Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/89

Rh from a world which he can bear no longer, because he has forfeited his self-respect, into a peace which is more than sleep. He bids farewell, gently and tenderly, to the sun, the streams, even the plains of Troïa. All else he will reserve "for those that dwell in Hades." Antigone devotes herself to her self-imposed duty towards the dead, because it is with them that she will have to dwell evermore, and they will count her deed honourable. Death has for her no terrors, because it removes her from a world where right is often crushed, to one in which it is eternally triumphant. The Chorus consoles Electra with the thought that one who had suffered much was reigning in the other world in the fulness of life. Of the spirit of reverence and religion, it is said, that while in one sense it does not pass away whether men live or die, but abides eternally, in another, it does indeed die with them. They pass into Hades, and their works do follow them.

What has been called the irony of Sophocles has been so exhaustively discussed in Bishop Thirlwall's masterly Essay in the Philological Museum, that any treatment of it within the limits of these pages must be necessarily unsatisfying. Our survey of the