorus, and there is 
 no necessity for supposing his speech to be spoken 
 with studied artifice : if there is artifice, it is the poet's 
 "irony." Or it may be that he "desires, half in pity 
 and half in scorn, to disguise from his listeners a pur- 
 pose too great for their sympathy."* But whatever 
 may have been the intention of the words, their pur- 
 port is that his heart has been melted within him: he 
 will atone for his rash deeds : he will purify himself 
 from the stain of blood, that so he may find rest for 
 his soul. 
 
 This famous farewell speech is worthy of being 
 given in full, and the following is Mr Calverley's 
 admirable translation : 
 
 " All strangest things the multitudinous years 
 Bring forth, and shadow from us all we know. 
 Falter alike great oath and steeled resolve ; 
 And none shall say of aught, ' This may not be.' 
 Lo ! I myself, but yesterday so strong 
 As new-dipt steel, am weak and all unsexed 
 By yonder woman : yea I mourn for them, 
 Widow and orphan, left amid their foes. 
 But I will journey seaward where the shore 
 Lies meadow-fringed so haply wash away 
 My sin, and flee that wrath that weighs me down, 
 And, lighting somewhere on an untrodden way, 
 I will bury this my sword, this hateful thing, 
 Deep in some earth-hole where no eye shall see 
 Night and hell keep it in the under- world ! 
 
 * Jebb's Ajax.
 
 112 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 For never to this day, since first I grasped 
 The gift that Hector gave, my bitterest foe, 
 Have I reaped aught of honour from the Greeks. 
 So true that byword in the mouths of men, 
 ' A foeman's gifts are no gifts, but a curse.' 
 
 Wherefore henceforward shall I know that God 
 Is great ; and strive to honour Atreus' sons. 
 Princes they are, and should be obeyed. How else ? 
 Do not all terrible and most puissant things 
 Yet bow to loftier majesties ? The Winter, 
 Who walks forth scattering snows, gives place anon 
 To fruitage-laden Summer ; and the orb 
 Of weary Night doth in her turn stand by, 
 And let shine out, with her white steeds, the Day : 
 Stern tempest-blasts at last sing lullaby 
 To groaning seas : even the arch-tyrant, Sleep, 
 Doth loose his slaves, not hold them chained for ever. 
 
 And shall not mankind, too, learn discipline ? 
 I know, of late experience taught, that him 
 Who is my foe I must but hate as one 
 Whom I may yet call friend : and him who loves me 
 Will I but serve and cherish as a man 
 Whose love is not abiding. Few be they 
 Who reaching friendship's port have there found rest. 
 
 But, for these things they shall be well. Go thou, 
 Lady, within, and there pray that the gods 
 May fill unto the full my heart's desire ; 
 And ye, my mates, do unto me with her 
 Like honour ; bid young Teucer, if he comes, 
 To care for me, but to be your friend still. 
 For where my way leads, thither must I go ; 
 Do ye my bidding ; haply ye may hear, 
 Though now is my dark hour, that I have peace." * 
 
 The Chorus are convinced that Ajax has shaken off 
 the sullen despair which, had brooded over his spirit, 
 * Verses and Translations, p. 177.
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 113 
 
 and give vent to their delight in a passionate burst 
 of joy, which must have been far more effective in 
 the original music of the ode than it can ever be in 
 an English translation, however gracefully rendered. 
 Once more they may see the " white glory of happy 
 days ; " and they call on Pan himself to lead their 
 dance of triumph. 
 
 " I thrill with eager delight, 
 And with passionate joy I leap ; 
 lo Pan! lo Pan! lo Pan! 
 Come over the waves from the height 
 Of the cliffs of Cyllene, where sweep 
 The storm-blasts of snow in their might ! 
 
 Come, come, O King, at the head 
 Of the dance of the Gods as they tread. 
 
 5 And over Icarian wave, 
 
 Coming with will to save, 
 May Delos' king, Apollo, gloriously advance ! 
 
 Yes, the dark sorrow and pain 
 
 Far from me Ares hath set ; 
 
 lo Pan ! lo Pan ! once more ; 
 
 And now, Zeus ! yet again 
 May our swift-sailing vessels be met 
 By the dawn with clear light in its train." (P.) 
 
 But hardly have these joyous strains died away, 
 when a messenger from the Greek camp enters, in- 
 quiring for Ajax. Teucer has just returned from the 
 foray, and has with difficulty made his way through 
 the crowd of soldiers, who assailed him with a storm 
 of insults and threats as " the madman's brother." 
 On his entering the council chamber, Calchas, the 
 
 A. c. vol. x. H
 
 114 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 seer, had drawn him aside, and earnestly warned him 
 to keep Ajax within doors till sunset. The wrath 
 of Minerva would last for the space of this one day, 
 which was destined to bring him death or life. But 
 the warning and the message have come too late. 
 Ajax has already gone forth, and the Chorus realising 
 the irony of his farewell speech to them hurriedly 
 summon Tecmessa, and disperse themselves to seek 
 their prince, and stay his hand while there may yet 
 be time. 
 
 For a moment the stage is vacant; then, by a 
 skilful appliance of machinery, the scene changes. 
 The sea still heaves in the distance; but, instead 
 of the tents of the Salaminian sailors, there is seen 
 the dark and lonely " grove by the shore," and near 
 it stands Ajax himself, looking steadfastly at his 
 sword, which is fixed point upwards with the hilt 
 buried in the earth. All things, he says, are ready 
 for the sacrifice. The sword that is to slay him 
 Hector's fatal gift, but his best friend now is ready 
 sharpened, and fixed where it may strike the surest 
 blow. Then he invokes the gods, with whom he 
 makes his peace by his blood. Let Zeus summon 
 Teucer by a " swift rumour," that he may protect his 
 body from the insults of his enemies; let Mercury 
 guide his soul to a home of rest, after it has parted 
 from his body "at one swift bound without a 
 struggle;" let the Furies avenge his wrongs, and 
 " spare not the Greek host, but lap their fill of slaugh- 
 ter." Then a softer spirit comes over him, and he bids 
 farewell to life not with the bitter and half-affected
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 115 
 
 disdain of Romeo and Hamlet, but affectionately 
 appealing to the bright daylight, and to Nature, with 
 all their pleasant memories of the past : 
 
 " And thou that mak'st high heaven thy chariot-course, 
 
 Sun, when gazing on my Fatherland, 
 Draw back thy golden rein, and tell my woes 
 To the old man my father, and to her 
 
 Who nursed me at her bosom my poor mother ! 
 There will be wailing through the echoing walls 
 When but away with thoughts like these ! the hour 
 Brings on the ripening deed. Death, death ! look on me 
 Did 1 say Death ? it was a waste of words ; 
 We shall be friends hereafter. 
 
 'Tis the DAY, 
 
 Present and breathing round me, and the car 
 Of the sweet sun, that never shall again 
 Eeceive my greeting ! henceforth time is sunless, 
 And day a thing that is not ! Beautiful Light,. 
 My Salamis my country and the floor 
 Of my dear household-hearth ; and thou, bright Athens, 
 Thou for thy sons and I were boys together 
 Fountains and rivers, and ye Trojan plains, 
 
 1 loved you as my fosterers fare ye well ! 
 
 Take in these words, the last earth hears from Ajax 
 
 All else unspoken ; in a spectre-land 
 
 I'll whisper to the Dead." (Lord Lytton.) 
 
 And we must remember, says a French critic, that 
 this appeal was made in a theatre with the blue 
 heaven for its canopy, and the mountains and sea for 
 its decorations. When he saluted for the last time 
 the sun and the sweet light of day, the real sun was 
 actually shedding a radiance on the features of the 
 dying hero, and the entranced faces of the audience.
 
 116 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Salamis, sacred land of my fathers !" cried Ajax, and 
 all the spectators could see Salamis and its glorious 
 gulf. There it lay, sparkling in the sunshine, in 
 the midst of the waves, which still murmur the name 
 of Themistocles ; there it lay, with all the memories 
 which its name and sight could recall to the Athenians. 
 " Fair and glorious Athens, sweet sister of my father- 
 land ! " again cried the hero ; and not only did he say 
 this in Athens, but Athens was all there centred 
 beneath his gaze.* 
 
 "With one last look at the sunlight, Ajax falls for- 
 wards on his sword, and his body lies concealed from 
 the audience by the underwood of the grove. The 
 Chorus enter hurriedly in two bands, right and left of 
 the stage. They have wearied themselves with a vain 
 search, far and wide, on the eastern and western sides 
 of the camp, but they have not found their prince ; 
 and they appeal to the " children of the sea " the 
 nymphs and naiads of the springs to aid their quest. 
 Suddenly a woman's cry is heard from the grove. It 
 is Tecmessa, who, searching nearer home, has just 
 stumbled on the body of Ajax, as it lies " with the life- 
 blood streaming from the nostrils ; " and they see her 
 covering it with her robe from the eyes of his friends. 
 
 Teucer enters in the midst of their grief, warned by 
 a mysterious rumour from some god of the death of 
 Ajax. He uncovers the body; and, gazing steadfastly 
 at it, he too bursts into a passionate lament. As the 
 sons of Jacob feared to return to their father without 
 
 * Translated from Girardin, Cours de Litterature Drarnat, 
 L29.
 
 TEE DEATH OF AJAX. 117 
 
 bringing Benjamin with them, so the foster-brother 
 shrinks from returning alone to Salamis and facing the 
 aged Telamon fierce even in his gentlest mood ; and he 
 foresees, what actually happened, that he will be driven, 
 like a slave and an outcast, from his doors. And then he 
 moralises over the fatality of an enemy's gifts, which 
 have brought death and dole to giver and receiver. 
 
 " Mark, by the gods, these hapless heroes' fate. 
 Bound by the very belt which Ajax gave 
 To the swift chariot, Hector breathed his last : 
 He too, possessing Hector's fatal gift, 
 By it hath perished with a mortal wound. 
 Did not some Fury forge that sword, and Death 
 A stern artificer that baldric weave ? 
 Such fates, I ween, the gods for man ordain ; 
 Yea, and all strange vicissitudes of life." (D.) 
 
 Here it seems as if the play should end ; but it is 
 carried on into another act. To an Athenian audi- 
 ence, Ajax was more than a hero of tragedy : he was 
 almost a tutelary god, the deified ancestor of one of 
 their noblest families, to which not only Miltiades, but 
 Alcibiades, and Thucydides the historian perhaps ac- 
 tual spectators of the play all belonged. Divine hon- 
 ours were paid to his tomb ; and a yearly festival was 
 held in his memory at Salamis, His burial, therefore, 
 even on the stage, had almost the sanctity of a religious 
 rite; and Menelaus and his brother (as types of Argos 
 and Sparta, the national enemies of Athens) appropri- 
 ately " fill the posts of ' Devil's Advocates ' at this 
 process of canonisation."* 
 
 * Bishop Thirlwall.
 
 118 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Just as Teucer is about to remove the body in order 
 to prepare it for burial, Menelaus, accompanied by a 
 herald, appears, and haughtily bids him leave the 
 corpse as it lies upon the sand. "There," he says, "it 
 shall remain, food for the birds that haunt the shore ; 
 for in his lifetime Ajax had been a worse foe to the 
 Greeks than all the Trojans." Then follows an angry- 
 dialogue, in which the speakers, with Homeric rough- 
 ness, exchange all degrees of insult, from the " reply 
 churlish " to the " lie direct." Teucer is a fearless 
 champion of the dead, and cares nothing for the rank 
 of his opponent or for the consequences to himself. 
 " Come, therefore," he replies, in a spirit as haughty 
 as the Spartan's, 
 
 " Come, therefore, bring with thee a host of heralds ; 
 Yea, bring the King of men himself. I care not 
 For all thy stir, while thou art what thou art." 
 
 Menelaus, accordingly, goes to summon his brother 
 Agamemnon ; and Teucer calls Tecmessa and Eury- 
 saces to watch the body while he prepares the grave. 
 Then he bids the young child sit as a suppliant, with 
 one hand on the corpse, and holding in the other a lock 
 of his father's hair. 
 
 " And should one 
 
 In all our army tear thee from the dead, 
 May he thus bare, unburied, basely die, 
 An exile from his home, with all his race 
 As utterly cut off, as I now cut 
 This braided lock." (P.) 
 
 The Chorus deplore the weary length of the siege, and 
 curse the memory of him who first taught war to the
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 119 
 
 Greeks, and thereby cut them off from all the joys of 
 life "garlands, and trimming wine -cups, and the 
 flute's sweet music, and sleep, and love." 
 
 " Yes, he from love and all its joy 
 
 Has cut me off, ah me ! ah me ! 
 And here I linger still in Troy, 
 
 By all uncared for, sad to see. 
 Till now, from every fear by night, 
 
 And bulwark against darts of foe, 
 Ajax stood forward in his might, 
 
 But now the stern god lays him low. 
 
 Ah ! would that I my flight could take 
 Where o'er the sea the dark crags frown, 
 
 And on the rocks the wild waves break, 
 And woods the height of Sunium crown, 
 
 That so we might with welcome bless 
 
 Great Athens and her holiness { " (P.) 
 
