The Historians' History of the World 03

There was no opposition between the art of Sophocles and that of his predecessor. The former looked up reverentially to the man whose original genius had led the way to the consummation of tragic art. Envy and jealousy were foreign to his lovable disposition. But he was an independent-minded pupil of his great master, and a man of very different endowments. His genius was gentler, simpler, and more tranquil, the extremes of pathos and pomp were repugnant to his taste. Accordingly he toned down the force of the theatrical diction which Æschylus had introduced, and, without degrading his characters to the common level, tried to make them more human, so that the spectators could feel more closely akin to them. This method is intimately connected with the altered treatment of the subjects of tragedy. In the treatment of tragic legend Æschylus reached the greatest heights to which the genius of Greece ever soared; in this sphere no man could surpass him. But Sophocles realised that the legends could not always be presented to the people with the same breadth of handling without their interest being gradually exhausted. It was therefore necessary to develop more vital action within the various tragedies, to conceive the characters more definitely, and excite a more vivid psychological interest.

Æschylus had already treated the trilogy in such a manner that it was not bound to the thread of a single myth, and the combination, if not dissolved by Sophocles, was so far loosened as to make each tragedy of the three complete in itself, leading up to its appropriate close within the limits of the action and capable of being judged as a separate composition. The result was much greater freedom, the motive of each play could be treated in fuller detail and the poetic picture enhanced by the prominence given to secondary characters. Thus, in his treatment of the legend of Orestes, Sophocles suffers the act of matricide and its perpetrator to fall into the background and gives quite a new turn to the familiar subject by making Electra the leading character in place of her brother Orestes, showing the whole course of the action as reflected in her spirit, and thus securing an opportunity of creating a study of varied emotion and a type of womanly heroism to which the picture of her sister’s dissimilar temperament serves as an admirable foil.

In order to take full advantage of the resources of a more refined and advanced style of art, Sophocles introduced a third actor on the stage and thus opened the way to incomparably greater vividness of treatment no less than to much greater variety of colouring and grouping in the dramatis personæ

. Moreover, Sophocles, though an adept in the song and dance, was the first poet to abandon the practice of appearing in the parts he had created. From that time the professions of poet and actor were distinct, and the art of the latter acquired greater independent value. A less active part, outside the scope of the action, was assigned to the chorus, and the dramatic element became more significantly prominent as the nucleus of the tragedy. Æschylus himself recognised the advance, for he not only adopted the improvements in the outward setting of tragedy thus effected, but spurred on by his younger rival, rose to the height of a maturer art in his dramas.

To the influence of Sophocles was due the increased fondness for Attic subjects; his Triptolemus

extolled Attica as the home of a superior civilisation, which spread victoriously from that centre to distant lands, he brings the legend of Œdipus to an harmonious close on Attic soil, at Colonus, his own birth-place, and even in the Electra he manifests the Athenian point of view by taking the overthrow of unlawful dominion and the successful struggle for liberty as the purpose of the action.