Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/362

340 340 HISTORY OF THE tradition* that the Antigone was the thirty-second play in a chrono- logical arrangement of the dramas of Sophocles, there still remain eighty-one dramas for the second half of his poetical career ; or, if we leave out the satyrical dramas, we have about fifty-eight pieces remain- ing. We arrive at the same result from a date relating to Euripides, of whose pieces, said to be ninety-two in number, the Alcestis was the sixteenth. f Now, according to the same authority, the Alcestis was exhibited in Olymp. 85. 2. B.C. 438, the seventeenth year of the poetical life of Euripides, which lasted for forty-nine, from Olymp. 81. 1. b.c. 455, to Olymp. 93. 2. B.C. 406. It may be seen from this, that at first both poets brought out a tetralogy every three or four years, but after- wards every two years at least. A consequence of this more rapid production appears in that slight regard for, or rather the absolute neglect of, the stricter models, which has been remarked in the lyrical parts of tragedy after the 90th or 89th Olympiad. § 3. As far as one can judge from internal and external evidence, the remaining tragedies are all subsequent to the Antigone : the following is perhaps their chronological order • Antigone, Electra, Trachinian Women, King Oedipus, Ajax, Philoctetes, Qjldipus at Colonus. The only definite information we possess is that the Philoctetes was acted in Olymp. 92. 3. B.C. 409, and the OSdipus at Colonus not till Olymp. 94. 3. b.c. 401, when it was brought out by the younger Sophocles, the author being dead. Taken together, they exhibit the art of Sophocles in its full maturity, in that mild grandeur which Sophocles was the first to appropriate to himself, when, after having (to use a remarkable ex- pression of his own which has been preserved) put away the pomp of iEschylus along with his boyish things, and laid aside a harshness of manner, which had sprung up from his own too great art and refine- ment, he had at length attained to that style which he himself con- sidered to be the best and the most suited to the representation of the characters of men. % In the Antigone, the Trachinian Women, and the Electra, we have still, perhaps, a little of that artificial style and studied number thirty-two included the satyrical dramas also, some of the trilogies must have been without this appendage ; otherwise the thirty-second piece would have been a satyrical drama. f See the didascalia to the Alcestis e cod. Faticano published by Dindorf in the Oxford edition 1836. The number /?' is, in accordance with this view, changed to if, which suits the reckoning better than iZ,'. We have a third date of this kind in the Birds of Aristophanes, which is the thirty-fifth of that poet's comedies. The important passage, quoted by Plutarch, De Profectu Virtut. Sent. p. 79. B., should undoubtedly be written as follows: — b lotpoxXru 'ivyi, tov Klo-^vXov 'hia. iriitouy^as byxav, lira to tfixpov xai xarari^vov rns ccwrou xuravxivri;, lis rpirov no*n to rris Xi^ioi; fiira/iiZxXuti titos, SVsj itrr'iv iihxojrarov xa) fiiXritrrov. [The xarao-xiuh here opposed to the Xs2;/s means the language or words as op- posed to the style or their arrangement. See Plutarch Comp. Aristoph. et Menandr. p. 853 C. iv rn narcurxivy run bvof&dTwt.—J&Q .]
 * See the hypothesis to the Antigone, hy Aristophanes of Byzantium. If the