 Teucer enters again, and at the same moment there 
 is seen approaching from the Greek camp a tall chief- 
 tain of stately bearing, in resplendent armour. It is 
 " the King of men, the commander of the host," Aga- 
 memnon himself. He addresses Teucer with studied 
 insolence, affecting not even to understand his "bar- 
 barous tongue." " Does the son of the bondmaid,"* he 
 asks, "presume to set himself up as champion of a 
 hero no whit better than his fellow-captains? Let 
 him bring a free-born Greek to plead his cause." 
 Teucer replies half in anger, half in sorrow, that the 
 valour and the good services of Ajax should so soon 
 have faded from men's remembrance. He apostrophises 
 
 * Teucer was the son of Telamon by a captive princess.
 
 120 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 the dead before he will even condescend to notice the 
 taunt of the living. 
 
 " Alas ! how swiftly doth man's gratitude 
 Turn traitor to the memory of the dead ! 
 Lo, hath this prince not even one little word 
 Of thought for thee, O Ajax, who didst oft 
 In his behalf aforetime gage thy life ? " * 
 
 Then he turns indignantly to the great king "What, 
 does he not remember 1 It was Ajax who had saved 
 the ships from destruction, when wrapped in flames. It 
 was Ajax who had confronted Hector himself and the 
 ' son of the bondmaid ' had then stood by his brother's 
 side." Then he retorts the charge of mean descent on 
 Agamemnon sprung from the " godless Atreus," and 
 from a mother who played her husband false. He will 
 die himself sooner than desert the dead and it would 
 be more glorious, he adds, to die for his gallant foster- 
 brother than for Helen, the faithless wife. 
 
 At this point Ulysses enters, and acts as peacemaker 
 between the angry disputants. His shrewd sense had 
 argued that nothing could be gained by outraging the 
 body of the dead warrior; and he appeals to Agamemnon 
 not to press his hatred beyond the grave basing his 
 appeal upon common humanity and reason 
 
 " Unto me 
 
 This man of all the host was greatest foe, 
 Since I prevailed to gain Achilles' arms ; 
 
 * " But yesterday the name of Caesar might 
 
 Have stood against the world : now lies he there, 
 And none so poor to do him reverence." 
 
 Julius Csesar, act iii. sc. 2.
 
 THE DEATH OF AJAX. 121 
 
 But though he were so, being what he was, 
 I would not put so foul a shame on him, 
 As not to own I looked upon a man 
 The best and bravest of the Argive host, 
 Of all that came to Troia, saving one, 
 Achilles' self. Most wrong 'twould therefore be 
 That he should suffer outrage at thy hands ; 
 Thou wouldst not trample upon him alone, 
 But on the laws of God." (P.) 
 
 Agamemnon reluctantly gives way, and leaves the 
 scene. Then Ulysses, turning to Teucer, offers him his 
 hand in friendship, with a generosity which is in strong 
 contrast to the bitter insolence of the son of Atreus ; 
 he offers also to assist in paying the last honours to the 
 noble dead. But this Teucer cannot allow, "lest it 
 displease the dead himself;" and so Ulysses departs, 
 having, so far as he could, made his peace with the 
 manes of his ancient enemy. 
 
 Ulysses and Ajax met once more so says the 
 Homeric legend in the lower world. While all the 
 other heroes, in " the asphodel meadow," press forward 
 to greet their old comrade in arms who has come to 
 visit them in the flesh, the shade of Ajax stands aloof 
 from all the others, brooding over the injuries of his 
 lifetime, and sullenly turns away from the proffered 
 courtesy of his rival. 
 
 Teucer returned to Salamis, taking with him Tec- 
 messa and Eurysaces ; but, as he had foreseen, Telamon 
 received him with angry reproaches for allowing Ajax 
 to perish. Then Teucer set sail for Cyprus, and there 
 he founded a city which he called Salamis, after his
 
 122 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 old home. Horace describes his farewell banquet, and 
 his spirited address to the companions of his voyage : 
 
 "Where fortune bears us, than my sire more kind, 
 
 There let us go, my own, my gallant crew : 
 'Tis Teucer leads, 'tis Teucer breathes the wind ; 
 
 No more despair ; Apollo's word is true. 
 Another Salamis in kindlier air 
 
 Shall yet arise. Hearts, that have borne with me 
 Worse buffets ! drown, to-day, in wine your care ; 
 
 To-morrow we recross the wide, wide sea ! " * 
 
 * Odes, I. 7 (Conington's Transl.)
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 THE MAIDENS OP TRACHIS. 
 
 THIS play, like many of the Greek tragedies, takes 
 its name not from the plot or the hero, but from 
 the personages of the Chorus that very important 
 element in the Greek drama. The vague title tells 
 nothing to an English reader, but every Athenian 
 knew, at least by name, the little Thessalian town of 
 Trachis, nestling at the foot of Mount (Eta, not far 
 from the famous pass of Thermopylae ; and many, like 
 Plutarch, had visited the spot, and seen for themselves 
 what tradition had consecrated as the tomb of De- 
 janira. But what, after all, mattered to them the title 
 of the play, even if Trachis had been as distant as 
 Babylon, when its subject was perhaps the best-known 
 story in all mythology ? 
 
 Hercules in his wanderings had come to Pleuron in 
 ^Etolia. There he saw and fell in love with Dejanira, 
 the king's daughter, whose hand was sought by a 
 suitor of a strange sort the river-god Achelous. This 
 potent rival had, as she tells us, wooed her in various 
 shapes (none of them, it must be confessed, attractive),
 
 124 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 now coming as a bull, now as a scaly dragon, now 
 in human form, with a bull's head, "with streams 
 of water flowing from his shaggy beard." Hercules 
 wrestled with Achelous, while the maiden looked on 
 at a prudent distance ; and the river-god, after being 
 nearly strangled and losing one of his horns, gave way, 
 and the victor bore away his bride in triumph. On 
 their way homewards they came to the river Evenus, 
 where the centaur Nessus dwelt, who was wont to 
 carry travellers across. Hercules himself breasted the 
 stream, and reached the further bank in safety, carry- 
 ing his lion's skin, his bow, and the famous arrows 
 which had been dipped in the poison of the hydra. 
 Hearing a cry, he looked back, and saw Nessus offer- 
 ing violence to Dejanira, as he was bearing her across. 
 Ovid who has told the whole story describes the 
 prompt vengeance of the hero, as the centaur tries to 
 fly. " Think not, thou," exclaims Hercules 
 
 " ' With all the speed of all thy hoofs to 'scape ! 
 My wounds are swifter than my feet ! ' The act 
 Followed the word, and through his flying back 
 Impelled before his breast the barb outstood. 
 And as he plucked it thence, from either wound 
 Mingled with Lerna's venom gushed the blood, 
 And steeped his mantle's fold. ' Not unavenged,' 
 He muttered, ' will I perish ! ' and to her 
 He would have ravished gave the robe, yet warm 
 With poisoned gore, and bade her with that gift 
 At need assure her husband's wavering love." * 
 
 Dejanira herself comes forward, and, as the single 
 actor was wont to do in the earlier drama, tells the 
 * Ovid's Metam. ix. ii. (transl. by King.)
 
 THE MAIDENS OF TRACHIS. 125 
 
 audience the history of her troubles. All these years 
 of her married life, though her husband has treated her 
 kindly, and children have been born to her, she has 
 known little peace of mind. Hercules was constantly 
 absent, fulfilling the labours imposed on him by Eurys- 
 theus. He was seldom at Trachis, and saw his chil- 
 dren as rarely as "the husbandman who visits his 
 distant fields at seed-time and at harvest." For fif- 
 teen months he has now been away from home, and 
 his wife is sorely troubled at heart ; for on his last 
 departure he had made disposition of his wealth, and 
 left with her a tablet, on which was engraved an 
 oracle to the effect that the next year would be the 
 crisis of his life bringing him either death or rest 
 from all his toils. But month after month has passed, 
 and still Dejanira has heard nothing of her husband, 
 and she fears the worst. 
 
 Then her eldest son Hyllus enters, and bids his 
 mother be of good cheer, for Hercules is even now 
 close at hand, in the island of Eubcea, which could 
 almost be seen from. Trachis. There, as rumour said, 
 he was making war on the town of Eurytus; and 
 there, at the suggestion of Dejanira, Hyllus sets out, 
 like Telemachus, to obtain more certain tidings of his 
 father. 
 
 The Chorus enter young girls from the town of 
 Trachis ; and in their opening song they endeavour to 
 console and reassure their neighbour with warm sym- 
 pathy. They beseech the Sun-god to tell them where 
 the hero is at that moment.
 
 126 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Thou flaming Sun ! whom spangled Night, 
 Self -destroying, brings to light, 
 
 Then lulls to sleep again ; 
 Bright Herald, girt with beaming rays, 
 Say, where Alcmena's offspring strays ; 
 
 Say, lurks he on the main ? 
 Or lays his head to rest 
 On Europe or on Asia's breast ? 
 
 In pity deign reply, 
 
 Thou of the lordly eye ! 
 
 His bride, erst won by desperate fray, 
 Muses where lies his dangerous way j 
 Like some sad bird, her soul is set 
 On constancy and vain regret ; 
 Sleep never seals those eyes, where woe 
 Lies all too deep for tears to flow, 
 While thought and boding Fancy^s dread 
 Flit ever round her lonely bed. 
 
 Oft when the northern blast, 
 Or southern winds unwearied rave, 
 
 Ye see the ocean cast 
 In quick succession wave on wave ; 
 So to whelm old Cadmus' son, 
 Rush redoubled labours on, 
 Thick as round the Cretan shore 
 The swoln and turbid billows roar : 
 Yet his step from Pluto's halls 
 Still some unerring God recalls. 
 My Queen ! disdain not thou to brook 
 My chidings kind, and soft rebuke, 
 Nor cast away, in morbid mood, 
 The cheering hope of future good. 
 For universal nature's lord, 
 Saturn's great son, by all adored,
 
 THE MAIDENS OF TRACHIS. 127 
 
 Enjoyment willed not to bestow- 
 On human lot, unmixed with woe : 
 Grief and delight, in endless change, 
 Eound man in mazy circles range, 
 Like never-setting stars, that roll 
 In ceaseless courses round the pole. 
 Soon spangled night must yield to day, 
 Soon wealth, soon trouble flits away ; 
 In turn, so fixed the eternal plan, 
 Bliss and bereavement wait on man. 
 My Queen ! on hope thy soul be stayed, 
 
 Nor yield thee to despair ; 
 When hath not Jove his children made 
 
 His providential care ? " (A.) 
 
 But Dejanira, though she appreciates their kindness, 
 is but half-convinced by the words of the Chorus. 
 They are but young girls, she says, and know little 
 of the sad experiences of a wife and mother. Night 
 after night she has started up in an agony of terror, 
 lest she should be bereaved of the " noblest man on 
 earth;" and that mysterious tablet causes her grave 
 misgivings. 
 
 Suddenly comes a messenger with good news. Her- 
 cules is not only alive, but is on the point of returning 
 home after victory, and has sent his herald Lichas with 
 the captives on before him. Then Lichas himself 
 enters, and behind him follow a train of women, the 
 unfortunate prizes of the war. Dejanira turns eagerly 
 to the herald. " Tell me," she asks, " dearest of 
 messengers, what I most wish to know, shall I re- 
 ceive Hercules again alive ? " " Yes," is the answer ; 
 " I left him alive and strong, and smitten of no
 
 128 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 disease." Dejanira is made happy by the answer 
 so happy, that she fears some fresh disaster. She can- 
 not help contrasting her own joy with the forlorn and 
 helpless state of these captive women. Heaven grant, 
 is her prayer, such sorrow may never come on her or 
 hers ! 
 
 Then her attention is caught by one of the captives 
 standing somewhat apart from the others, and a 
 woman's instinct impels her to ask of Lichas the name 
 and history of this pale and graceful stranger 
 
 " For, more than all, my own heart pities her, 
 And, more than all, her soul is quick to feel." (P.) 
 
 But Lichas professes ignorance. He knows nothing of 
 this maiden, except that she has done nothing but weep 
 and wring her hands ever since she left her home on 
 the " windy heights " of CEchalia ; and she has been 
 possessed by a dumb spirit, and will answer no 
 questions. And then he leads his retinue off the 
 stage. 
 
 Then the same old messenger who had preceded the 
 herald enters again. He is, as M. Girardin terms him, 
 an " indiscreet lago," * whose meddlesome loquacity 
 produces graver mischief than the machinations of a 
 hardened villain. "With a mysterious and important 
 air he begs an audience; he tells his mistress that 
 Lichas has deceived her ; that this fair and grace- 
 ful maiden is none other than lole, the daughter of 
 Eurytus ; and that it was love of her which had im- 
 
 * Cours de Litt. Dramat., v. 255.
 
 THE MAIDENS OF TRACH1S. 129 
 
 pelled Hercules to attack and storm CEchalia. Such 
 is the whole truth, concludes this ancient mischief- 
 maker, which it has been his painful duty to tell at 
 all costs. 
 
