ERRATA. Page 76, line 770, for åλλ' TMηvikaûð, read åλλà tyvikavð3. 83, 13 Translation, for Dirke's, read Dike's. 84, 854, for ἱερὸν ὄμμα, read ἱρὸν ὄμμα. ... 122, ... 1277, for συγκέκραμαι, read συγκέκραμαι. INTRODUCTION. § 1. Date of the Antigone. § 2. Position and Sentiments of Sophocles at this time. § 3. General Design of the Play. § 4. The Dramatis Persona and their distribution among the three actors. § 5. The Chorus. § 6. The Time, and § 7. the Place of Action. §8. Subdivisions of the Play. § 9. Analysis of the Plot. § 10. Bibliography of this Drama. § 1. THE date of the Antigone has been made a subject of discussion among Scholars. Petit, Bentley, Musgrave, Böckh, and Bernhardy, have referred it to Ol. 84, 3. Seidler argues for Ol. 85, 1. With Süvern, Wex, Clinton, and Müller, I believe that the first representation took place in Ol. 84, 4, that is, in the early spring of 440 B. C., probably at the great Dionysia in Elaphebolion, the ninth month of the Attic year. Without entering upon the details of this controversy, I will remark that, according to a well-attested and generallyadmitted statement, Sophocles was appointed one of the ten strategi, or prætors, in the Samian war, in consequence of the approbation with which this play was received1. Now as this must have been the great war in which Pericles shared his command with nine colleagues, and not his preliminary expedition with forty 1 Aristophanes of Byzantium, in his argument to the Play, p. 244. Gaisf. Strabo, XIV. p. 446. Suidas, v. Méλɩros. Athen. x. p. 603, F. Schol. Arist. Pax. v. 696. Cic. Offic. 1. 40. § 144. Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2. Val. Max. IV. 3. Plut. Pericl. c. VIII. galleys2, and as that great war continued for about nine months, from the summer of 440 to the spring of 439, it seems more than probable that Sophocles was elected to the prætorship at the annual Archæresia in Thargelion, the eleventh Attic month3, when the popularity he had acquired by his Drama was fresh and efficacious. Of the performances of Sophocles in this war, we know only that he was one of the officers in command of the squadron which was sent to bring up reinforcements from Lesbos and Chios1. § 2. To the reader of the Antigone, the date of the play, thus established, is chiefly interesting, from the light which this synchronism throws upon the general tone of the drama itself. At this time, the influence of Pericles was paramount5, and while those who were ambitious of public employment would be most likely to attain their object by judiciously paying court to the great statesman, he could not but be sensible of the importance of securing the aid of the most experienced and popular dramatist of the day. As Eschylus some years before had pleaded from the tragic stage for the views of Aristides, Sophocles, we may be sure, did not neglect the opportunities which his art afforded of recommending, by indirect but circumstantial panegyric, the counter policy of his friend Pericles. To what extent he had previously done this, we have no means of judging : 2 See Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, Vol. III. p. 48, sqq., and Wex, Prolegom. c. I. 3 Petersen, in the Zeitschrift f. d. Alterthumswissenschaft, 1846, No. 75. p. 595. 4 Athenæus, XIII., p. 603, F. 5 See Thirlwall, ш. p. 47. 6 Müller, Eumeniden, § 38, p. 120. for although he was 55 years old when he produced the Antigone, it is the earliest of his extant tragedies". But there can be little difficulty in recognizing his advocacy of Pericles and his authority in many passages of this play. The sentiments put into the mouth of Kreon (vv. 178, sqq.) are less suited to a tyrant, than to the leader of a free state, and were probably an echo of much that had fallen from the lips of Pericles. The lecture on obedience to constituted authority, and its connexion with martial discipline (vv. 663, sqq.), seems to me to have a direct and obvious reference to the position occupied by Pericles at this particular time. The frequentative construction, in v. 6578, would not be applicable to the case of any but an elective ruler; and though the despot speaks out in the following line, the hyperbole is all in favour of the general rule respecting military discipline. But perhaps the most distinct personal reference to Pericles is that in v.352 sqq., where he speaks of man's self-taught attainments as consisting in eloquence, Anaxagorean philosophy, and statesmanship, -the three most prominent characteristics of the statesman in question-where he dwells on the architecture which Pericles so largely patronized, and where he draws a contrast between the exaltation (v. 368, viñoλıs) of Pericles, which was due to his popular measures, and the recent ostracism (v. 369, aroλis) of his rival Thucydides, the son of Melesias, who had taken up the Laco7 Müller, Hist. of Lit. of Greece, 1. p. 338. 8 ἀλλ ̓ ὃν πόλις στήσειε, τοῦδε χρὴ κλύειν "No! when a city constitutes a chief, nian policy of Kimon'. That Sophocles afterwards, like most of the literary or middle-class party at Athens 10, joined the enemies of the old Athenian constitution, and was actually one of the Probuli, or committee of safety, who paved the way for the downfal of democracy at the close of the Peloponnesian war, is well known: but this need not prevent us from believing that he was attached to the popular party, and opposed to the aristocratizing faction, in the glorious days of Pericles. Great changes took place in the views of cultivated Athenians, in the interval between the years 445 and 413. To trace the various steps of this change from Sophocles and Pericles through Euripides and Theramenes to Plato and Xenophon, would be to write the political history of Athens during the Peloponnesian war. It is sufficient to state here that the change did take place, and that the easy-minded Sophocles, who voted for the abolition of a popular constitution when there was only in his judgment a choice of evils 12, went hand-in-hand with Pericles in his great plans for the subversion of the anti-popular government of Samos, and in all his schemes of domestic policy. The intercourse, which is said to have passed between Sophocles and the historian Herodotus, may be taken as an additional illustration of the liberal opinions of the former. 9 Thirlwall, I. p. 44. 10 This view I put forth some years ago, in the continuation of Müller's Hist. Lit. Gr., Vol. II. p. 127, and have since repeated it in an eminent London Review. 11 Thucyd. VIII. 1. Arist. Rhet. III. 18. Pol. VI. 5, 10. Thucyd. VIII. 67. 12 Arist. Rhet. III. 18: οὐ γὰρ ἦν ἄλλα βελτίω. |