did. The completeness of his self-abandonment appears most vividly in

the dialogue with Creon, upon whose will his immediate fate depends. When Creon, whom he had lately misjudged and treated with violent harshness, comes and greets him kindly, the wretched king tastes the very bitterness of degradation, yet he is not abject. He only prays once more, with intensest urgency of pleading, to have the uttermost of the excommunication he had vowed, executed upon his head. Thinking less of himself than of the miserable beings associated with him in disaster, he beseeches Creon to inter the queen, and, for his boys, to give them only a fair chance in life--they will be men, and may carve out their own fortunes in the world; but for his two poor girls, left desolate, a scorn and mockery to all men, he can only pray that they may come to him, be near him, bear the burden of their misery by their father's side. The tenderness of Oedipus for Ismene and Antigone, his yearning to clasp them, is terribly--almost painfully--touching, when we remember who they were, how born, the children of what curses. The words with which the king addresses them are even hazardous in their directness. Yet it was needful that humanity should by some such strain of passion be made to emerge from this tempest of soul-shattering woes; and thus, too, a glimpse of that future is provided which remained for Oedipus, if sorrowful, assuaged at least by filial love. In reply to all his eloquent supplications Creon answers that he will not take upon himself the responsibility of dealing with his case. Nothing can be done without consulting the oracle at Delphi. Oedipus has, therefore, to be patient and endure. The strong hero, who saved Thebes from the Sphinx and swayed the city, is now in the hands of tutors and governors awaiting his doom. He submits quietly, and the tragedy is ended.

The effect of such a tragedy as _Oedipus the King_ is to make men feel that the earth is shaken underneath them, and that the heavens above are big with thunder. Compassion and fear are agitated in the highest degree; old landmarks seem to vanish; the mightiest have fallen, and the most impious, convinced of God, have been goaded to self-murder. Great, indeed, is the tragic poet's genius who can make the one sure point amid this confusion the firmness of its principal fore-destined victim. That is the triumph of Sophocles. Out of the chaos of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ springs the new order of the _Oedipus Coloneüs_; and here it may be said that perhaps the most valid argument in favor of the Æschylean trilogy as a supreme work of dramatic art is this--that such a tragedy as the first Oedipus demanded such another as the second. The new motives suggested in the last act were not sufficiently worked out to their conclusion; much that happened in the climax of the _Tyrannus_ seemed to necessitate the _Coloneüs_.

The interest of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ centres in its plot, and that is my only excuse for having dwelt so long on the structure of a play familiar to every student. That of the _Oedipus Coloneüs_ is different. It has, roughly speaking, no plot. It owes its perfect, almost superhuman, beauty to the atmosphere which bathes it, as with peace after tempest, with the lucid splendors of sunset succeeding to a storm-vexed and tumultuous day. The scene is laid, as the name indicates, in the village birthplace of the poet. Years are supposed to have elapsed since the conclusion of the former tragedy; Oedipus, after being detained in Thebes against his will at first, has now been driven forth by Creon, and has wandered many miles in blindness, led by his daughter's hand. The ethical interest of the play, so far as it is not absorbed by Oedipus himself, centres principally in Antigone, whereby we are prepared for her emergence into fullest prominence in the tragedy which bears her name. Always keeping in mind that these three plays are not a trilogy, I cannot but insist again that much is lost, especially in all that concerns the unfolding of Antigone's character, by not reading them in the order suggested by the fable. At the same time, though Antigone engrosses our sympathy and attention, Sophocles has varied the drama by a more than usual number of persons. The generous energy of Theseus forms a fine contrast to the inactivity forced upon Oedipus by the conditions of the subject, and also to the meanness of Creon; while the episodes of Ismene's arrival, of Antigone's abduction, and of the visit of Polyneices, add movement to what might else have been too stationary. It should also be said that all these subsidiary sources of interest are used with subtle art by Sophocles for enhancing the dignity of Oedipus, for arousing our sympathy with him, and for bringing into prominence the chief features of his character. None can, therefore, be regarded as superfluous, though, strictly speaking, they might have been detached without absolute destruction of the drama, which is more than can be said about the slightest incidents of _Oedipus Tyrannus_. As regards Oedipus himself, that modification of his fiery temperament which Sophocles revealed at the end of the first tragedy has now become permanent. He is schooled into submission; yet he has not lost the old impetuosity that formed the groundwork of his nature. He is still quick to anger and vehement in speech, but both his anger and his vehemence are justified by the occasion. Something, moreover, of fateful and mysterious, severing him from the common race of men and shrouding him within the seclusion of his dread calamity, has been added. The terror of his dreadful past, and the prospect of his august future, environ him with more than kingly dignity. The skill of Sophocles as a dramatic poet is displayed in all its splendor by the new light thrown upon the central figure of Oedipus. The effect of unity is not destroyed: those painful shocks to our sense of probability so frequent when inferior dramatists--poets of the rank of Fletcher or of Jonson--attempt to depict a nature altered by internal reformation or by force of circumstance do not occur. The Oedipus of both the tragedies remains one man; we understand the change that has been wrought in him; and while we feel that it is adequate and natural, we marvel at the wisdom of the poet who could vary his design with so much firmness.

