Specimens of Greek Tragedy | Page 3

saw. Prizes were given to the authors of the best pieces. Each tragedian
exhibited three pieces, which at first formed a connected series, though
afterwards this rule was disregarded. After the three tragic pieces was
performed a satyric drama, to relieve the mind from the strain of
tragedy, and perhaps also as a conventional tribute to the jollity of the
god of wine. In the Elizabethan Drama the tragic and comic are blended
as they are in life.
The subjects were taken usually from mythology, especially from the
circle of legends relating to the siege of Troy, to the tragic history of
the house of Atreus, the equally tragic history of the house of Laius,

and the adventures of Hercules. The subject of "The Persae" of
Aeschylus is a contemporary event, but this, as Grote says, was an
exception. Heroic action and suffering, the awful force of destiny and
of the will of heaven, are the general themes of Aeschylus and
Sophocles; passion, especially feminine passion, is more frequently the
theme of Euripides. Romantic love, the staple of the modern drama and
novel, was hardly known to the Greeks, whose romantic affection was
friendship, such as that of Orestes and Pylades, or Achilles and
Patroclus. The only approach to romantic love in the extant drama is
the love of Haemon and Antigone in the "Antigone" of Sophocles; and
even here it is subordinate to the conflict between state law and law
divine, which is the key-note of the piece; while the lovers do not meet
upon the scene. The sterner and fiercer passions, on the whole,
predominate, though Euripides has given us touching pictures of
conjugal, fraternal, and sisterly love. In the "Oedipus Coloneus" of
Sophocles also, filial love and the gentler feelings play a part in
harmony with the closing scene of the old man's unhappy life. In the
"Philoctetes," Sophocles introduces, as an element of tragedy, physical
pain, though it is combined with moral suffering.
A popular entertainment was of course adapted to the tastes of the
people. Debate, both political and forensic, was almost the daily bread
of the people of Athens. The Athenian loved smart repartee and display
of the power of fencing with words. The thrust and parry of wit in the
single-line dialogues (_stichomythia_) pleased them more than it
pleases us. Rhetoric had a practical interest when not only the victory
of a man's opinions in the political assembly, but his life and property
before the popular tribunal, might depend on his tongue. The Drama
was also used in the absence of a press for political or social teaching,
and for the insinuation of political or social opinions. In reading these
passages we must throw ourselves back twenty-three centuries, into an
age when political and social observation was new, like politics and
civilised society themselves, and ideas familiar to us now were fresh
and struggling for expression. The remark may be extended to the
political philosophy which struggles for expression in the speeches of
Thucydides.
The trio of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides has been compared
with that of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and

with that of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire. The parallel will hardly
hold good except as an illustration of the course of youth, perfection,
and decay through which every art or product of imagination seems to
run, unlike science, which continually advances. The epoch of the
Athenian three, like that of the Elizabethan three, like that of the great
Spanish dramatists, was one of national achievement, and their drama
was thoroughly national; whereas the French drama was the highly
artificial entertainment of an exclusive Court.
Aeschylus (B.C. 525-456) was the heroic poet of Athens. He had
fought certainly at Marathon, and, we may be pretty sure, at Salamis, so
that the narrative of the battle of Salamis in "The Persae" is probably
that of an eye-witness; and that he had fought at Marathon, not that he
had won the prize in drama, was the inscription which he desired for
his tomb. He is of the old school of thought and sentiment, full of
reverence for religion and for eternal law. The growing scepticism had
not touched him. His morality is lofty and austere. In politics he was a
conservative, of the party of Cimon, opposed to the radically
democratic party of Pericles; and his drama, especially the Oresteian
trilogy, teems with conservative sentiment and allusion. His characters
are of heroic cast. He deals superbly with the moral forces and destiny;
though it may be that more philosophy has been found in him,
especially by his German commentators, than is there, and that
obscurity arising from his imperfect command of language has
sometimes been mistaken for depth. His "Agamemnon" is generally
deemed the masterpiece of Greek tragedy. His language is stately and
swelling,