 Lichas now comes to ask his mistress if she has any 
 parting message for Hercules ; and Dejanira confronts 
 him with his falsehood. He protests and denies, and 
 repeats his former story. Then Dejanira, with a 
 woman's duplicity, bids him speak out and fear no- 
 thing. She knows the ways of men she knows the 
 power of love she knows the amorous temper of her 
 husband : 
 
 " Has he not, 
 
 Our Hercules, of all the men that lived, 
 Wedded most wives, and yet not one of them. 
 Has had from me or evil speech or taunt ? 
 Nor will she have ; though she in love for him 
 Should melt and pine for lo ! I pitied her 
 "When first I saw her, for her beauty's sake : 
 For it, I knew, had wrecked her life's fond hope, 
 And she, poor soul, against her will, had wrought 
 The ruin of her fatherland, and brought 
 Its people into bondage. Let all this 
 Go to the winds. For thee, I bid thee, I, 
 Be false to others, but to me be true." (P.) 
 
 Lichas is completely deceived by this speech, and is 
 persuaded that Dejanira will resign herself quietly to 
 her fate. Accordingly he confirms what the messenger 
 had already told her; but, like a good servant, he 
 makes out the best case he can for his master. 
 
 " Well then, dear mistress, since I see that thou, 
 Being human, hast a human heart, and knoVst 
 A. c. vol. x. I
 
 130 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 No stubborn purpose, I will tell thee all, 
 
 The whole truth, nought concealing. All is so 
 
 As this man tells thee. Strong desire for her 
 
 Did seize on Heracles, and so her land, 
 
 CEchalia, was laid waste by armed host, 
 
 And brought full low. And this (for I must tell 
 
 His doings also) he nor bade conceal 
 
 Nor yet denied ; but I myself, dear lady, 
 
 Fearing to grieve thy heart with these my words, 
 
 Did sin, if thou dost count it as a sin. 
 
 And now, since thou dost know the whole of things 
 
 For his sake and for thine, full equally 
 
 Treat the girl kindly, and those words of thine 
 
 Thou saidst of her, be firm and true to them ; 
 
 For he whose might prevails in all things else, 1 
 
 In all is conquered by his love for her." (P.) 
 
 Then he takes his leave. Dejanira bethinks herself 
 of some means by which she may recall the waning 
 affections of her husband, and she remembers that she 
 has still preserved the blood which had flowed from 
 the wound of N/essus, but has never yet used it, though 
 the Centaur had assured her it would prove a resistless 
 love-charm. After taking counsel with the Chorus, 
 -,vho advise her to make experiment before putting her 
 project into action, she smears an embroidered robe 
 with the blood, and intrusts it to Lichas, with strict 
 charge that none should wear it before Hercules him- 
 self: 
 
 " Nor must the light of sunshine look on it, 
 Nor sacred shrine, nor flame of altar hearth, 
 Before he stands, conspicuous, showing it 
 On day of sacrifice, in sight of gods. 
 For so I vowed, if I should see him safe
 
 THE MAIDENS OF TRACHIS. 131 
 
 At home, or hear his safety well assured, 
 To clothe him with this tunic, and send forth 
 The glorious worshipper in glorious robe." (P.) 
 
 But hardly has Lichas departed, carrying with him 
 the fatal gift, than Dejanira enters again in an agony 
 of alarm. She had, according to the Centaur's instruc- 
 tions, kept the blood in a bronze vessel " untouched 
 by fire or sunlight " even when she smeared it on 
 the robe, it had been in a dark chamber within the 
 house ; but she had thrown the wisp of wool which 
 she had used for the purpose on the ground in the 
 sunshine. There it had melted and crumbled into 
 dust in a strange fashion 
 
 " And from the earth where it had lain, there oozed 
 Thick clots of foam, as when in vintage bright 
 Eich must is poured upon the earth from vine 
 Sacred to Bacchus ; and I know not now 
 Which way of thought to turn, but see too well 
 That I have done a deed most perilous." (P.) 
 
 Why, she reasons, should the Centaur have wished her 
 well 1 No the philtre must have been given with 
 a purpose, and her husband will die of that "black 
 poison " in which his own arrows have been steeped. 
 
 And at that moment Hyllus rushes in, and charges 
 her with being his father's murderess. He has just 
 come from witnessing the agony which had convulsed 
 Hercules in the midst of his triumphal sacrifice to 
 Jove. The blaze of fire from, the altar had excited the 
 latent and deadly power of the venom in which the 
 robe had been steeped ; maddened with pain, the hero 
 had seized on Lichas, the unlucky bringer of the pre-
 
 132 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 sent, and had dashed his brains out against the rocks ; 
 then he had burst away from his attendants, and 
 Ovid gives even a more vivid picture of the giant's 
 sufferings than Sophocles 
 
 " And filled all leafy (Eta with his groans, 
 Striving to rend away the deadly robe 
 That with it rent the skin, and horribly 
 Or to his limbs inseparably glued 
 Refused to part, or, as it parted, bare 
 From the big bones the quivering muscle tore ! 
 And in that poisonous heat his very blood, 
 Like white-hot steel in cooling water plunged, 
 Seethed hissing in his veins ; the greedy fire 
 Devoured his inmost vitals ; audible snapped 
 The crackling sinews ; and from every limb 
 The lurking venom broke in livid sweat, 
 And sucked the melting marrow from his bones." * 
 
 Then Hyllus, in compliance with his prayer, had 
 placed him in a ship, and he was even now on his 
 way to Trachis. But may all the curses of the gods 
 fall on his mother's head, he concludes, for 
 
 " Murdering the noblest man of all the earth, 
 Of whom thou ne'er shalt see the like again." 
 
 Dejanira had listened in silence, both to the tale of 
 her husband's agony, and to the cruel reproaches of 
 her son. All her happiness had been bound up with 
 the wellbeing of Hercules. She had loved him with 
 devoted affection, in spite of his long absences and 
 his countless amours ; and now by her own thought- 
 less act she has destroyed this idol of her heart, and 
 
 * Ovid, Metam. ix. iii. (King.)
 
 THE MAIDENS OF TRACE IS. 133 
 
 has plunged the man whom she so faithfully loved into 
 bodily torment such as she could not have devised 
 even for her bitterest enemy. She is powerless to 
 avert or to heal the sufferings which she has so un- 
 wittingly inflicted ; and the voice of conscience within 
 tells her that she can give but one real proof of her 
 affection. It is the resolve which forms the refrain in 
 the pathetic epistle which Ovid imagines her to have 
 written to her husband 
 
 " Impia, quid dubitas, Deianira, mori ? " * 
 
 And so, without answering her son, she leaves the 
 stage, and soon her nurse comes to tell the maidens 
 that all is over. After wandering restlessly from room 
 to room, mourning for the evil fate which had come 
 upon her, she had thrown herself upon the bed of 
 Hercules, and there ended her sorrow by a mortal 
 wound from his sword ; and then Hyllus, learning her 
 innocence too late, had embraced the insensate body, 
 with idle tears and kisses. 
 
 As the Chorus are lamenting her cruel death, the 
 tramp of approaching steps is heard, and Hyllus and 
 some attendants are seen carrying a litter, on which 
 the huge frame of Hercules lies stretched. The convul- 
 sive pains which had so cruelly tortured him are lulled 
 for the moment, and he is plunged in a death-like 
 stupor ; but he is roused by his son's voice, and with 
 consciousness his agony revives, and he groans aloud 
 in his despair. "Will none, he asks, smite him with the 
 
 * " Why, guilty Dejanira, why not die I"
 
 134 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 sword, and give him the death he longs for 1 Then his 
 thoughts turn to her who has wrought these sufferings, 
 and it angers him to think that the gigantic strength, 
 which, Samson-like, had overcome all forms of death, 
 and had tamed even the lion in his wrath, should have 
 fallen victim to the snares of a Delilah 
 
 " For she a woman, woman-like in mind, 
 Not of man's strength, alone, without a sword, 
 
 She hath destroyed me 
 
 Come, my son, be bold, 
 
 And pity me, in all ways pitiable, 
 Who like a girl must weep and shriek in pain ; 
 And yet lives there not one, who, ere it came, 
 Could say that he had seen this man thus act, 
 But ever I bore pain without a groan." (P.) 
 
 Let Hyllus, therefore, if he loves him, bring this false 
 woman near him, that he may slay her before he dies 
 himself. 
 
 Then Hyllus tells him of the fatal mistake of De- 
 janira, and how fatally the mistake had been atoned. 
 When Hercules hears that the robe had been dipped 
 in the Centaur's blood, he recognises the will of the 
 gods, and bows to his fate. It had been foretold to 
 him long before, that, like Macbeth, he should die by 
 the hand of " none of woman born " 
 
 " And thus the centaur monster, as was shown, 
 Though dead did slay me, who till now did live." 
 
 This knowledge seems to teach him resignation. He 
 utters no more groans or cries of anguish, but conjures 
 Hyllus to bear his body to the top of CEta, and there
 
 THE MAIDENS OF TRACHIS. 135 
 
 to place it on a pile of wood, and kindle the flames 
 
 himself : 
 
 " Let no tear 
 
 Of wailing enter in, but do thy deed, 
 If thou art mine, without a tear or groan ; 
 Or else, though I be in the grave, my curse 
 Shall rest upon thee grievous evermore." (P.) 
 
 One more demand he makes (according to our ideas, 
 a revolting request) Hyllus must take lole to wife. 
 The son, after much reluctance, promises obedience ; 
 and so the drama ends. Ovid tells us how one of 
 these commands was obeyed how the pile was reared ; 
 how calm, " as though at a banquet," the hero spread 
 his lion's skin over it and reclined thereon ; how the 
 roaring flames rose upwards and around him 
 
 " And as some serpent casts his wrinkled skin 
 Rejuvenate, and with new burnished scales 
 Delighted basks, so, of these mortal limbs 
 Untrammelled, all the Hero's nobler part 
 In nobler shape and loftier stature rose 
 Renewed, august, majestic, like a God ! 
 Whom with those four immortal steeds that whirl 
 His chariot-wheels, the Sire omnipotent 
 Upbore sublime above the hollow clouds, 
 And set amid the radiant stars of Heaven." * 
 
 * Ovid, Metam. ix. iv. (King.)
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 PHILOCTETES. 
 
 ALL that was mortal of Hercules, as we have seen, 
 perished in the flames on Mount (Eta ; but his famous 
 "bow and the arrows with the hydra's blood were 
 not burnt with the hero. Philoctetes, his armour- 
 bearer, had been among the few who had aided Hyllus 
 in carrying his father up the steep sides of the moun- 
 tain ; he had gathered the wood for the funeral-pile ; 
 and it was said that he had with his own hands 
 applied the torch and kindled the flames. In grati- 
 tude for these last offices, Hercules had given him the 
 bow and the poisoned arrows ; which proved a posses- 
 sion almost as full of trouble to their new owner as 
 they had to the hero himself. 
 
 Philoctetes had sailed for Troy with the rest of the 
 armament ; but on the voyage it happened that the 
 Greek fleet touched at Chrysa, and there, while rashly 
 treading on consecrated ground, he had been bitten in 
 the foot by a venomous serpent. The wound gangrened 
 and festered and so noisome was the stench from it, 
 and so terrible were the sufferer's cries of agony, that,
 
 PHILOCTETES. 137 
 
 "by the advice of Ulysses, he was landed while asleep on 
 the desert isle of Lemnos, and there left alone in his 
 misery. 
 
 It is at Lemnos, accordingly, that the scene of this 
 tragedy is laid. Instead of the usual palace or ances- 
 tral mansion in the background with the city on one 
 side and the open country on the other the spectators 
 have nothing before them but rocks and waves ; and 
 these for nine weary years had been the sole compan- 
 ions of Philoctetes.* From time to time some stray 
 ship had come, and the sailors had so far pitied him as 
 to give him some scanty supplies of food and clothing ; 
 but none would listen to his prayers that they would 
 carry him home with them to Greece. And so he had 
 lingered on, tortured by his rankling wound, satisfy- 
 ing his hunger with the birds that he brought down 
 with his bow, and with difficulty dragging his limbs 
 to the spring to quench his thirst. 
 
 Meanwhile Troy was still being besieged, though 
 many of the great heroes of the war had met their 
 
 * "We may compare a similar passage in Tennyson's Enoch 
 Arden, p. 32, 
 
 " The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 
 And winding glade high up like ways to heaven, 
 The glories of the broad belt of the world, 
 All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen 
 He could not see, the kindly human face, 
 Nor ever heard a kindly voice, but heard 
 The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 
 The league-long roller thundering on the reef, 
 As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 
 Sat often- in the seaward-gazing gorge, 
 A shipwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail."
 
 138 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 deaths around its walls. Hector had fallen by the 
 sword of Achilles. Achilles himself had been struck 
 with an arrow from the bow of Paris, guided by his 
 enemy the Sun-god. Ajax, as we have seen, had 
 slain himself in his despair. But the surviving chief- 
 tains maintained the war with the same obstinacy as 
 before ; and recently a new aspect had been given to 
 the struggle. They had captured Helenus, son of 
 Priam, endowed like Cassandra with the gift of pro- 
 phecy; and from him they learned that an oracle had 
 disclosed that Troy should never be taken but by the 
 son of Achilles and with the bow of Hercules. 
 