The oracle, which continues to play an important part in this tale of Thebes, has warned Oedipus that he will end his days within the precincts of the Semnai Theai, or august goddesses of retribution. In his new phase the man of haste and wrath is no longer heedless of oracles; nor does he let their words lie idle in his mind. It is, therefore, with a strong presentiment of approaching death that he discovers early in this play that his feet, led by Antigone, have rested in the grove of the Furies at Colonus. The place itself is fair. There are here no harpy-gorgons with bloodshot eyes, and vipers twining in their matted hair. The meadows are dewy, with crocus-flowers and narcissus; in the thickets of olive and laurel nightingales keep singing; and rivulets spread coolness in the midst of summer's heat. The whole wood is hushed, and very fresh and wild. A solemn stillness broods there; for the feet of the profane keep far away, and none may tread the valley-lawns but those who have been purified. The ransomed of the Lord walk there. This solemnity of peace pervades the whole play, forming, to borrow a phrase from painting, the silver-gray harmony of the picture. In thus bringing Oedipus to die among the unshowered meadows of those Dread Ladies, whom in his troubled life he found so terrible, but whom in his sublime passage from the world he is about to greet resignedly, we may trace peculiar depth of meaning. The thought of death, calm but austere, tempers every scene in the drama. We are in the presence of one whose life is ended, who is about to merge the fever of existence in the tranquillity beyond. This impression of solemnity is heightened when we remember that the poet wrote the _Coloneüs_ in extreme old age. Over him, too, the genius of everlasting repose already spread wings in the twilight, and the mysteries of the grave were nearer to him and more daily present than to other men.

A country fellow, who perceives Oedipus seated by his daughter on a marble bench within the sacred precinct, bids them quit the spot, for it is hallowed. Oedipus, however, knowing that his doom shall be fulfilled, asks that he may be confronted with the elders of the place. They come and gaze with mingled feelings of distrust and awe on the blind hero, august in desolation. Before they can converse with him, Oedipus has to quit the recesses of the grove, and gain a spot where speech and traffic are permitted. Then, in answer to their questions, he informs them who he is--Oedipus. At that name they start back in horror, demanding that he shall carry the abomination of his presence from their land. This affords the occasion for a splendid speech from the old man, one of the most telling passages of eloquence in Sophocles, in which he appeals to the time-long hospitality and fame for generosity of Athens. Athens was never known to spurn the suppliant or expel the stranger, and the deeds of Oedipus they so much dread are sufferings rather:

