Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/378

356 356 HISTORY OF THE tions. With regard to this, it must be remarked that, at the period when he wrote, the spirit of the Greek nation was in a state of progres- sive developement, in which it entered upon speculations beyond its own impulses and their utterance by means of words and sentences, and in which the reflecting powers were every day gaining more and more the mastery over the powers of perception. In such a period as this, an observation of and attention to words in themselves is perfectly natural. Besides, at this time of vehement excitement, the Athenians had an especial fondness for a certain difficulty of expression.* An orator would please them less by telling them everything plainly than by leaving them something to guess, and so giving them the satis- faction of acquiring a sort of respect for their own sagacity and discern- ment. Thus Sophocles often plays at hide and seek with the significa- tions of words, in order that the mind, having exerted itself to find out his meaning, may comprehend it more vividly and distinctly when it is once arrived at. In the syntactical combinations, too, Sophocles is very expressive, and to a certain extent artificial, while he strives with great precision to mark all the subordinate relations of thought. Perspicuity and fluency are incompatible with such a style as this; and, indeed, these properties were not generally characteristic of the rhetoric of the time. The style of Sophocles moves on with a judicious and accurate observation of all incidental circumstances, and does not hurry forwards with inconsiderate ha^te ; though in this very particular there is a dif- ference between the older and the more recent tragedies of Sophocles, for several speeches in the Ajax, the Philoctetes, and the GEdipus at Colonus have the same oratorical flow which we find in Euripides.f In the lyrical parts, this distinct exhibition and clear illustration of the thoughts are combined with an extraordinary grace and sweetness : several of the choral odes are, even taken by themselves, master-pieces of a sort of lyric poetry, which rivals that of Sappho in beauty of de- scription and grace of conception. Sophocles, too, has with singular good taste cultivated the Glyconian metre, which is so admirably calcu- lated for the expression of gentle and kindly emotions. by novelties of style ; that they despise what is common, admire what is strange, and, i hough they speak not themselves, are nevertheless so far rivals of the speaker that they follow close upon him with their thoughts, and even outrun him. f See the speeches of Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Teucer, in the second part of 'Me Ajax, and CEdipua' defence in v. 960 of the OEdipus at Colonus.
 * uieon says (in Thucydides III. 38) that the Athenians may easily be deceived