 Accordingly, when the play opens, a Greek vessel 
 has just reached Lemnos, bearing a deputation from the 
 camp, to fetch Philoctetes and his fated arrows. At 
 last in their own need the Greeks have bethought them 
 of the comrade whom they had so cruelly deserted. 
 And it is Ulysses, of all men, Ulysses, by whose ad- 
 vice the unhappy man had been left behind, who 
 now comes to induce him by persuasion if possible, 
 by force if need be to give the allies the aid of his 
 weapons. Such an ambassador on such an errand 
 would have seemed of all men the least likely to succeed. 
 Sophocles probably did but take this part of the tale 
 as he found it ; and loyalty to the epic tradition, that 
 no enterprise which required diplomacy, eloquence, or 
 subtle device, could possibly be undertaken by the 
 Greeks without the aid of " the man of many wiles," 
 led the story-tellers, and Sophocles after them, to make 
 him the envoy on this as on similar occasions. With 
 him, however, is a comrade of a very different charac- 

 
 PHILOCTETES. 139 
 
 ter. This is the young Neoptolemus (better known to 
 us, perhaps, by his surname of Pyrrhus " the Red "), 
 son of the dead Achilles. The poet's reasons for thus 
 associating him with Ulysses (for here the dramatist 
 takes original ground of his own) are sufficiently clear. 
 The young chief was wholly guiltless of any compli- 
 city in the injury done to the hero by the older Greeks 
 in deserting him ; for he was then a boy in Phthiotis, 
 far from the scene of action. Neoptolemus, too, has 
 a special interest in procuring the charmed weapons, 
 for it is to him the Fates point as the hero who is to 
 win the town of Troy. 
 
 The two voyagers have landed, and they commence 
 the dialogue of the piece. Ulysses knows the locali- 
 ties well. The cave with double entrance, with the 
 fountain close at hand it was here that, so many years 
 ago, they had left their wretched comrade asleep. He 
 bids Neoptolemus advance along the rocks and explore 
 the neighbourhood, and look cautiously into the cavern, 
 to ascertain whether he whom they seek lies within. 
 He keeps himself in the background, for to be dis- 
 covered by Philoctetes would be ruin to his plan. The 
 younger chief easily finds the place the bed of leaves, 
 the wooden drinking-vessel, the few rags for dressing 
 the wounded foot such is the poor wealth of the oc- 
 cupant ; but he is not within. Ulysses, then, after 
 setting one of the crew to watch, discloses to his young 
 companion very conveniently for the audience the 
 plan which he wishes him to pursue in order to get 
 Philoctetes and his arrows on board their vessel. If the 
 too prosaic and curious reader should remark that this
 
 HO SOPHOCLES. 
 
 disclosure comes very late, when there had been such 
 ample time during the voyage for Ulysses to explain 
 his whole design, it may be very fairly answered, that the 
 wily Greek was aware that there was much in it which 
 was sure to disgust the young chiefs ingenuous nature, as 
 it presently does ; and that he was anxious not to enter 
 into these awkward details until the last moment, when 
 it would be almost too late for the other to draw back. 
 The plan is this : Ulysses himself is to keep out of 
 sight entirely, for him to show his face on the island 
 would be quite enough to determine the sufferer never 
 to set foot on board the same vessel as his enemy, and 
 probably to make them both a mark for his terrible 
 arrows. Neoptolemus is to approach him, with a very 
 plausible tale ; how the Greeks, after bringing him to 
 Troy, had refused to give him the arms of his father 
 Achilles, awarding them instead to Ulysses, upon 
 whose name he receives full permission to shower 
 every term of scorn and reproach. Ulysses will take 
 it rather as a compliment, under the circumstances, 
 that he should do so. He is to add that, stung by 
 this insult, he had left the fleet, and is now on his voy- 
 age homewards, and to offer Philoctetes a safe passage 
 to his own country. 
 
 The younger chief at first repudiates utterly any such 
 falsehood and treachery : 
 
 " The thing which even in word I loathe to hear, 
 Son of Laertes, that I scorn to do. 
 My nature was not made for crooked guile ; 
 Nor mine, nor, as men say, his that begot me. 
 I am content to take the man by force,
 
 PHILOCTETES. 141 
 
 So not by treachery ; for his single strength 
 Were scarce a match, I trow, for all our crew. 
 Still, having shared thine errand, I were loath 
 , To seem a recreant now ; yet would I rather 
 Fail through fair deeds than win a foul success." 
 
 The reader wants little more to put him in posses- 
 sion of the character of Xeoptolemus. Gallant and 
 impetuous, open and chivalrous, he is the true son of 
 the ideal knight of Greek romance, the great Achilles, 
 who had declared, in Homer's words which we can 
 see, from the brief passing allusion, were in the mind 
 of the dramatist, as he knew they surely would be in 
 those of his audience 
 
 " Who dares think one thing and another tell, 
 My heart detests him as the gates of hell." * 
 
 Not so Ulysses. The crafty man of the world sneers 
 at the youthful enthusiast for honesty and straightfor- 
 wardness. Such things are very well in their time 
 and place. He himself had tried them : 
 
 " Son of a gallant sire, I was young once, 
 And used my tongue not much, my hand full promptly ; 
 But now, schooled by experience, I can see 
 That in all mortal dealings 'tis the tongue 
 And not the hand that wins the mastery." 
 
 After a brief parley, the plausible counsels of 
 Ulysses prevail over the better feelings of his com- 
 rade. The argument which the latter cannot resist is, 
 that without these arrows of Hercules he will lose the 
 
 * Iliad, ix. 312 Pope's translation, which even Mr Glad- 
 stone pronounces "not quite unworthy" of the original.
 
 142 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 glory of taking Troy. So Ulysses leaves the stage, 
 commending his young friend with a calculating 
 piety which unhappily is not peculiar to pagan dra- 
 matists to the care of the goddess of Wisdom, his 
 own special protectress, and to Hermes, the god of 
 guile. The piety of Ulysses (for he was pious after 
 his own fashion) breathes the spirit of the famous 
 prayer in the ' Critic,' 
 
 " Grant us to accomplish all our ends, 
 And sanctify whatever means we use 
 To gain them." 
 
 The Chorus, who now take up the action, are com- 
 posed in this play of the crew of Nebptolemus's vessel, 
 and appear, from their reminiscences, to be some of the 
 veteran " Myrmidons " who had served at Troy under 
 his father Achilles. They proceed, by the young 
 chief's permission, to explore the island ; keeping a 
 careful watch, however, lest its solitary inhabitant 
 should suddenly surprise them, and launch against 
 such intruders his poisoned shafts. Neoptolemus 
 shows them the opening in the rock which leads to 
 the cavern, but tells them that the sufferer is not now 
 within. They soon hear the cry of one in pain ; as 
 they listen, the sound comes nearer, and, dragging his 
 steps painfully along the rocky pathway, Philoctetes 
 makes his appearance. He hails the strangers, and 
 inquires their country and their errand : 
 
 " Your outward guise and dress of Hellas speak, 
 To me most dear, and yet I fain would hear 
 Your speech ; and draw not back from me in dread, 
 As fearing this my wild and savage look,
 
 PHILOCTETES. 143 
 
 But pity one unhappy, left alone, 
 
 Thus helpless, friendless, worn with weary ills : 
 
 Speak, if it be ye come to me as friends. 
 
 Neop. Know this then first, O stranger, that we come 
 Of Hellas all ; for this thou seek'st to know. 
 
 Phil. O dear-loved sound .' Ah me ! what joy it is 
 After long years to hear a voice like thine ! 
 What led thee hither, what need brought thee here ? 
 Whither thy voyage, what blest wind bore thee on 1 
 Tell all, that I may know thee who thou art 
 
 Neop. By birth I come from sea-girt Skyros' isle, 
 And 1 sail homeward, I, Achilles' son, ^ 
 
 Named Neoptolemos. Now know'st thou all." (P.) 
 
 And does Neoptolemus know the wretched man 
 "before him? asks Phlloctetes. The young chief, of 
 course, professes entire ignorance ; and Philoctetes 
 proceeds to tell his miserable history, which we have 
 told before ; and he invokes curses on the Atreidae and 
 011 Ulysses, who planned his wrongs. 
 
 Then Neoptolemus tells his story, as arranged "be- 
 tween himself and Ulysses previously. He, too, has 
 reason to curse the brother-kings and the false Ulysses. 
 But his very first words remind Philoctetes, and re- 
 mind the audience, of the long years which have 
 elapsed since he was here deserted by his comrades, 
 " When the Fates ruled it that Achilles died." 
 
 What breaks in the exile is Achilles dead? He is 
 indeed, and Ulysses and the Atreidae have rejected his 
 son's rightful claim to the hero's armour. Nothing 
 which he hears of Ulysses, in the way of baseness or 
 falsehood, can surprise Philoctetes. Nor had he ever 
 much confidence in the justice of the sons of Atreus.
 
 144 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 But there was one chief among the Greeks who would 
 surely, he thought, have prevented this wrong. Ajax 
 was honest surely, if none else 
 
 " He was no more, O stranger. Had he lived, 
 I had not thus been cheated of my right." 
 
 True the questioner had again forgotten the changes 
 of ten years. Is it then possible (he grasps eagerly at 
 the hope) that his bitter enemy Ulysses " the bastard 
 of Sisyphus," as he calls him and Diomed, who had 
 been his abettor in the treachery, are they too dead ? for 
 at least they were unfit to live. Neoptolemus replies 
 
 " In sooth, not they : be sure they nourish yet, 
 Holding high piace amid the Argive host." 
 
 And Nestor the noble old warrior, his personal friend, 
 whose prudent counsel was wont to curb the rashness 
 of the younger captains he is probably dead ateo? 
 No ; the old man lives, but li ves to mourn the loss of 
 Antilochus, the son of his old age, whom death, in its 
 bitter irony, has taken before the father. And Patro- 
 clus, the trusty friend of Achilles ? 
 
 " He, too, has fallen. Lo ! in one brief word 
 I tell thee all : War never, with good will, 
 Doth choose the evil man, or leave the good. 
 
 Phil. I hold it true; and for that very cause 
 Will ask thee yet as to one worthless wretch, 
 Of subtle tongue and crafty, how he tares ? 
 
 He must mean Ulysses, says Neoptolemus, follow- 
 ing his chief's instructions to abuse him, apparently 
 with considerable zest. But it is Thersites, the mob- 
 orator of Homer, the man who boldly speaks evil of
 
 PHILOCTETES. 145 
 
 dignities, who is in Philoctetes' mind. Every Athen- 
 ian in the audience would remember the description of 
 him in the Iliad. He is alive, of course ? Neoptole- 
 mus understands that he is, though he has never seen 
 him. Philoctetes replies bitterly 
 
 " Well may he live, for nothing bad will die, 
 So well the gods do fence it round about ; 
 And still they joy to turn from Hades back 
 The cunning and the crafty, while they send 
 The just and good below." (P.) 
 
 Neoptolemus purposes ostensibly to return to his 
 ship, to wait for the rising of the breeze which is to 
 bear him home to Scyros. "For he will never see the 
 Greek camp and the sons of Atreus more. Never 
 again will he be found amongst a company 
 
 " Where still the evil lord it o'er the good, 
 
 And honour starves, and cowardice bears sway." 
 
 He bids farewell to Philoctetes, and prays that heaven 
 may soon send some cure for his pains. Then follows 
 a scene which, in the hands of a good actor, must have 
 been one of the most effective in the play. Seeing 
 himself about to be thus a second time deserted, Phil- 
 octetes breaks into an agonised entreaty that the young 
 chief and his sailors will take him on board their 
 vessel. Put him where they will, " in hold, or stem, or 
 stern," he cares not, so he may see once more his father 
 and his native land. It will be a noble deed, and 
 
 "Noble souls 
 
 Still find the base is hurtful, and the good 
 Is full of glory.' 7 
 A. c. vol. x. K
 
 146 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 The young chief acts his assumed part well. It is 
 easy to imagine, from the frequent breaks in the appeal 
 made to him by Philoctetes, the by-play of hesitation 
 now turning to depart, and now apparently half relent- 
 ing with which he listens to the sufferer's entreaties. 
 The Chorus are moved to pity. They pray their young 
 captain to assent. They, for their own part, are quite 
 willing to bear the inconvenience of such a passenger, 
 though his grievous affliction will, as he warns them, 
 make him no very pleasant companion on ship-board. 
 So he yields to this double solicitation, and Philoctetes 
 turns to bid a pathetic farewell to the scene of his long 
 and miserable exile, to which he nevertheless bears 
 some sort of affection, when two men are seen ap- 
 proaching. They are two of the ship-guard one of 
 them disguised as a merchant, who professes to have 
 just landed on the island, and, hearing of Neoptole- 
 mus's presence there, has come to bring him important 
 news from the coast of Troy, whence he himself has 
 lately sailed. It is, in fact, an additional stratagem of 
 Ulysses, brought into play apparently for the purpose 
 of hurrying Philoctetes on board the vessel. The pre- 
 tended merchant's tale is that the Greeks, in their 
 wrath at the defection of Neoptolemus, have despatched 
 an expedition to overtake him and bring him back by 
 force. Another party has also sailed under Ulysses and 
 Diomed, in quest of a certain Philoctetes, without 
 whom the Fates have declared Troy cannot be taken, 
 and whom Ulysses has pledged himself and offered 
 his own head as a forfeit if he fails to bring into the 
 Grecian camp either by force or by persuasion. Great
 
 PHILOCTETES. 147 
 
 is the apparent dismay of the stranger at being told 
 that Philoctetes stands before him; and great the 
 indignation of Philoctetes to hear that he is to be 
 taken now to Troy, as he had been before left in 
 Lemnos, at the pleasure of his detested enemy : 
 
 " Wretch that I am ! this villain, most accursed, 
 Hath he then sworn to lure me back to Greece ? 
 As soon shall he persuade me, when no more, 
 Like his false father, to return to earth." * 
 
 The agent of Ulysses is far too discreet to under- 
 stand the sneer at his master's birth. He makes 
 answer sedately, 
 
 " Of this I nothing know, but to my ship 
 Depart. The gods aright direct you both." (D.) 
 