#epei ta g' erga mou peponthot' esti mallon ê dedrakota.#

The Chorus, moved by the mingled impetuosity and sound reasoning of their suitor, perceive that the case is too grave for them to decide. Accordingly, they send a messenger for Theseus; but, before he can be summoned, Ismene arrives on horseback with the news that her brothers are quarrelling about the throne of Thebes. Eteocles, the younger, has usurped the sovereignty, while Polyneices has fled to Argos to engage the chiefs of the Achaians in his cause. Both parties, meantime, are eager to secure the person of Oedipus, since an oracle has proclaimed that with him will victory abide. Oedipus, hearing these tidings, bursts into a strain of passionate denunciation, which proves that the old fire of his temper is smouldering still unquenched. When he was forlorn and in misery, his unnatural sons took no thought of him. They sent him forth to roam a pariah upon the earth, leaving to his daughters the care and burden of supporting him. Now, basely anxious for their selfish profit, they come to claim possession of his old, world-wearied flesh. Instead of blessings, they shall meet with curses. Instead of the fair land of Thebes to lord it over, they shall barely get enough ground to die and be buried in. He, meanwhile, will abide at Athens, and bequeath a heritage of help and honor to her soil.

The Chorus now call upon Oedipus to perform the rites of purification required by the Eumenides--rites which Sophocles has described with the loving minuteness of one to whom the customs of Colonus were from boyhood sacred. Ismene goes to carry out their instructions, and in her absence Theseus arrives upon the scene. Theseus, throughout the drama, plays towards Oedipus the part of a good-hearted hospitable friend. His generosity is ethically contrasted with the meanness of Creon and the selfishness of Polyneices, while, artistically, the practical energy of his character serves for a foil to the stationary dignity of the chief actor. Sophocles has thus contrived to give weight and importance to a personage who might, in weaker hands, have been degraded into a mere instrument. Oedipus assures the Attic king that he will prove no useless and unserviceable denizen. The children of Erechtheus, whose interests rank first in the mind of Theseus, will find him in the future a powerful and god-protected sojourner within their borders. His natural sympathy for the persecuted and oppressed having been thus strengthened by the prospect of reciprocal advantage, Theseus formally accepts Oedipus as a suppliant, and promises him full protection. At this point, forming, as it were, a halting-place in the action of the play, Sophocles introduced that famous song about Colonus, which no one has yet succeeded in translating, but which, for modern ears, has received new value from the music of Mendelssohn.

What follows, before the final climax of the drama, consists of the efforts made by Creon, on the part of Eteocles, and by Polyneices, to enlist Oedipus respectively upon their sides in the war of succession to the Theban throne. Creon displays his heartless, cunning, impudent, sophistical, and forceful character, while Oedipus opposes indignation and contempt, unmasking his hypocrisy, and stripping his specious arguments of all that hides their naked selfishness. In this scene we feel that Sophocles is verging upon the Euripidean manner. A little more would make the altercation between Creon and Oedipus pass over into a forensic wrangling-match. As it is, the chief dramatic value of the episode is to exhibit the grandeur of the wrath of Oedipus in its righteous heat when contrasted with the wretched shifts of a mere rhetorical sophist.

After Creon, by the help of Theseus, has been thwarted in his attempt to carry off Antigone, Polyneices approaches with crocodile tears, fawning intercessions, and fictitious sorrow for his father's desolation. Oedipus flashes upon his covert egotism the same light of clear unclouded insight which had unmasked Creon. "What," he asks, "is the value of tears now, of prayers now? Dry were your eyes, hard as stone your heart, dumb your lips, when I went forth from Thebes unfriended. Here is your guerdon: Before Thebes's walls you shall die, pierced by your brother's hand, and your brother by yours." The imprecation of the father upon the son would be unnatural, were it not for the son's falseness, who behaved like a Regan to Oedipus in his calamity, and who now, when the old man has become a mysteriously important personage, seeks to make the most of him for his own uses.

