Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/366

344 344 HISTORY OF THE Sophocles considers Antigone's act as going beyond what women should dare, he lays much more stress on the truth; that there is something holy without and above the state, to which the state should pay respect and reverence : a doctrine which Antigone declares with such irresist- ible truth and sublimity.* Every movement in the course of this piece which could shake Creon in the midst of his madness, and open his eyes to his own situation, turns upon this and is especially directed to him : — the noble security with which Antigone relies on the holiness of her deed ; the sisterly affection of Ismene, who would willingly share the consequences of the act ; the loving zeal of Harmon, who is at first prudent and then desperate ; the warnings of Teiresias ; — all are in vain, till the latter breaks out into those prophetic threatenings of misfortune which at last, when it is too late, penetrate Creon's hardened heart, Hsemon slays himself on the body of Antigone, the death of the mother follows that of her son, and Creon is compelled to acknowledge that there are blessings in one's family for which no political wisdom is an adequate substitute. § 6. The characteristics of the art of Sophocles are most prominently shown in the Electra, because we have here an opportunity of making a direct comparison with the Orestea of iEschylus, and in particular with the Choephorce. Sophocles takes an entirely different view of this mythological subject, as well by representing the punishment of Cly- taemnestra without the connexion of a trilogy, as by making Electra the chief character and protagonist. This was impracticable in the case of iEschylus, for he was obliged to make Orestes, who was the chief per- son in the legend, also the chief character in the drama. But for So- phocles' finer delineation of character, and for his psychological views, Electra was a much more suitable heroine. For while Orestes, a matri- cide from duty and conscience, an avenger of blood from his birth, and especially intrusted with this commission by the Delphic oracle, appears to be urged to it by a superior power ; Electra, on the con- trary, is sustained in her burning hatred against her mother and her mother's paramour, by her own feelings, — which are totally different from those of her sister Chrysothemis, — by her entire devotion to the sublime image of her murdered father, which is ever present to her mind, by disgust for her mother's pride and lust, in short by the most secret impulses of a young maiden's heart : that ^Egisthus wears the robes of Agamemnon, that Clytsemnestra held a feast on the day of her husband's murder, these are continually recurring provocations. Such is the character which Sophocles has made the central figure in his tragedy, a character in which the warmest feelings are blended with the peculiar shrewdness that distinguished the female character at the time represented, and he has contrived to give such a direction to the plot, V, 450. all yap ri f/.oi Zivs r,v —