 The object of this particular scene, which seems, in 
 point of fact, rather to throw difficulties in the way of 
 Neoptolemus and rouse the obstinacy of Philoctetes, is 
 by no means easy to understand. It serves to compli- 
 cate the action, and that is alL It may be that the 
 poet wishes to show, in the character of Ulysses, that 
 insolence of conscious power which does not care so 
 much to accomplish its object easily, as to enjoy the 
 discomfiture of a weaker opponent. If this was the 
 intention, and if, as seems possible, Ulysses is all the 
 while supposed to be within ear-shot (as he certainly 
 is at a later stage of the action), then there would be 
 produced upon the audience, as is not uncommon in 
 
 * Sisyphus, who (and not Laertes) was said to have been the 
 real father of Ulysses.
 
 148 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 the Attic tragedies, a half-comic effect by the protest 
 of Philoctetes, delivered, as it were, in the very pre- 
 sence of the man between whom and himself he is 
 determined to put the wide barrier of the sea, and into 
 whose very arms he is thus about to rush in his eager 
 haste to escape him. 
 
 The wind is against them as yet, says Ifeoptolemus 
 they must wait a while. Nay, replies the other, 
 
 " All winds are fair to him who flies from woe." 
 
 But before he embarks, he has some poor treasures 
 which he must needs get together and take with him. 
 A herb there is which he has found on the island, 
 which in some sort soothes the anguish of his wounded 
 'foot. And he must take good heed that he leaves 
 behind no one of the fateful arrows. Then, for the 
 first time, Neoptolemus seems to remark the bow which 
 he carries. Is this the wondrous bow of Hercules? 
 May he be allowed to handle it for a moment, nay, 
 to print a reverent kiss upon the sacred relic of so 
 renowned a hero 1 And while the sufferer, leaning on 
 his new-found friend, withdraws into his cavern to 
 seek what he requires, the Chorus, as they tread the 
 stage in measured time to the accompanying music, 
 chant an ode expressive of their kindly sympathy. 
 
 And now the pair reappear upon the scene, to begin 
 their way to the ship, when suddenly Philoctetes stops, 
 and utters a suppressed cry. One of those paroxysms 
 of agony which his wound causes him from time to 
 time has come on at this moment. Dreading the effect 
 which it may have upon Neoptolemus and his crew, as
 
 PHILOCTETES. 149 
 
 reminding them of the annoyance which the close 
 companionship of such a wretch is sure to prove to 
 them throughout their voyage, he strives for a while to 
 conceal his anguish. " Tis but a trifle " " he is 
 better again." But at last the trial is too much for 
 him. Maddened by the pain, be begs of his friend to 
 draw his sword and smite off the miserable limb, nay, 
 if it cost him his life, the deed will be a charity. But 
 no, these paroxysms are terrible while they last, but 
 after a while, having run their course, they will sub- 
 side. He cannot bear even the touch of the hand 
 which Neoptolemus extends to support him : 
 
 " Nay, not so : 
 
 But take my bow and arrows, which but now 
 Thoxi askedst for, and keep them till the force 
 Of the sharp pain be spent ; yea, guard them well, 
 For slumber takes me when this evil ends, 
 Nor can it cease before ; but thou must leave me 
 To sleep in peace ; and should they come meanwhile 
 Of whom we have heard, by all the gods I charge thee 
 Nor with thy will, nor yet against it, give 
 These things to them, by any art entrapped, 
 Lest thou shouldst deal destruction on thyself 
 And me who am thy suppliant. 
 
 Neop. Take good heart, 
 
 If forethought can avail. To none but thee 
 And me shall they be given. Hand them to me, 
 And good luck come with them ! 
 
 Phil, (giving the bow and arrows!) Lo there, my son ! 
 Receive thou them ; b'ut first adore the power 
 Whose name is Jealousy, that they may prove 
 To thee less full of trouble than they were 
 To me, and him who owned them ere I owned. 
 
 Neop. So be it, O ye gods, to both of us ;
 
 150 SOPHOCLES 
 
 And may we have a fair and prosperous voyage 
 "Where God thinks right, and these our ships are bound !" 
 
 Alas ! the prayer, Philoctetes fears, will be in vain. 
 The spasms have come on afresh ; and his great fear is 
 lest his new-found friend shall desert him after all : 
 
 " And wilt thou stay ? 
 Neop. Deem that beyond all doubt. 
 Phil. I do not care to bind thee by an oath. 
 Neop. I may not go from hence apart from thee. 
 Phil. Give me thy hand as pledge. 
 Neop. I give it thee 
 
 As pledge of our remaining." (P.) 
 
 At length after a scene of physical suffering pro- 
 tracted to a length which proves that the taste of an 
 Athenian audience for sensation was as keen as that of 
 any modern play-goer, though the sensation is of a dif- 
 ferent type nature is exhausted, and the sufferer sinks 
 into a death-like sleep. As he lies there, while Neop- 
 tolemus retires into the background, the Chorus take 
 up their chant again. It is in part an invocation 
 to sleep, mingled with hints to Neoptolemus (whose 
 instructions from Ulysses they seem partly to under- 
 stand, partly only to suspect) that now, while he lies 
 thus helpless, there is an opportunity to carry him 
 off bodily, or to make safe prize of the coveted weapons 
 of Hercules : 
 
 " O sleep that know'st not pain ! 
 sleep that know'st not care ! 
 Would thou mightst come with blessed balmy air, 
 And blessing long remain,
 
 PHILOCTETES. 151 
 
 And from his eyes ward off the noontide blaze, 
 
 Now full upon him poured. 
 
 Come as our healer, lord ! 
 And thou, my son, look well to all thy ways ; 
 
 What next demands our thought ? 
 
 What now must needs be wrought ? 
 
 Thou seest him ; and I ask 
 
 Why we delay our task ; 
 Occasion that still holds to counsel right 
 With quickest speed appears as conqueror in the fight." 
 
 They continue their chant in this strain of innuendo, 
 while Philoctetes lies stretched in the sleep of physical 
 exhaustion. 
 
 The conflict between the better nature of the young 
 chief and the uncongenial task he has undertaken, has 
 begun long before the sufferer awakes. It is shown 
 but faintly in the dialogue; but an actor who threw 
 himself into the part would no doubt express it very 
 intelligibly by his movements and gestures, while he 
 watched the sleeper and listened to the strains of the 
 Chorus. Loyalty to what he holds to be the public 
 interest of the Greek cause, the overwhelming import- 
 ance of the capture of Troy, the renown which awaits 
 him personally as its conqueror, all these have to be 
 weighed in the scale against an act of unquestionable 
 treachery, yet after all, it might be said, a treachery 
 rather to the advantage of the victim. His embar- 
 rassment is completed by the words of Philoctetes, 
 when at length he awakes from his troubled sleep, 
 the agony subdued for a while, and addresses his 
 deliverers, as he thinks them, with simple gratitude 
 and confidence :
 
 152 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 " Phil, (waking.) light that follows sleep ! help, my 
 
 thoughts 
 
 Had never dared to hope for from these strangers ! 
 For never had I dreamt, boy, that thou 
 With such true pity wouldst endure to bear 
 All these my sorrows, and remain and help. 
 The Atreidae ne'er had heart to bear with them 
 As well as thou hast borne. Brave generals they ! 
 But thou, my son, who art of noble heart, 
 And sprung from noble-hearted ones, hast made 
 But light of all" (P.) 
 
 Philoctetes begs that they may sail at once. And 
 Neoptolemus assists him to rise and move in the 
 direction of the ship. But suddenly the young man 
 stops; he can endure to keep up this deception no 
 longer. 
 
 " Neop. heavens ! what now remains for me to do ? 
 
 Phil. What ails thee, my son ? what words are these ? 
 
 Neop. I know not how to speak my sore distress. 
 
 Phil. Distress from what ? Speak not such words, my 
 son. 
 
 Neop. And yet in that calamity I stand 
 
 Phil. It cannot be my wound's foul noisomeness 
 Hath made thee loath to take me in thy ship ? 
 
 Neop. All things are noisome when a man deserts 
 His own true self, and does what is not meet. 
 
 Phil. But thou, at least, nor doest aught nor say'st, 
 Unworthy of thy father's soul, when thou 
 Dost help a man right honest. 
 
 Neop. . I shall seem 
 
 Basest of men. Long since this tortured me." (P.) 
 
 At length he tells Philoctetes the truth, he is com- 
 missioned to carry him to Troy. Then Philoctetes
 
 PHILOCTETES. 153 
 
 breaks out into very natural indignation, and demands 
 his weapons back. " That may not be," says Neop- 
 tolemus. His victim's wrath, mingled with an unwil- 
 lingness to believe in such treachery under so fair an 
 outside seeming, is expressed in one of the finest pas- 
 sages in the play : 
 
 " Thou loathed inventor of atrocious fraud, 
 What hast thou done how wronged my easy faith ? 
 Doth it not shame thee to behold me thus, 
 A suitor and a suppliant, wretch, to thee ? 
 Stealing my bow, of life thou hast bereft me. 
 Restore, I pray thee, my son, restore it ! 
 By thine ancestral gods, take not my life ! 
 Wretch that I am, he deigns not e'en reply, 
 But still looks backward, as resolved to spurn me. 
 Ye ports, ye beetling crags, ye haunts obscure 
 Of mountain-beasts, ye wild and broken rocks, 
 To you I mourn, for I have none beside ! 
 To you, who oft have heard me, tell the wrongs, 
 The cruel deeds Achilles' son hath wrought ! 
 Pledged to convey me home, he sails to Troy ; 
 Plighting his hand in faith, he meanly steals 
 My bow, the sacred arms of Jove's great son, 
 And would display them to the Grecian host. 
 By force he takes me, as some vigorous chief, 
 Nor knows his triumph is achieved o'er one 
 Long helpless as the dead a shadowy cloud 
 An empty phantom. In my hour of might 
 He ne'er had seized me thus, since, in my ills, 
 He but by fraud entrapped rne. I am now 
 Deceived to my despair. What shall I do ? 
 Ah ! yet restore them, be again thyself. 
 What dost thou say ? Yet silent ? Then I perish. 
 Thou double portal of the rock, again
 
 154 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 I enter thee, of arms, of life, deprived. 
 
 But I must pine forsaken in the cave ; 
 
 Nor winged bird, nor mountain-ranging beast, 
 
 Shall these good darts bring down. I yield in death 
 
 To those a banquet, who supplied my own. 
 
 I will not curse thee, ere I learn if yet 
 
 Thou wilt relent if not, all evil blast thee ! " (D.) 
 
 Neoptolemus makes a motion to restore the bow, 
 when Ulysses (who, we must suppose, has been a 
 listener to at least the latter portion of the dialogue) 
 rushes in between them : 
 
 " Vlys. What wouldst thou do, 
 
 O vilest of mankind ? Wilt thou not hence, 
 The sacred arms resigning to my hand ? 
 
 Phil. Ha ! who is this ? Ulysses do I hear ? 
 
 Ulys. Ay, I who stand before thee am Ulysses. 
 
 Phil. 0, 1 am sold, undone ! This is the wretch 
 Who snared and hath despoiled me of mine arms. 
 
 Ulys. Tis I, in sooth none else. I own the deed. 
 
 Phil. Eestore, give back the arms to me, my son ! 
 
 Vlys. This, did he wish, he would not dare to grant. 
 But thou must hence with us, or those around 
 By force must drag thee." (D.) 
 