The protracted dialogues with Creon and Polyneices serve to enhance the sublimity of Oedipus. He, all the while, is seated, a blind, travel-stained, neglected mendicant, upon the marble bench of the Eumenides. There is horror in his very aspect. Hellas rings with the abominations connected with his name. Yet, to this poor pariah, to this apparent object of pity and loathing, come princes and warriors capable of stirring all the States of Greece in conflict. He rejects them, firm in his consciousness of heaven-appointed destiny. Sophocles seems bent on showing how the wrath of God may be turned aside from its most signal and notorious victims by real purity of heart and nobleness of soul; how, from the depths of degradation and affliction, the spirit of man may rise; and how the lot of demigods may be reserved for those whom the world ignorantly judges worthy of its scorn. Oedipus of late stood like the lightning-blasted tree that travellers dread--the _evitandum bidental_ of Roman superstition. His withered limbs have now more health and healing in them than the leaf-embowered forest oak.

The treatment of Polyneices in the _Oedipus Coloneüs_ supplies a good example of the Sophoclean tendency to humanize the ancient myths of Hellas. The curse pronounced by Oedipus formed an integral element of that portion of the legend which suggested to Æschylus the _Seven against Thebes_. By its force, the whole weight of the doom that overhangs the house of Laius is brought to bear upon the suicidal brethren, both of whom rush helplessly, with eyes open, to meet inevitable fate.

#ô Zeu te kai Gê kai polissouchoi theoi, Ara t' Erinys patros hê megasthenês#

are the opening words of the prayer of Eteocles in that tragedy; while phrases like these, #ô ponoi domôn neoi palaioisi symmigeis kakois# and #ô melaina kai teleia geneos Oidipou t' ara#, form the burden of the choric songs. Sophocles does not seek to make the wrath of Oedipus less terrible; he adheres to the old outline of the story, and heightens the tragic horror of the curse by framing for it words intense by reason of their very calculated calmness (1383-1396). At the same time he shows how the obstinate temper of Polyneices, and his sense of honor, are necessary to its operation. After the dreadful sentence, dooming him to self-murder by his brother's spear, has been pronounced, Polyneices stands before his father and his sister like one stunned. Antigone, with a woman's instinct, entreats him to choose the only way still left of safety. He may disband the army, and retire from the adventure against Thebes. To this her brother answers:

#all' ouch hoion te. pôs gar authis an palin strateum' agoimi tauton eisapax tresas?#

when she persists, he repeats #mê peith' ha mê dei#. Thus, instead of bringing into strong relief the operation of blind fate, Sophocles places in the foreground the human agencies which contribute to the undoing of Polyneices. His crime of unfilial egotism, his dread of being thought a coward, and his honor rooted in dishonor, drive him through the tempest of his father's curse upon the rock of doom. The part played by Antigone in this awful scene of altercation between her father and her brother, first interceding for mercy, and then striving to break the stubborn will of the rebellious youth,[141] prepares our minds for the tragedy in which she will appear as protagonist. Hitherto she has been remarkable for filial love. She now shows herself a gentle and tender sister to one who had deeply wronged her. The absolute unselfishness which gives to her the beauty as of some clear, flawless jewel shines forth by anticipation in the _Coloneüs_, enlisting our warmest sympathies upon her side, and tempering the impression of hardness that might be produced by a simple study of the _Antigone_.

When Polyneices, with the curse still ringing in his ears, has fled forth, Cain-like, from the presence of his father, thunder is heard, and the end approaches. The chief actors, led by the blind hero, move from the stage in order suited to the processional gravity of the Greek theatre, while the speech of the Messenger, conveying to the Chorus the news of the last minutes in the life of Oedipus, prepares the spectators for the reappearance of his daughters on the scene. As in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, so now a new motive of interest is introduced in the last act of the drama. The _Antigone_ is imperatively demanded as a sequel. Our attention is riveted upon Antigone, who in losing her father has lost all. Her first thought is that he died nobly, peacefully, at one with God. Her next thought is that she shall never see him again, never more bear the sweet burden of anxiety and pain for him, never even have access to his hidden tomb. Her third thought is a longing to be dead with him, enfolded in oblivion of the fate which persecutes her kith and kin. Life stretches before her boundless, homeless, comfortless, nor has she now a single memory for him whose love might have consoled a woman of less stubborn soul--for Hæmon. It is characteristic of his whole conception of Antigone that Sophocles introduced no allusion to that underplot of love at this point. When Theseus reproves her for despair, she awakes to fresh unselfishness: "Send me to Thebes," she cries, "that I may stay, if possible, my brothers' strife." Throughout this final scene the single-hearted heat and firm will of Antigone, her desire for action, and her readiness to accept responsibility are contrasted with Ismene's yielding temper and passivity. We are thus prepared for the opening of the third drama, which, though written first by Sophocles, is the artistic close and climax of the tale of Thebes.

