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12 the wise sit in the clouds and mock them." A long train of disastrous consequences often follows from a single impious speech, or guilty deed—nay, even from a hot word or a hasty blow. Thus the idea of Destiny passes into that of retribution. Punishment surely follows sin, if not in a man's own day, yet descending, like an heirloom of misery, upon his children.

In fact, Sophocles seems to have asked himself the question put by Nisus to Euryalus in the Æneid, and to have answered it in his treatment of men in their relations to God:—

In each of his plays he shows how passion works out its own end—whether it be the pride of Œdipus, the stubbornness of Creon, the insane fury of Ajax, or the