 In vain does the sufferer appeal to Heaven against 
 such wrong ; it is Heaven, says Ulysses, whose will he 
 and Neoptolemus are obeying in forcing him to Troy. 
 Then he will throw himself headlong from the rock, 
 and end his misery at once, rather than be thus dis- 
 graced. But he is seized and overpowered by order 
 of Ulysses, who listens with a calm composure to the
 
 PHILOCTETES. 155 
 
 bitter invectives which his prisoner hurls at him. 
 When Philoctetes at last pauses in his denunciation, 
 Ulysses replies in measured words which are a 
 perfect index to his character, as drawn by the 
 poet : 
 
 " I might say much in answer to his words, 
 If there were time. Now this one word I speak : 
 Where men like this are wanted, such am I ; 
 But when the time for good and just men calls, 
 Thou couldst not find a godlier man than me. 
 In every case it is my bent to win, 
 Except with thee. To thee of mine own will 
 I yield the victory. Ho, leave him there ! 
 Lay no hand on him, let him here remain. 
 With these thy arms, we have no need of thee : 
 Teucros is with us, skilled in this thine art ; 
 And I, too, boast that I, not less than thou, 
 This bow can handle, with my hand shoot straight ; 
 What need we thee ? In Lemnos walk at will, 
 And let us go. And they perchance will give 
 As prize to me what rightly thou mightst claim." (P.) 
 
 The character of Ulysses is drawn in stronger and 
 less favourable colours by the dramatist than as he 
 appears in either of the Homeric poems. There is a 
 cold cruelty in his treatment of Philoctetes, from first 
 to last, which does not characterise him in either the 
 Iliad or Odyssey. It is true that he is serving no 
 selfish end ; it is in the cause of Greece that he under- 
 takes this commission, as it was in the same interest 
 (we must suppose) that he advised the desertion of 
 Philoctetes at Lemnos. We must not wonder that, 
 like many diplomatists, he is little scrupulous as to
 
 156 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 means. But lie seems almost to revel in the odious- 
 ness of his self-imposed duty. 
 
 He withdraws again from the scene, taking with him 
 the reluctant and repentant Neoptolemus, who is half 
 inclined to listen to the appeal of their victim. The 
 crew, by Neoptolemus's permission, remain, and strive 
 to console the sufferer, who laments his miserable fate 
 in strains to which the Chorus make such reply as they 
 can : 
 
 " Ah me ! upon the shore, 
 
 Where the wild waters roar, 
 
 He sits and laughs at me, 
 
 And tosseth in his hand 
 
 What cheered my misery, 
 What ne'er till now another might command. 
 
 O bow most dear to me, 
 
 Torn from these hands of mine, 
 
 If thou hast sense to see, 
 
 Thou lookest piteously 
 
 At this poor mate of thine, 
 
 The friend of Heracles, 
 Who never more shall wield thee as of old ; 
 
 And thou, full ill at ease, 
 Art bent by hands of one for mischief bold, 
 
 All shameful deeds beholding, 
 
 Deeds of fierce wrath and hate, 
 And thousand evils from base thoughts unfolding 
 Which none till now had ever dared to perpetrate." 
 
 -(P-) 
 
 But they are interrupted by the sudden return of 
 Neoptolemus, in high dispute with Ulysses, who is 
 trying to hold him back. The young chief has made 
 up his mind. He will do the right, come what may.
 
 PHILOCTETES. 157 
 
 The glory of taking Troy will be no compensation for 
 the loss of self-respect. He will at once give back the 
 weapons of Hercules. In vain Ulysses threatens him 
 with the vengeance of the allied Greeks ; in vain or 
 worse than in vain he lays his hand significantly 
 upon his sword. The young chief replies to the threat 
 by a fierce grasp of the hilt of his own weapon ; and 
 Ulysses, too wary to involve himself in a dangerous 
 and discreditable brawl, contents himself with an ap- 
 peal to the Greeks in council. Neoptolemus will not 
 spare him a natural sarcasm on his discretion : 
 
 " Thou hast shown prudence ; be as prudent ever, 
 And thou mayest chance to keep thyself from harm." 
 
 But Ulysses, as he turns off in disgust, either does not 
 hear, or affects not to hear, the taunt. Then the other 
 calls Philoctetes out of his cave, and restores to him 
 the weapons. Ulysses comes forward again, and loudly 
 protests against such weakness ; but Philoctetes, once 
 more master of his bow, vengefully prepares to launch 
 an arrow at his enemy, when Keoptolemus stays his 
 hand. Once more the latter tries to urge upon him to 
 go with them to Troy of his own free will, and so reap 
 the glories which await him there ; but arguments on 
 this point have no avail, and he prepares to redeem 
 his pledge to carry the exile home. 
 
 The perplexity is solved by an expedient allowable 
 in the Greek drama, though it would be held inartistic 
 in our own. Hercules himself intervenes. The hero- 
 god appears suddenly in mid-air (and we have reason to 
 believe the scenic appliances were complete enough for
 
 158 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 such appearance to be highly effective), and stands before 
 the mortal captains radiant in the glories of Olympus. 
 Such a visitor is, after all, not a bolder appeal to the 
 supernatural than the ghost in Hamlet ; and perhaps 
 the half-imaginative belief of the educated portion 
 of an Athenian audience in the continual existence, 
 in some higher state, of their national heroes, might 
 correspond pretty nearly to the belief in ghosts which 
 would have been found amongst the same class of 
 Englishmen in Shakspeare's day. It would be suffi- 
 cient indeed, it is practically sufficient still for the 
 sentiment of the tragedy. The tableau on the stage 
 was no doubt highly effective when Hercules, with a 
 commanding gesture, arrests the steps of Philoctetes as 
 he is moving off: 
 
 " Not yet, son of Paeas, ere once more 
 Our accents reach thine ear. 
 Know 'tis the voice of Hercules thou nearest, 
 His form thine eyes behold. 
 To watch thy fortunes I awhile have left 
 My own celestial seat, 
 
 That Jove's almighty mandate I may breathe, 
 And in his name forbid thy purposed course." 
 
 (Dale.) 
 
 He tells his friend of the glory which yet awaits him, 
 how he shall be healed of his wound, shall slay 
 Paris with one of the fateful arrows, and be judged the 
 bravest of the Greek host. And when Troy has fallen by 
 his hands and those of Neoptolemus, let them not for- 
 get, in the hour of their triumph, to reverence the gods ; 
 for that alone can bring lasting happiness to mortals.
 
 PH1LOCTETES. 159 
 
 Philoctetes cannot resist the voice of the great hero 
 whom he still loves and honours. He accompanies 
 Neoptolemus to the ship; but before they go, he 
 chants his last words of farewell to the scene of his 
 long banishment : 
 
 " Come, then, and let us bid farewell 
 To this lone island where I dwell : 
 Farewell, O home that still didst keep 
 Due vigil o'er me in my sleep ; 
 Ye nymphs by stream or wood that roam ; 
 Thou mighty voice of ocean's foam, 
 Where oftentimes my head was wet 
 With drivings of the South wind's fret ; 
 And oft the mount that Hermes owns 
 Sent forth its answer to my groans, 
 The wailing loud as echo given 
 To me by tempest-storms sore driven; 
 And ye, fountains clear and cool, 
 Thou Lykian well, the wolves' own pool 
 We leave you, yea, we leave at last, 
 Though small our hope in long years past ; 
 Farewell, plain of Lemnos' isle, 
 Around whose coasts the bright waves smile, 
 Send me with prosperous voyage and fair 
 Where the great Destinies may bear, 
 Counsels of friends, and God supreme in Heaven 
 Who all this lot of ours hath well and wisely given." 
 
 -(P-) 
 
 This tragedy has been highly praised both by French 
 and by English critics, and it has undoubtedly the 
 merit of being simple and natural, though the interest 
 is of a weaker quality than in most of the plays of 
 Sophocles. The character of Keoptolemus is well
 
 160 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 drawn ; and the struggles between interest and duty 
 or rather between what seem to him two conflicting 
 duties are interesting, if not highly tragic. But the 
 play has one prominent feature which mars the whole 
 effect to our English taste. No man can be a hero, to 
 our notions, whose sufferings are wholly physical ; and 
 far less one who demands our sympathies for such 
 sufferings by physical expressions of pain. Upon a 
 Greek audience, no doubt, the effect was different. 
 The enjoyment of life was very keen among the Athen- 
 ians : they also felt bodily pain more keenly, with 
 their sensitive organisations, than we do, and they 
 certainly expressed their feelings with far less reticence. 
 For them, the diseased foot, and the cries of agony to 
 which it gives occasion, had possibly a real tragic 
 interest. To us it is not so. All the ingenuity and 
 ability of critics fails to make such a subject anything 
 but distasteful to an ordinary English mind. "We 
 almost forgive the Greeks for leaving Philoctetes be- 
 hind, if he was always shrieking and bemoaning him- 
 self after the fashion assigned to him in the play. It 
 is one of the hardest things connected with continued 
 bodily suffering, when it finds vent in audible groans 
 and complaints, that instead of rousing the sympathies 
 of those in attendance on the sufferer, it is too apt to 
 dull and weary them. Cries and complaints may be 
 unavoidable, but to our notions they are always un- 
 dignified and unmanly. Our cold and stern temper 
 demands that pain be borne in silence ignored 
 altogether, so far as possible. Its audible expressions 
 belong with us to comedy, not to tragedy. Even in
 
 PHILOCTETES. 161 
 
 tlie Iliad, we are not touched with the dying groans 
 of the heroes. Our ideal hero is mute in suffering 
 he must have more of the nature of the Roman wolf- 
 cub 
 
 " He dies in silence, biting hard, 
 Amid the dying hounds." 
 
 But in this respect, the Philoctetes of Sophocles is 
 Hot only at variance with modern tastes and sympa- 
 thies ; it stands also in strong contrast with an earlier 
 Greek tragedy of a severer type, in which the hero is 
 also represented in the extremity of physical suffering 
 the Prometheus of ^Eschylus. The Titan is brought 
 upon the stage to be fastened to his rock, there to 
 waste away for long years in sufferings compared with 
 which those of Philoctetes are but ordinary : the ada- 
 mantine rivets are driven through his chest, but he 
 utters no cry of physical anguish. Nay, so long as his 
 tormentors are present, he is mute altogether. When 
 he utters his grand appeal to Earth, and Sky, and 
 Sea, it is against the injustice of his doom, rather 
 than the bitterness of the torture. He launches de- 
 fiance against his torturer, not complaints. Therefore, 
 even across the gulf of centuries, we feel almost as an 
 Athenian audience felt the grandeur of the conception. 
 It is true enough, as has been said, that Sophocles is 
 far more human in his tragic pathos than the elder 
 poet ; but there are phases of humanity, intensely 
 natural, which are yet no fit subjects for dramatic 
 representation ; and it is surely not a decline but a 
 development of critical taste, which reckons physical 
 pain as one of them. 
 
 A, c. vol. x. L
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ELECTRA. 
 
 IN this drama Sophocles has selected a portion of 
 the same story which formed the subject of the famous 
 trilogy of ^Eschylus. The Electra is simply the return 
 of Orestes, and the vengeance which he takes on 
 Clytemnestra and ^Egisthus. By both poets this act 
 of vengeance is elevated to a religious duty. The gods 
 above and the shades of the dead below demand that 
 a " foul unnatural murder " shall not go unpunished. 
 Accordingly Orestes never swerves for a moment from 
 his deadly purpose. Pity and tenderness have no 
 place in his breast, nor do we ever find him reasoning 
 with himself after the manner of Hamlet 
 
 " heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever 
 The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom ; 
 Let me be cruel, not unnatural ; 
 I will speak daggers, but will use none." * 
 
 Once more as in the trilogy of ^Eschylus the 
 sceno is the royal palace of the Pelopidye, "rich in 
 
 * Hamlet, act iii. sc. 3.
 
 ELECTRA. 163 
 
 gold and rich in slaughter," as Electra describes it, 
 fronted by the stately " Gate of Lions " which then 
 guarded the statue of Apollo, and built in that stupen- 
 dous Cyclopsean style which still impresses every tra- 
 veller. But Agatharchus, or whatever artist Sophocles 
 employed, has given us on this occasion more than the 
 usual architectural background. There is the grove of 
 lo, "the tormented wanderer," and the market-place 
 sacred to Apollo as the "Wolf-god;" on the left is 
 the famous temple of Juno, while in the far distance 
 are seen the towers of Argos.* The time is early morn- 
 ing in Athens as well as on the stage, and it is such 
 a morning as Chaucer would have loved, with the hills 
 and greenwood bright and fresh in the sunlight, as one 
 of the speakers describes it, 
 
 " Which wakes the birds to tune their matin song, 
 And star-decked night's dark shadows flee away. (P.) 
 
 Two young men enter. They are the famous friends, 
 whose names, like those of David and Jonathan, have 
 consecrated all later friendships, Orestes and Pylades. 
 "With them comes an old and faithful servant (perhaps 
 " the watchman " of ^Eschylus's ' Agamemnon '), who 
 had saved the young Orestes at the time of his father's 
 murder, had reared him up to manhood, and is now 
 
 * Mr Jebb quotes Clark's Peloponnesus (p. 72), with refer- 
 ence to the famous historic localities which Sophocles has thus 
 brought together in one picture, irrespectively of distance, and 
 which Clark compares with a stage direction in Victor Hugo's 
 play of 'Marie Tudor.' "Palais de Richmond: dans le fond 
 a gauche 1'Eglise de Westminster, a droite la Tour de Londres." 
 Jebb's Electra, p. 3.
 
