Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/375

353 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 353 an allusion to this fact in a passage of the (Edipus at Colonus,* where Antigone says, by way of apology for Polyneices, " Other people, too, have had bad children, and a choleric temper, but have been induced by the soothing speeches of their friends to give up their anger." § 12. It was then in the latter years of his life that Sophocles com- posed this tragedy, which the ancients justly designate as a sweet and charming poem jf so wonderfully is it pervaded by gentle and amiable feelings, so deeply tinged with a tone mixed up of sorrow for the miseries of human existence and of comforting and elevating hopes. This drama impresses every susceptible reader with a warmth of sensi- bility as if it treated of the weal of the poet himself; here, more than in any other poem, one can recognize the immediate language of the heart.J In this play the aged Sophocles has plunged into the recollec- tions of his youth, during which the monuments and traditions of his rustic home, the village of Colonus near Athens, had made a deep and lasting impression on his mind : in the whole piece, and especially in the charming parodos-song which celebrates the natural beauties and ancient glory of Colonus, he expresses in the most amiable manner his patriotism and his love for his home. At Colonus were hallowed spots of every kind, consecrated by faith in the powers of darkness ; a grove of the Erinnyes, who were designated as " the venerable goddesses" (<7£/imi) ; " a brazen threshold/' as it was called, which was regarded as the portal of the subterranean world ; and, among other things, also an abode where (Edipus was said to dwell beneath the earth as a pro- pitious deity, conferring upon the land peace and bliss, and destroying its enemies, especially the Thebans. The touching thought that this (Edipus, whom the Erinnyes had so cruelly persecuted in his life-time, should find rest from his sorrows in their sanctuary, had been mythically expressed in other places, and was connected with particular localities. That such a sacrifice, however, to the avenging goddesses, one recon- ciled to them, and even tranquillized by them, should also possess the power of conferring blessings, depends upon the fundamental ideas of the worship of the Chthonian deities among the Greeks, which directly ascribe to the powers of the earth and the night a secret and mysterious fulness of life. It was in reference to these,§ according to the views of f Mollissimum ejus canren de OEdijiode. Cicero de Fin., v. i. 3. X Not to touch upon the higher ideas, we may also refer to the complaints of the chorus about the miseries of old age, v. 1211. There is a counterpoise to these laments in the subsequent praises of an easy death, at peace with the gods. § Sophocles himself says, v. 62, of the temples and monuments of Colonus, TDiavTa trot towt' icrrh, u %iy, oh >Jyci; rift&iftiv' «U« T>i mov<r'ioi *-X:sv, i.e.. not cele- brated by poets and orators, but only by local tradition. How far vEschylns was from conceiving anything of the kind may be seen from several passages in the Seven against Thebes ; according to which (Edipus must have been dead and buried in Thebes before the war, and this was in accordance with the more ancient 2 A
 * aXX' ia aurov' tiff) ^ari^m; yova.) xaxai. V. 1 192 ff.