LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TYPES OF GREEK CAVALRY . A group from the Forman Vase in the British SOPHOCLES Cover Photogravure Frontispiece From a marble bust in the British Museum. The EDIPUS AND THE SPHINX From a painting in the interior of a cup in the TEIRESIAS BEFORE EDIPUS From a vase formerly in Naples. 4th century B.C. From a vase formerly in the Beugnot Collection. CONTEST OF ATHENA AND POSEIDON FOR THE From a vase in the Hermitage Museum, St. Peters- TYPES OF GREEK CAVALRY A group from the Forman Vase in the British THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES From a sarcophagus in the Villa Pamfili, show- XV Page 18 34 120 and 121 Portion of drum of sculptured column from From a vase in the Museo Nazionale at Naples. EAGLE SEIZING A SNAKE From a coin of Elis, of about 430 B.C. ANTIGONE BROUGHT BEFORE CREON From a vase in the Berlin Museum, 4th cen- DANAË (Photogravure) . Bronze Mirror Case in the British Museum. On p. 180 are Apollo, Hermes, and (probably) ✓ DIONYSUS WITH HIS THIASOS OF SATYRS AND MAENADS From a vase in the British Museum, 4th cen- "BEEHIVE" TOMB From the Kylix painted by Sotades in the British 180 and 181 INTRODUCTION I FIND no literary artist so difficult to seize in exact mental portraiture as Sophocles: Homer himself is hardly more impersonal. We praise the impersonal; coldly, in obedience to critical convention; but the old Adam of curiosity hankers after the autobiographical touch of allusion, the literary egoism which brings our author down into refreshing contact with earth. Aeschylum laudo, Euripidem lego, said an English scholar of the eighteenth century. Aeschylus is impersonal in a sense; but I distinguish: Aeschylus is impersonal because he is too big for self-consciousness. Not with the impersonality of Sophocles. You can see the difference most clearly in this: that Aeschylus was an open field for parody, even to a satiric poet who loved and admired him. Aristophanes, nay, a much less skilled hand, could catch the external manner of Aeschylus, so that any one must laugh at the mimicry. You could parody Marlowe, but not Shakespeare: why? Let me defer the answer for a moment, and go round to another line of approach. There are few people who make Sophocles their favourite among the Triumvirs of Tragedy, few who can echo M. Arnold But be his My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, Partly, perhaps, because we love authors no less for their faults than their virtues; we take an easy and satisfying grasp of prominent characteristics. Once familiar with an author, his mannerisms tickle the sense of initiation. Personality fascinates, even expressed in growths which tend towards the extravagant and the grotesque. Self hungers after its own mystery, and seeks for the Self in another communicated by artistic interpretation. And it is the self which eludes us in Sophocles. But if most moderns (who care, or who are qualified to care, for any of them) prefer Aeschylus or Euripides, the Greeks themselves did not. His unequalled continuity of success on the stage proves the judgment of his contemporaries; but even more significant for our purposes is the opinion of Greek posterity. I need not remind the reader that Sophocles' practice is repeatedly Aristotle's example of some canon in the formulation of dramatic technique. And he was not the favourite of the critics only. Look at Xenophon's testimony. He makes Socrates ask Aristodemus1 who are his chief objects of admiration for artistic skill: Aristodemus replies, "Homer in Epic, Melanippides in Dithyramb, Sophocles in Tragedy, Polycleitus in Statuary, Zeuxis in Painting." It is the judgment of the man in the street -the street of Athens. Just so his modern analogue would answer Shakespeare'; only an exquisite could say 'Marlowe.' Why? Now we can answer both questions at once: because he is the artistic embodiment of an age, of a national spirit in a given age, ofto clench it in a comprehensive term-a civilisation. By that word I mean the whole sum of expression of the passions, fancies, reasonings, principles, aspirations of a people. "A civilisation," says a penetrating writer of the school of Taine, "is a balance of qualities and defects." Again: "There are five or six categories of |