The most perfect female character in Greek poetry is Antigone. She is purely Greek, unlike any woman of modern fiction, except perhaps the Fedalma of George Eliot. In her filial piety, in her intercession for Polyneices at the knees of Oedipus, in her grief when her father is taken from her, she does, indeed, resemble the women whom most men among us have learned to honor in their sisters or their daughters or their mother. Of such women the Greek maiden, with her pure calm face and virginal straight lines of classic drapery, is still the saint and patroness. But what shall we say of the Antigone of this last drama, of the sister who is willing, lest her brother lie unburied on the Theban plain, to lay her own life down, disobeying the law of her sovereign, defying Creon to the face, appealing against unjust tribunals to the judgment-seat of powers more ancient than the throne of Zeus himself, and marching to her living tomb with dauntless strength in order that the curse-attainted ghost of Polyneices shall have rest in Hades? To the modern mind she appears a being from another sphere. A strain of unearthly music seems to announce her entrance and her exit on the stage. That the sacrifice of the sister's very life, the breaking of her plighted troth to Hæmon, should follow upon the sprinkling of those few handfuls of dust--that she should give that life up smilingly, nor ever in her last hours breathe her lover's name--is a tragic circumstance for which our sympathies are not prepared: we can neither divest our minds of the fixed modern prejudice that the first duty of a woman is to her husband, nor can we fully enter into the antique superstition of defrauded sepulture. Yet it is necessary to do both of these things, to sequester Antigone from the sphere of modern obligations, and to enter hand in hand with her the inner sanctuary of antique piety, in order to do justice to the conception of Sophocles. This effort of the imagination may be facilitated by remembering, first, that Antigone inherited her father's proud self-will--

#dêloi to gennêm' ômon ex ômou patros tês paidos; eikein d' ouk epistatai kakois#--

and, secondly, that disaster after disaster, the loss of Oedipus, the death of her two brothers, has come huddling upon her in a storm of fate, so that life is, in a manner, over for her, and she feels isolated in a cold and cruel world. This combination of her character and her circumstances renders her action in the _Antigone_ conceivable. Without the hardness she inherited from Oedipus, she could not have gone through her tragic part. Without the vow she registered above her father's grave, to bring help to her brethren, seeing that they alone were left, the sentiment of her last speech would sound rhetorical. Moreover, the poet who breathed into her form a breath of life so fiery has himself justified us in regarding her act as one removed from the plain path of virtue. Antigone was no Hindoo widow to die upon a husband's pyre. Her heroism, her resistance offered to the will of Creon, had in it a splendid criminality. It was just the casuistry of the conflict between public and private obligations, between the dictates of her conscience and the commands of her sovereign, that enabled Sophocles to render the peculiar stoicism of her character pathetic. In spite of all these considerations, it is probable that she will strike a modern reader at the first as frigid. Especially, if he have failed to observe the _nuances_ of her portrait in the _Oedipus Coloneüs_, he will be inclined to wish that Sophocles had softened here and there the outlines of her adamantine statue. Yet, after long contemplation of those perfect lineaments, we come to recognize in her a purity of passion, a fixity of purpose, a loyalty of kinship, a sublime enthusiasm for duty, simply conceived and self-justified in spite of all conventions to the contrary, which soar above the strain of modern tragic sentiment. Even Alfieri, in the noble drawing he has sketched from the Sophoclean picture, could not abstain from violating its perfection by this sentimental touch of common feeling:

Emone, ah! tutto io sento, Tutto l' amor, che a te portava: io sento Il dolor tutto, a cui ti lascio.