 164 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 guiding him back, after his long exile, to the familiar 
 scenes of Argolis. Orestes has returned to Mycenae 
 (as he tells his friends and the audience) on a holy 
 mission of vengeance, consecrated by Apollo himself ; 
 but in order to gain his ends he must use a pious fraud. 
 His old attendant must enter the palace, and represent 
 himself as a Phocian stranger, sent by an old friend 
 of the family : 
 
 " And tell them yea, and add a solemn oath 
 That some fell fate has brought Orestes' death 
 In Pythian games, from out the whirling car 
 Boiled headlong to the earth. This tale tell thou ; 
 And we, first honouring my father's grave, 
 As the God bade us, with libations pure 
 And tresses from our brow, will then come back, 
 Bearing the urn well wrought with sides of bronze, 
 Which, thou know'st well, 'mid yonder shrubs lies hid, 
 That we with crafty words may bring to them 
 The pleasant news that my poor frame is gone, 
 Consumed with fire, to dust and ashes turned. 
 
 So I, from out this rumour of my death, 
 Shall, like a meteor, blaze upon my foes." (P.) 
 
 Then the three retire, for the purpose of pouring a 
 libation at Agamemnon's grave. Pylades, it should 
 be observed, owing to the strict rule of the Athenian 
 drama limiting the speakers on the stage to three, 
 never takes part in the dialogue throughout the play. 
 
 Even before they left the stage, they had heard the 
 wailing of women from the palace ; and now there 
 issues from the gates Electra, the sister of Orestes,
 
 ELECTRA. 105 
 
 meanly clad and with dishevelled hair, followed by a 
 train of Argive maidens. Her history had been a sad 
 one. Years had passed away since that day of horror, 
 when her father had been cut off in his glory not 
 slain by the sword on the battle-field, but felled by 
 the axe of ^Egisthus, " as the woodman fells the oak- 
 tree in the forest." Years had passed away, but each 
 year had only imbittered the resentment of Electra, 
 and turned to gall all the sweetness of her woman's 
 nature. She can neither tear from her heart the re- 
 membrance of that deed* of blood, nor forgive those 
 who wrought it. It had needed no message from the 
 grave, no spirit returned from limbo, to keep alive this 
 memory. Always before her was the same repulsive 
 contrast which tortured the keener sensibilities of 
 Hamlet, the cowardly ^Egisthus, sitting in the dead 
 man's place, and receiving the caresses of the perjured 
 wife ; while the guilty pair had seemed to glory in 
 their shame, the one pouring libations on the very 
 hearth where the king had fallen, and the other, with 
 an impious and unnatural joy, celebrating each month 
 the day of her husband's murder, as though it were a 
 religious festival, with sacrifices and solemn dances. 
 Meanwhile, the portion of Electra had been mockery 
 and insult; for her proud spirit had scorned such 
 submission as her more facile sister Chrysothemis had 
 been ready to give. She had been a living protest 
 against the sin of Clytemnestra and ^Egisthus; her 
 incessant grief had provoked their hatred, and this 
 hatred had found its vent in bitter and continual re-
 
 166 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 proach. Day and night, as she tells the Chorus, she 
 had been mourning over the ruin of her race in the 
 plaintive strains of the nightingale, whose note was 
 proverbial among the Greeks for a never-ending grief ; 
 and she had been rated by her mother much in the 
 same style as Hamlet is lectured by his uncle : 
 
 " To persevere 
 
 In obstinate condolement is a course 
 Of impious stubbornness. 
 
 Tis a fault to heaven, 
 A fault against the dead, a fault to nature ; 
 To reason most absurd ; whose common theme 
 Is death of fathers." * 
 
 Then, again, these tears had been followed by a 
 sterner feeling, and soon 
 
 " Vengeance, deep-brooding o'er the slain, 
 Had locked the source of softer woe." 
 
 She had cherished the thought of a day of retribu- 
 tion, and had implored all the gods of the lower world 
 not to overlook the shedding of innocent blood, or to 
 allow "the guile which devised and the lust which 
 struck the blow" to go for long unpunished. But 
 years had passed, and still Orestes, for whose coming 
 she had prayed, came not ', and Electra, in her despair, 
 had begun to question the justice of those careless gods 
 who allowed the guilty to flourish in their sin, and 
 murder to go unavenged 
 
 "For if the dull earth cover thus the blood 
 Of him who basely died, 
 
 * Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.
 
 ELECTRA. ' 167 
 
 And they who wrought his fall 
 
 Repay not life for life ; 
 
 Then perish shame for aye, 
 
 And piety be banished from mankind ! " (D.) 
 
 The Chorus vainly try to comfort her. No tears or 
 prayers, they say, can recall the dead from " the lake 
 of darkness." Let her trust to Time, that " calm and 
 patient deity," to bring her brother home at last. 
 
 Then there enters to her " bright Chrysothemis with 
 golden hair," * bearing funeral offerings. The scene be- 
 tween the sisters recalls a similar one in a former play, with 
 the difference that here the characters are more strongly 
 drawn. Electra is cast in a harsher and sterner mould 
 than her counterpart, Antigone, for it is hatred rather 
 than love which hardens her resolution. Chrysothemis, 
 again, is more deliberately selfish than Ismene. " She 
 should have been the ally, but is only the temptress of 
 her sister, a weaker Goneril or Eegan, serving as a foil 
 to a more masculine Cordelia." t Electra cannot con- 
 ceal her scorn and indignation at this unworthy daugh- 
 ter of a king, who attempts to justify her baseness, and 
 whose cowardly spirit can endure to sit at the same 
 table with her father's murderers. For her own part, 
 she prefers the isolation of a slave to the gifts and 
 delicacies which Chrysothemis accepts at such hands. 
 
 " Loin d'eux, a ces festins, leiu- esclave prefere 
 Le pain de la pitid qu'on jette a sa misere, 
 A leur table insolente allez courber le front ; 
 Flattez les meurtriers, mes pleurs me suffiront. 
 
 " Iliad, ix. 145 (Pope). t Jebb's Ajax, p. 34, note.
 
 168 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Des pleurs sont mes tremors, des pleurs ma nourriture, 
 Us ne me verront pas outrageant la nature, 
 A mon pere infidele, indigne de inon nom, 
 Boire avec eux dans 1'or le sang d' Agamemnon."* 
 
 Chrysothemis is too well accustomed to her sister's 
 reproaches to attempt any farther justification. In 
 reply, she tells her the strange mission on which she 
 has now come from the palace. On the previous night 
 Clytemnestra had dreamed a dream, in which she had 
 seen her hushand, tall and majestic as in his lifetime, 
 and carrying the sceptre which had descended from 
 prince to prince in the dynasty of Argos,t and was 
 now wielded by the murderer ^Egisthus. In her vision, 
 Clytemnestra sees him plant this sceptre in the hearth 
 of his palace, and there it had seemed to take root 
 downwards and "bear fruit upwards, spreading forth 
 into boughs and branches, and overshadowing all My- 
 cenae. So terribly significant had been this vision of 
 the night, and so accordant with the restless dread of 
 her son's return which has haunted the guilty woman, 
 
 * Chenier's Electre, act i. sc. 3. (Quoted by M. Patin.) 
 t Homer gives us the history of this sceptre : 
 
 "His royal staff, the work of Vulcan's art, 
 Which Vulcan to the son of Saturn gave, 
 To Hermes he, the heavenly messenger ; 
 Hermes to Pelops, matchless charioteer ; 
 Pelops to Atreus ; Atreus at his death 
 Bequeathed it to Thyestes, wealthy lord 
 Of num'rous herds ; to Agamemnon last 
 Thyestes left it token of his sway 
 O'er all the Argive coast and neighbouring isles." 
 
 Iliad, ii. 100 (Lord Derby).
 
 ELECTRA. 169 
 
 that after rising early in the morning, and telling her 
 dream to the Sun-god, she had sent Chrysothemis to 
 carry libations to the tomb of Agamemnon, in the hope 
 of appeasing the manes of the murdered king. 
 
 Electra can hardly restrain the fiery wrath which 
 consumes her, as she hears of what she considers a 
 fresh act of impious effrontery on the part of Clytem- 
 nestra. Her sister must never insult the dead by pre- 
 senting these offerings from the guilty wife : 
 
 " Cast them forth 
 
 To the wild winds, or hide them in the earth 
 Deep, deep ; that never to my father's tomb 
 The accursed thing may reach ; but when she dies, 
 Lie hid in earth to grace her sepulchre. 
 For had she not been formed of all her sex 
 The most abandoned, never had she crowned 
 These loathed libations to the man she slew. 
 Think'st thou the dead entombed could e'er receive 
 In friendly mood such obsequies from her 
 By whom he fell dishonoured, like a foe, 
 While on her mangled victim's head she wiped 
 His blood for expiation ? " (D.) 
 
 Let her rather offer at her father's tomb locks of 
 hair cut from his daughters' heads, accompanied by a 
 prayer that the son may speedily return to avenge his 
 death. Chrysothemis assents, but begs her sister to 
 keep her counsel. 
 
 Then follows a noble choral ode almost rising to 
 the grandeur of JEschylus. The dream which had 
 terrified the queen animates the dying hopes of the
 
 170 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Argive maidens. Something in their hearts tells them 
 that the day of vengeance is nigh at hand. Neither 
 the spirit of the murdered man, nor the axe which 
 struck that felon stroke, " though dimmed by the rust 
 of years," has ever forgotten the deed of blood. 
 They can already see the shadow nay, they can 
 almost feel the breath and hear the approaching tramp 
 of the "brazen-footed fury with many hands and 
 feet." And then their thoughts revert to the fountain- 
 head of all these troubles the curse invoked on the 
 treacherous Pelops by Myrtilus, as he was "dashed 
 headlong from his golden chariot, and sent to his last 
 sleep beneath the waves." * 
 
 There is a pause upon the stage, and a low murmur 
 of expectancy runs through the audience, as the Chorus 
 respectfully move back to make way for Clytemnestra, 
 who comes forward with a haughty and defiant mien, 
 and whose speech shows that she is as " man-minded " 
 as of old. She at once sharply rebukes Electra for 
 taking her ease abroad in the absence of ^Egisthus ; 
 and then she vindicates her murder of Agamemnon. 
 He had slain his daughter, and she had only slain her 
 husband in retaliation ; and why should she not 1 
 
 Electra is not slow to reply, and her tone and 
 manner are as defiant and insulting as her mother's. 
 It was the wrath of Diana, she says, reverting to a 
 "wasted theme," and the contrary winds at Aulis, 
 
 * Myrtilus was the charioteer of CEnomaus, and was bribed 
 by Pelops to take out the linch-pins from his master's chariot. 
 Pelops won the race, but, unwilling to give him his reward, 
 threw him from Cape Gersestus.
 
 ELECTRA. 171 
 
 that forced the king, sorely against his will, to sacri- 
 fice Iphigenia. And as to the doctrine of " blood for 
 blood," if it were put in force, Clytemnestra herself 
 would be the first victim. " Yes," says the maiden, 
 with a fierce look, 
 
 "And I own, 
 Had I but strength, be sure of this, 'twere done." 
 
 The Chorus stand too much amazed and terrified at 
 this stormy altercation between mother and daughter 
 to offer advice, or even to speak, and at last Electra's 
 passion exhausts itself. She turns her back upon her 
 mother, and stands aloof in gloomy silence. Then 
 Clytemnestra makes her secret prayer to the Sun- 
 god : 
 
 " Hear thou the while, Phoebus who guard' st our gates, 
 My secret prayer ; for not to friendly ears 
 Can I speak forth, nor dare I breathe in air 
 All that I mean, while she stands here beside me. 
 Yet hear me thus as I with heed will speak. 
 Those visions of the night, whose two-edged sense 
 I dimly read, if they be good, O King 
 Grant them fulfilment ! but, if they be evil, 
 Then launch them back upon mine enemies ! 
 And if there be who by their cunning plots 
 Would strip me of this wealth, suffer it not ; 
 But grant me still, living an unharmed life, 
 To wield the sceptre here in Atreus' halls, 
 Consorting still with whom I consort now, 
 And happy in such children as may nurse 
 No secret hate or bitter grudge against me. 
 Such boon, Apollo, Slayer of the wolf, 
 Grant of thy grace as fully as we ask it ! 
 And, for the rest, even though I be silent,
 
 172 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 Thou art a god and needs must understand me. 
 For they see all things who are born of Jove." 
 
 It would seem as if her prayers were to be quickly 
 answered ; for at this moment the old attendant enters, 
 and announces, according to the previous agreement, 
 the death of Orestes. Clytemnestra, strangely dis- 
 turbed herself by conflicting feelings, cuts short the 
 bitter cry of grief which bursts from the lips of Electra, 
 and bids the messenger tell the manner of his death. 
 
 Then follows a false but closely circumstantial 
 account of the death of Orestes in the Pythian games 
 at Delphi a tragedy within a tragedy, so real and 
 life-like, that it is difficult to believe that it is not 
 a description of some actual catastrophe. The lists 
 were set, says the supposed Phocian stranger; the 
 herald made proclamation; all Greece was there; every 
 nation had sent its representatives, and among them 
 came Orestes, winning the hearts of the spectators by 
 his grace and noble bearing. His achievements on the 
 first day were worthy of his name and lineage, for he 
 came off victorious in five contests. On the second, 
 day followed the fatal tournament of chariots, in which 
 there were ten competitors. 
 
