that his desperate compounds are never affected or unnecessary. Although, therefore, he violated the rules that bound weaker men, it is false to say that be was less an artist than they. His art was of a different kind, despising what they prized, and attempting what they did not dare, but not the less a conscious and thorough art. Though the drawing of character was not his main object, his characters are truer and deeper than those of poets who attempted nothing else. Though lyrical sweetness had little place in the gloom and terror of his Titanic stage, yet here too, when he chooses, he equals the masters of lyric song. So long as a single Homer was deemed the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we might well concede to him the first place, and say that Æschylus was the second poet of the Greeks. But by the light of nearer criticism, and with a closer insight into the structure of the epic poems, we must retract this judgment, and assert that no other poet among the Greeks, either in grandeur of conception or splendor of execution, equals the untranslatable, unapproachable, inimitable Æschylus." [Footnote: "Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p.275.]

SOPHOCLES.

Æschylus was succeeded, as master of the drama, by Sophocles-- the Raffaelle of the drama, as Bulwer calls him--who was also one of the generals of the Athenian expedition against Samos in the year 440 B.C. He brought the drama to the greatest perfection of which it was susceptible. In him we find a greater range of emotions than in Æschylus--figures more distinctly seen, a more expanded dialogue, simplicity of speech mixed with rhetorical declamation, and the highest degree of poetic beauty. Says a late writer: "The artist and the man were one in Sophocles. We cannot but think of him as specially created to represent Greek art in its most refined and exquisitely balanced perfection. It is impossible to imagine a more plastic nature, a genius more adapted to its special function, more fittingly provided with all things needful to its full development, born at a happier moment in the history of the world, and more nobly endowed with physical qualities suited to its intellectual capacity."

Sophocles composed one hundred and thirteen plays, but only seven of them are extant. Of these the most familiar is the tragedy of OEd'ipus Tyran'nus--"King OEdipus." It is not only considered his masterpiece, but also, as regards the choice and disposition of the fable on which it is founded, the finest tragedy of antiquity. A new interest has been given to it in this country by its recent representation in the original Greek. Of its many translations, it is conceded that none have done, and none can do it justice; they can do little more than give its plan and general character. The following, in brief, is the story of this famous tragedy:

OEdipus Tyrannus.

La'i-us, King of Thebes, was told by the Delphic oracle that if a son should be born to him, by the hand of that son he should surely die. When, therefore, his queen, Jocasta, bare him a son, the parents gave the child to a shepherd, with orders to cast it out, bound, on the hill Cithæ'ron to perish. But the shepherd, moved to compassion, deceived the parents, and intrusted the babe to a herdsman of Pol'ybus, King of Corinth; and the wife of Polybus, being childless, named the foundling OEdipus, and reared it as her own.

Thirty years later, OEdipus, ignorant of his birth, and being directed by the oracle to shun his native country, fled from Corinth; and it happened at the same time that his father (Laius) was on his way to consult the oracle at Delphi, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the child that had been exposed had perished or not. As father and son, strangers to each other, met in a narrow path in the mountains, a dispute arose for the right of way, and in the contest that ensued the father was slain.

Immediately after this event the goddess Juno, always hostile to Thebes, sent a monster, called the sphinx, to propound a riddle to the Thebans, and to ravage their territory until some one should solve the riddle--the purport of which was, "What animal is that which goes on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at evening?" OEdipus, the supposed son of Polybus, of Corinth, coming to Thebes, solved the riddle, by answering the sphinx that it was man, who, when an infant, creeps on all fours, in manhood goes on two feet, and when old uses a staff. The sphinx then threw herself down to the earth and perished; whereupon the Thebans, in their joy, chose OEdipus as king, and he married the widowed queen Jocasta, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Although everything prospered with him--as he loved the Theban people, and was beloved by them in turn for his many virtues--soon the wrath of the gods fell upon the city, which was visited by a sore pestilence. Creon, brother of the queen, is now sent to consult the oracle for the cause of the evil; and it is at the point of his return that the drama opens. He brings back the response