No such words are to be found in Sophocles upon the lips of the dying Antigone. She is all for her father and her brothers. The tragedy of Hæmon belongs to Creon, not to her. Her furthest concessions to the sympathies which might have swayed a weaker woman are found in this line,

#ô philtath' Haimon, hôs s' atimazei patêr#,

and in the passage of the Kommos where she bewails her luckless lot of maidenhood. For the rest, Sophocles has sustained her character as that of one "whom, like sparkling steel, the strokes of chance made hard and firm." This steely durability, this crystalline sparkle, divide her not only from the ideal raised by romance for womanhood, but distinguish her, as the daughter of Oedipus, from the general sisterhood even of Greek heroines.

The peculiar qualities of Antigone are brought into sharp relief by the milder virtues of Ismene, who thinks it right to obey Creon, and who has no spirit for the deed of daring, but who is afterwards eager to share the punishment of her sister. Antigone repels her very sternly, herein displaying the force of her nature under its less amiable aspect: "Have courage! Thou livest, but my soul long since hath died." The glory of the act is hers alone. Ismene has no right to share it when the risks are past, the penalty is paid. Antigone's repulsion of her sister seems to supply the key to her own heroism. "Oedipus," she says, "is dead; my brethren are dead: for them I lived, and in their death I died to life; but you--your heart is not shut up within your father's and your brother's grave; it is still warm, still eager for love and the joys of this world. Live, then. For me it would be no more possible to live such life as yours than for the clay-cold corpse upon the bier."

The character of Creon, darkened in its tone and shadow to the utmost with a view to affording a foil of another species for Antigone, was thought worthy of minute and careful treatment by Sophocles. In the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ he is wronged rather than wronging. While suffering from the unjust suspicion and hasty language of the king, he pleads his cause with decent gravity and shows no sign of either arrogance or cowardice. At the end, when Oedipus has fallen, his own behavior is such as would not disgrace a generous as well as prudent prince. The neutrality for good or evil which distinguishes Creon in this play, marking him out in contrast with the fiery heat of Oedipus, the impious irony of Jocasta, is, to say the least, respectable. In the _Oedipus Coloneüs_ he plays a consistently mean and odious part; his pragmatical display of rhetoric before the burghers of Colonus, when tested by his violent and cruel conduct towards Antigone, proves him to be a hollow-hearted and specious hypocrite. The light here reflected back upon his respectability in the _Tyrannus_ is decidedly unfavorable. In the _Antigone_ Creon becomes, if possible, still more odious; only our animosity against him is tempered by contempt. To the faults of egotism, hardness, and hypocritical prating, are now added the infatuation of self-will and the godless hatred of a dead foe. There is, indeed, a show of right in the decree published concerning the two brothers, one of whom had brought a foreign army against Thebes; but it would be sophistry to maintain that Creon was actuated by patriotic motives. The defeat and death of Polyneices were punishment enough. By pursuing his personal spite beyond the grave Creon insults the common instincts of humanity, the sympathies of the people, and the supposed feelings of the gods, who cannot bear to gaze upon abominations. The pathetic self-devotion of Antigone, the voice of the city, the remonstrances of Hæmon, and the warnings of Teiresias are all thrown away upon his stubborn and conceited obstinacy. He shows himself, in short, to be a tyrant of the orthodox sort. Like a tyrant, he is, moreover, absurdly suspicious: the guardian has, he thinks, been bought; Ismene must be hatching treason; Hæmon prefers a woman to his duty; Teiresias is plotting for the sake of gain against him. When it is just too late, he gives way helplessly and feebly, moved to terror by the dark words of the seer. Creon is, therefore, a mixed character, great neither for good nor for evil, weak through wilfulness, plausible in words and wavering in his determinations, a man who might have passed for excellent if he had never had to wield a kingdom's power. His own description of himself--#mataion andra#--suits him not only in the utter collapse of his character and rain of his fortunes, but also in the height of his prosperity and fulness of his seeming strength.