 " They took their stand where the appointed judges 
 Had cast their lots and ranged the rival cars. 
 Eang out the brazen trump ! Away they bound, 
 Cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened reins ; 
 As with a body the large space is filled 
 With the huge clangour of the battling cars. 
 High whirl aloft the dust-clouds ; blent together, 
 Each presses each, and the lash rings ; and loud
 
 ELECTRA. 173 
 
 Snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath 
 Along their manes and down the circling wheels 
 Scatter the foam." (Lord Lytton.) 
 
 Six times they had rounded the goal at the end 
 of the course ; but in the seventh the horses of one 
 chariot had proved unmanageable, and dashed against 
 the next. 
 
 " Then order changed to ruin, 
 Car crashed on car ; the wild Crisseean plain 
 Was sea-like strewed with wrecks ; the Athenian saw, 
 Slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge, 
 Left the wild tumult of that tossing storm. 
 Behind Orestes, hitherto the last, 
 Had yet kept back his coursers for the close ; 
 Now one sole rival left on, on he flew, 
 And the sharp sound of the impelling scourge 
 Rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds. 
 He hears, he reaches they are side by side 
 Now one the other by a length the victor. 
 The courses all are past the wheels erect 
 All safe when, as the hurrying coursers round 
 The fatal pillar dashed, the wretched boy 
 Slackened the left rein : on the column's edge 
 Crashed the frail axle : headlong from the car, 
 Caught and all meshed within the reins, he fell ; 
 And masterless the mad steeds raged along ! 
 
 Loud from that mighty multitude arose 
 A shriek a shout ! But yesterday such deeds, 
 To-day such doom ! Now whirled upon the earth, 
 Now his limbs dashed aloft, they dragged him those 
 Wild horses till all gory from the wheels 
 Released, and no man, not his nearest friends, 
 Could in that mangled corpse have traced Orestes. 
 They laid the body on the funeral -pyre ;
 
 174 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 And while we speak, the Phocian strangers bear, 
 
 In a small brazen melancholy urn, 
 
 That handful of cold ashes to which all 
 
 The grandeur of the Beautiful hath shrunk. 
 
 Hither they bear him, in his father's land 
 
 To find that heritage a tomb !" (Lord Lytton.) 
 
 So circumstantial is this narrative, that no doubt is 
 left on the minds of the hearers as to its truth. Even 
 Clytemnestra is touched and impressed by the sudden 
 end of one 
 
 " So young, so noble, so unfortunate." (P.) 
 
 After all, she is a woman and a mother. Orestes is 
 dead, and the secret prayer of her heart is thus ful- 
 filled. Orestes is dead, and she is at once delivered 
 from those terrors which had haunted her sleep. But, 
 hardened and guilty as she is, there is sorrow in the 
 thought that her peace of mind should be regained 
 only by the death of her first-born, " the child of her 
 own life." " Wondrous," she exclaims, almost against 
 her will, as if excusing her emotion 
 
 " Wondrous and strange the force of motherhood ! 
 Though wronged, a mother cannot hate her children." 
 
 -(P-) 
 
 It is a finer touch like this which stamps the poet. 
 " These few words of genuine grief," says Mr Jebb, 
 " humanise, and therefore dramatise, Clytemnestra 
 more vividly than anything in ^Eschylus." 
 
 But the queen's better nature does not assert itself 
 for long. A question put by the messenger as to
 
 ELECTRA. 175 
 
 whether his news be not welcome, and the sight of 
 Electra's unfeigned sorrow, rouse in her a feeling of 
 triumph and relief. Now at last, she says, she may 
 sleep soundly, and pass her days in peace. Then, 
 bidding the disguised attendant follow her, she retires 
 within the palace, while Electra bemoans her own fate, 
 left thus desolate and friendless. Her day-dreams of 
 vengeance have come to an end for ever, since the 
 brother on whom she had built her hopes has died 
 cruelly, trampled to death under horses' feet, in a 
 strange land 
 
 " By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned." 
 
 Suddenly Chrysothemis runs eagerly in with what 
 she conceives to be good news. She had found her 
 father's tomb covered with flowers, and moist with 
 freshly-poured libations, while on its summit lay a 
 lock of hair, which she at once divines to be a token 
 from Orestes. " My poor sister ! " says Electra, " your 
 Orestes is dead ; " and then she tells the story she has 
 heard ; but though he be dead, she continues, let us, 
 women as we are, take upon ourselves the work of 
 vengeance, and earn a glorious renown by slaying 
 ^Egisthus, our mother's paramour. 
 
 " All men love to look 
 
 On deeds of goodness. Dost not see full clear 
 All the fair fame thou'lt gain for thee and me, 
 If thou obey my counsels ? Who, seeing us, 
 Or citizen or stranger, will not greet us 
 With praises such as these : ' Behold, my friends, 
 Those sisters twain, who saved their father's house,
 
 176 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 And on their foes who walked in pride of strength, 
 Regardless of their lives, wrought doom of death ! 
 These all must love, these all must reverence ; 
 These in our feasts, and when the city meets 
 In full assemblage, all should honour well 
 For this their manly prowess.' Thus will all 
 Speak of us, so that fame we shall not miss, 
 Living or dying." (P.) 
 
 But Chrysothemis recoils from the suggestion. Her 
 spirit is too weak to venture on such a hazardous 
 enterprise. Besides, she says, our foes are stronger 
 than we are ; 
 
 " And nothing does it help or profit us, 
 Gaining fair fame, a shameful death to die." (P.) 
 
 Then the pretended Phociaus enter, carrying, as 
 they say, 
 
 " In one small urn 
 All that is left, sad relics of the dead." (P.) 
 
 The sight only increases Electra's sorrow, for it con- 
 firms what she had at first hoped might have been 
 only an evil rumour. She takes the urn from the 
 stranger (we must remember that the brother and 
 sister had not met for years) and she muses over her 
 shattered hopes, and over the untimely death of the 
 Orestes whom she had loved with such devoted affec- 
 tion : * 
 
 * An anecdote is told of the great actor Polus, that once, 
 when playing the part of Electra (for no woman ever appeared 
 on the Athenian stage), he embraced an urn containing the real 
 ashes of a much-loved son who had lately died, and, affected by
 
 ELECTRA. 177 
 
 " Btit now all joy bias vanished in a day 
 In this thy death, for, like a \vhirlwind, thou 
 Hast passed and swept off all. My father falls ; 
 I perish ; thou thyself hast gone from sight ; 
 Our foes exult. My mother wrongly named, 
 For mother she is none is mad with joy. 
 
 How hast thou brought me low, thou dearest one ! 
 Therefore receive thou me to this thy home, 
 Ashes to ashes, that with thee below 
 I may from henceforth dwell." (P.) 
 
 Then the disguised stranger knows that this maiden 
 noble even in her mean dress must be his sister ; 
 and his heart yearns towards her, and he can contain 
 himself no longer. He burns with indignation as he 
 looks on one whom he had left a light-hearted and inno- 
 cent girl, now worn and wasted, as she says herself, 
 
 " By blows, by hardships, and all forms of ill." 
 
 " Funeral urns," he cries, " are not for the living, and 
 Orestes is alive." Then he shows his father's signet- 
 ring, and Electra knows that he must be indeed her 
 brother. The haughty spirit which had defied ^gis- 
 thus, and repaid the queen with scorn for scorn, is at 
 once softened. She bursts into tears, and with wild 
 exclamations of joy throws herself into the arms of 
 " her own, her dear Orestes." 
 
 Even when told through the cold medium of a dead 
 language without a stage direction, without the aid 
 of dress or scenery no "recognition" in any drama 
 
 uncontrollable emotion, burst into genuine tears, and nttered 
 a cry of sorrow which deeply moved the sympathies of the 
 audience. 
 
 A. 0. vol. X. M
 
 178 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 comes up to the simple reality of this, although critics 
 may object that it is not in the highest style of art.* 
 
 But this is not a time for caresses and embraces. 
 Orestes remembers that there is sterner work before 
 them, and that 
 
 " Much speech might lose occasion's golden hour." (P.) 
 
 And while Electra still clings to her brother, as though 
 loath to leave him even for a moment, the old attendant 
 roughly breaks in upon their dialogue. Are they 
 weary of their lives, he asks, that they stand thus 
 idly prating on the brink of danger ? It is well that 
 he has kept good watch. Let them go in, and they 
 will find Clytemnestra alone within the palace. Then 
 Orestes and Pyladee obey his advice and enter. For 
 a while there, is a dead silence ; but suddenly the 
 silence is broken by a woman's shriek, and Electra 
 turns exultingly to the Chorus : 
 
 " A cry goes up within ; Mends, hear ye not ? 
 
 Cho. I heard what none should hear ah, misery ! 
 And shuddered listening. 
 
 Glytem. (unthin.) Ah me ! ah me ! Woe, woe ! 
 
 ^Egisthus, where art thou ? 
 
 Eke. Ha ! List again. 
 
 I hear a bitter cry. 
 
 Glytem. (within.} My son, my son, 
 Have pity on thy mother ! 
 
 Elec. Thou hadst none 
 
 On him, nor on the father that begat him. 
 
 * Aristotle (Poet. xi. 30) calls recognition by signs "most 
 inartistic."
 
 ELECTRA. 179 
 
 Clytem. (within.} Ah, I am smitten ! 
 
 Elec. Smite her yet again, 
 
 If thou hast strength for it. 
 
 Clytem. (within.) Ah ! blow on blow ! 
 
 Elec. Would that JEgisthus shared them ! 
 
 Clio. Yes ; the curse 
 
 Is now fulfilled. The buried live again ; 
 For they who died long since now drain in turn 
 The blood of those that slew them." (P.) 
 
 The shrieks from within have grown fainter and 
 fainter; and then follows the stillness of the grave, 
 until Orestes and Pylades come forth from the palace, 
 carrying their swords unsheathed and dripping with 
 blood. Almost at the same moment ^Egisthus is 
 seen coming from the country, and Electra hurriedly 
 pushes back her brother and his friend behind the 
 scene. The usurper has heard on the way a rumour of 
 the death of Orestes, and is radiant with triumphant 
 joy. He asks for the Phocian strangers, that he may 
 hear these good tidings from their own lips. " And so 
 they really report," he asks Electra, half incredulously, 
 "that your brother is dead?" "-You may see the 
 corpse," is her guarded answer. Then he bids the 
 palace-doors be thrown open, that all Mycenae may 
 behold the welcome sight. The set scene in the 
 background opens, and the interior of the palace 
 is discovered. There, on a bier, lies a body covered 
 with a veil. 
 
 Great Jove ! a grateful spectacle if thus 
 May it be said unsinning ; yet if she, 
 The awful Nemesis, be nigli and hear,
 
 180 SOPHOCLES. 
 
 I do'recall the sentence. Eaise the pall, 
 The dead was kindred to me, and shall know 
 A kinsman's sorrow. 
 
 Ores. Lift thyself the pall ; 
 
 Not mine, but thine, the office to survey 
 That which lies mute beneath, and to salute, 
 Lovingly sad, the dead one. 
 
 jEgis. Be it so, 
 
 It is well said. Go thou and call the queen. 
 Is she within ? 
 
 Ores. Look not around for her, 
 
 She is beside thee." (Lord Lytton.) 
 
 Then ^Egisthus lifts the veil, and recognises the 
 body of Clytemnestra. He knows at once that it must 
 be Orestes who stands before him, and that he is a 
 doomed man. " Let me speak one little word," he 
 pleads ; but Electra fiercely cuts him short, and bids 
 her brother " slay him out of hand, and cast his body 
 to the dogs and vultures : " 
 
 " Qu'il tombe, il en est temps, sous vos glaives vengeurs ! 
 Que son corps soit prive des funebres honneurs ! 
 Aux oiseaux devorants qu'il serve de pature, 
 Et trouve dans leurs flancs sa digne sepulture ! " * 
 
 Orestes accordingly forces him within the palace, that 
 the murderer may die by the son's hand on the same 
 spot where the father had fallen. And thus " poetical 
 justice elevates what on the modern stage would have 
 been but a spectacle of physical horror into the deeper 
 terror and sublimer gloom of a moral awe ; and vin- 
 
 * From the ' Electre ' of M. L&ra Hatevy, acted on the stage 
 at Paris in 1863 and 1865.
 
 ELECTRA. 181 
 
 dictive murder, losing its aspect, is idealised and hal- 
 lowed into a religious sacrifice." * 
 
 In an ancient epigram, a statue of Bacchus (the 
 patron god of the drama) is supposed to shadow and 
 protect the tomb of Sophocles. This statue holds in 
 its hands a mask, representing a woman's face of per- 
 fect beauty. " Whose face is that 1 " asks a passer-by. 
 " The face of Antigone," is the answer ; " or, if you 
 prefer it, that of Electra. You can make your choice,, 
 for both are masterpieces." 
 
 * Lord Lytton's Athens, ii. 568. 
 
 END OF SOPHOCLES. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.