Specimens of Greek Tragedy | Page 4

in keeping with the heroic part of his characters; sometimes it
is too swelling, and even bombastic. Though he is the greatest of all, art
in him had not arrived at technical perfection. He reminds us
sometimes of the Aeginetan marbles, rather than the frieze of the
Parthenon.
In Sophocles (B.C. 495-405) the dramatic art has arrived at technical
perfection. His drama is regarded as the literary counterpart of the
Parthenon. Its calm and statuesque excellence exactly met the
requirements of the taste which we call classic, and seems to
correspond with the character of the dramatist, which was notably
gentle, and with his form, which was typically beautiful. His characters
are less heroic, and nearer to common humanity than those of

Aeschylus. He appeals more to pity. His art is more subtle, especially
in the treatment, for which he is famous, of the irony of fate. In politics,
social sentiment, and religion, while he is more of the generation of
Pericles than Aeschylus, he is still conservative and orthodox. If he
belongs to democracy, it is a democracy still kept within moral bounds,
and owning a master in its great chief, with whom he seems to have
been personally connected. Nor does he ever court popularity by
bringing the personages of the heroic age down to the common level.
He, as well as Aeschylus, is dear to Aristophanes, the satiric poet of
conservatism, while Euripides is hateful.
Euripides (B.C. 480-406) perhaps slightly resembles Voltaire in this,
that he belongs to a different historic zone from his two predecessors,
from Sophocles as well as from Aeschylus, in political and social
sentiment, though not in date. He belongs to a full-blown democracy,
and is evidently the dramatic poet of the people. To please the people
he lays dignity and stateliness aside, brings heroic characters down to a
common level, and introduces characters which are unheroic. He gives
the people plenty of passion, especially of feminine passion, without
being nice as to its sources, or rejecting such stories as those of Phaedra
and Medea, which would have been alien to the taste, not only of
Aeschylus, but of Sophocles. He gives them plenty of politics, plenty of
rhetoric, plenty of discussion, political and moral, plenty of speculation,
which in those days was novel, now and then a little scepticism. His
"Alcestis" is melodrama verging on sentimental comedy, and heralding
the sentimental comedy of Menander known to us in the versions of
Terence. The chord of pathos he can touch well. His degradation, as the
old school thought it, of the drama of Aeschylus and Sophocles, and
what they deemed his pandering to vulgar taste, brought upon him the
bitter satire of Aristophanes. Yet he did not win many prizes. Perhaps
the vast theatre and the grand choric accompaniments harmonised ill
with his unheroic style. He is clearly connected with the Sophists, and
with the generation the morality of which had been unsettled by the
violence of faction and the fury of the Peloponnesian war. Still there is
no reason for saying that he preached moral scepticism or impiety.
Probably he did not intend to preach anything, but to please his popular
audience and to win the prize. The line quoted against him, "My lips
have sworn, but my mind is unsworn," read in its place, has nothing in

it immoral. Perhaps he had his moods: he was religious when he wrote
"The Bacchae." As little ground is there for dubbing him a
woman-hater. If he has his Phaedra and Medea, he has also his Alcestis
and Electra. He seems to have prided himself on his choric odes. Some
of them have beauty in themselves, but they are little relevant to the
play.
A full and critical account of the plays will not be expected in the
Preface to a series of extracts; it will be found in such literary histories
as that of Professor Mahaffy. Nor can it be necessary to dilate on the
merit of the pieces selected. The sublime agony of Prometheus Bound,
the majesty of wickedness in Clytaemnestra, the martial grandeur of the
siege of Thebes, or of the battle of Salamis, in Aeschylus; the awful
doom of Oedipus, his mysterious end, the heroic despair of Ajax, the
martyrdom of Antigone to duty, in Sophocles; the passion of Phaedra
and Medea, the conjugal self-sacrifice of Alcestis, the narratives of the
deaths of Polyxena and the slaughter of Pentheus by the Bacchae, in
Euripides, speak for themselves, if the translation is at all faithful, and
find their best comment in the reader's natural appreciation.
The number of those who do not read the originals will be increased by
the dropping of Greek from the academical course. To give them
something like an equivalent for the original in English is the object of