"That guilt of blood is blasting all the state;"

that this guilt is connected with the death of Laius, and that

"Now the god clearly bids us, he being dead, To take revenge on those who shed his blood,"

OEdipus engages earnestly in the business of unraveling the mystery connected with the death of Laius, the cause of all the Theban woes. Ignorant that he himself bears the load of guilt, he charges the Thebans to be vigilant and unremitting in their efforts,--

"And for the man who did the guilty deed, Whether alone he lurks, or leagued with more, I pray that he may waste his life away, For vile deeds vilely dying; and for me, If in my house, I knowing it, he dwells, May every curse I spake on my head fall."

A blind and aged priest and prophet, Tire'sias, is brought before OEdipus, and, being implored to lend the aid of prophecy to "save the city from the curse" that had fallen on it, he at first refuses to exert his prophetic power.

Tiresias. Ah! Reason fails you an, but ne'er will I Say what thou bidd'st, lest I thy troubles show. I will not pain myself nor thee. Why, then, All vainly question? Thou shalt never know.

But, urged and threatened by the king, he at length exclaims:

Tier. And has it come to this? I charge thee, hold To thy late edict, and from this day forth Speak not to me, nor yet to these, for thou-- Thou art the accursed plague-spot of the land!

OEdipus at first believes that the aged prophet is merely the tool of others, who are engaged in a conspiracy to expel him from the throne; but when Jocasta, in her innocence, informs him of the death of Laius, names the mountain pass in which he fell, slain, as was supposed, by a robber band, and describes his dress and person, OEdipus is startled at the thought that he himself was the slayer, and he exclaims,

"Great Zeus! what fate hast thou decreed for me? Woe! woe! 'tis all too clear."

Yet there is one hope left. The man whom he slew in that same mountain pass fell by no robber band, and, therefore, could not have been Laius. Soon even this hope deserts him, when the story is truly told. He learns, moreover, that he is not the son of Polybus, the Corinthian king, but a foundling adopted by his queen. Connecting this with the story now told him by Jocasta, of her infant son, whom she supposed to have perished on the mountain, the horrid truth begins to dawn upon all. Jocasta rushes from the presence of OEdipus, exclaiming,

"Woe! woe! ill-fated one! my last word this, This only, and no more for evermore."

When the old shepherd, forced to declare the truth, tells how he saved the life of the infant, and gave it into the keeping of the herdsman of Polybus, the evil-starred OEdipus exclaims, in agony of spirit:

"Woe! woe! woe! all cometh clear at last. O light! may this my last glance be on thee, Who now am seen owing my birth to those To whom I ought not, and with whom I ought not In wedlock living, whom I ought not slaying."

Horrors still thicken in this terrible tragedy. Word is brought to OEdipus that Jocasta is dead--dead by her own hand! He rushes in:

Then came a sight Most fearful. Tearing from her robe the clasps, All chased with gold, with which she decked herself, He with them struck the pupils of his eyes, With words like these--"Because they had not seen What ills he suffered and what ills he did, They in the dark should look, in time to come, On those whom they ought never to have seen, Nor know the dear ones whom he fain had known." With such-like wails, not once or twice alone, Raising his eyes, he smote them; and the balls, All bleeding, stained his cheek, nor poured they forth Gore drops slow trickling, but the purple shower Fell fast and full, a pelting storm of blood.

The now blind and wretched OEdipus, bewailing his fate and the evils he had so unwittingly brought upon Thebes, begs to be cast forth with all speed from out the land.

OEdipus. Lead me away, my friends, with utmost speed Lead me away; the foul, polluted one, Of all men most accursed, Most hateful to the gods.

Chorus. Ah, wretched one, alike in soul and doom, I fain could wish that I had never known thee.

OEdipus. Ill fate be his who from the fetters freed The child upon the hills, And rescued me from death, And saved me--thankless boon! Ah! had I died but then,