Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/146

 128 SOPHOCLES. as in the plenitude of wisdom and power, he undertakes to trace the evil, of which he is himself the sole author, to its secret source." The greatest dramatic ingenuity is shown in the manner in which CEdipus investigates the dreadful reality, and the hearer, though acquainted with the plot, shudders when CEdipus becomes at last conscious that he is about to hear the whole extent of his calamity ^ The powerful and self-confident king of the early part of the play becomes the blind and helpless outcast of the con- cluding scene; but his sins were involuntary 2, and his punishment and humiliation are his own act; so that the sufferer leaves the stage an object of the spectator's compassion, and a fit hero for the drama which renders poetic justice to this poor child of fate. In the CEdipus Coloneus the exiled king appears supported by his affectionate daughter Antigone, and dependent on the charity of strangers. His outward condition could not be more helpless and pitiable. But he is on the verge of his predicted resting-place. The sanctuary of the awful goddesses, who persecuted the volun- tary matricide Orestes, is opened to him, the unwilling murderer of his father, as a place of repose in which he would exercise a pro- tecting power over the land which received him. The Thebans, who had expelled him as a polluted person, strive in vain to get him back; his son Polyneices, whom he regarded as a parricide^, seeks his protection, but is rejected with imprecations ; and Q^]dipus descends to his sacred tomb, summoned by thunder from on high^, and led by Hermes and the goddess of the shades^, to the spot where he would be for ever the protecting genius of the land of Attica^. The Ajax represents the consequences of the frenzy into which that hero was driven by the disappointment of his claims to the armour of Achilles. Under the influence of a strong delusion, which Athena, in the prologue, states that she had brought upon him, he attacks the flocks and herds of the Greek army while he imagines that he is slaying or leading away captive his successful rival Ulysses and the chieftains who had sliglited him. On coming to his senses he calmly resolves on self-destruction as the only means of withdrawing himself from the disgrace and punishment ^ (Ed. Tijr. 1 1 69: TT/jos ai}T(2 y eifil rc^ 8eiv(^ Xeyeiv — K&ycjoy' aKoieiV. 2 (JEd. Col. 266: TO, y ipya fxov TrewovdoT ecrrt [xaXKov rj dedpaKdra. ^ 1361: aov (pove(j3S ixefivTjfihos. 4 1456 sqq. " 1547, 8.