Sophocles might fairly be censured for having made the misery of Creon the climax of a drama which ought to have had its whole interest centred in Antigone. Our sympathies have not been sufficiently enlisted on the side of Hæmon to make us care much about his death. For Eurydice it is impossible to rouse more than a languid pity. Creon, we feel, gets no more than he deserves; instead of being sorry for him, we are only angry that he was not swept away into the dustheap of oblivion sooner. It was surely a mistake to divert the attention of the audience, at the very end of the tragedy, from its heroine to a character which, like that of Creon, rouses impatient scorn as well as antipathy. That Sophocles had artistic reasons for not concluding this play with the death of Antigone may be readily granted by those who have made the crises of the _Ajax_, the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, and the _Oedipus Coloneüs_ the subject of special study. He preferred, it seems, to relax the strained sympathies of his audience by a prolongation of the drama on an altered theme. Yet this scarcely justifies the shifting of the centre of interest attempted in the _Antigone_. We have to imagine that the inculcation of a moral lesson upon the crime of #asebeia# was the poet's paramount object.[142] If so, he sacrificed dramatic effect to ethics.

It should be noticed that Antigone, in whom the fate of the family of Laius is finally accomplished, falls an innocent victim. Her tragedy is no immediate consequence of the Oedipodean curse. While her brethren were wilfully involved in the doom of their house, she perished in the cause of divine charity. Finding that the immutable ordinances of Heaven clashed with the arbitrary volition of a ruler, she preferred to obey the law of conscience and to die at the behest of a pride-maddened tyrant. She is technically disobedient, morally most duteous. Thus the _Antigone_ carries us beyond the region of hereditary disaster into the more universal sphere of ethical casuistry. Its tragic interest depends less upon the evolution of the law of ancestral guilt than on the conflict of two duties. By suggesting the casuistical question to his audience, while he freed his heroine from all doubt upon the subject, Sophocles maintained the sublime simplicity which distinguishes Antigone above all women of romance. The retribution that falls on Creon furnishes a powerful example of the Greek doctrine of Nemesis; but over Antigone herself Nemesis exerts no sway. In her action there was nothing unconsidered; in her doom there was nothing unforeseen.

FOOTNOTES:

[129] "Fain would I be a fair lyre of ivory, and fair boys carrying me to Dionysus's choir."

[130] "Soul of mine, in due season it is meet to gather love, when life is young."

[131] _De Aud. Poet._, p. 16 C.

[132] _De Subl._, xxxiii. 5.

[133] See above, p. 378.

[134] Notice the phrases #beltiones# in _Poet._, cap. ii., as compared with #kath' hêmas#, and again #homoious poiountes, kallious graphousin#, in cap. xv., together with the whole analogy of painting in both of these places.

[135] Cap. xxvi.

[136] _Oed. Tyr._, 863; _Ant._, 450. The first translation is borrowed from Mr. M. Arnold.

[137] See what Goethe says about the importance of Creon and Ismene in the _Antigone_. (Eckermann, vol. i.)

[138] Our imperfect knowledge of the Attic drama prevents our forming any opinion as to the employment of the _deus ex machinâ_ by the earlier tragedians.

[139] English Translation, vol. i. p. 371.

[140] _Poetics_, xi.

[141] See especially 1181-1203, 1414-1443.

[142] The last six lines spoken by the Chorus seem to justify this view. A couplet from the _Pheræi_ of Moschion might be inscribed as a motto upon the _Antigone_:

#kenon thanontos andros aikizein skian; zôntas kolazein ou thanontas eusebes.#

END OF VOL. I.

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