Nor to my friends nor me had been such woe.

A touching picture is presented in the farewell of OEdipus, on departing from Thebes to wander an outcast upon the earth. The tragedy concludes with the following moral by the chorus:

Chorus. Ye men of Thebes, behold this OEdipus, Who knew the famous riddle, and was noblest. Whose fortune who saw not with envious glances? And lo! in what a sea of direst trouble He now is plunged! From hence the lesson learn ye, To reckon no man happy till ye witness The closing day; until he pass the border Which Severs life from death unscathed by sorrow. --Trans. by E. H. PLUMPTRE.

Character of the Works of Sophocles.

The character of the works of Sophocles is well described in the following extract from an Essay on Greek Poetry, by THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: "The great and distinguishing excellence of Sophocles will be found in his excellent sense of the beautiful, and the perfect harmony of all his powers. His conceptions are not on so gigantic a scale as those of Æschylus; but in the circle which he prescribes to himself to fill, not a place is left unadorned; not a niche without its appropriate figure; not the smallest ornament which is incomplete in the minutest graces. His judgment seems absolutely perfect, for he never fails; he is always fully master of himself and his subject; he knows the precise measure of his own capacities; and while he never attempts a flight beyond his reach, he never debases himself nor his art by anything beneath him.

"Sophocles was undoubtedly the first philosophical poet of the ancient world. With his pure taste for the graceful he perceived, amidst the sensible forms around him, one universal spirit of Jove pervading all things. Virtue and justice, to his mind, did not appear the mere creatures of convenience, or the means of gratifying the refined selfishness of man; he saw them, having deep root in eternity, unchanging and imperishable as their divine author. In a single stanza he has impressed this sentiment with a plenitude of inspiration before which the philosophy of expediency vanishes--a passage that has neither a parallel nor equal of its kind, that we recollect, in the whole compass of heathen poetry, and which may be rendered thus: 'Oh for a spotless purity of action and of speech, according to those sublime laws of right which have the heavens for their birthplace, and God alone for their author--which the decays of mortal nature cannot vary, nor time cover with oblivion, for the divinity is mighty within them and waxes not old!'"

Sophocles died in extreme old age, "without disease and without suffering, and was mourned with such a sincerity and depth of grief as were exhibited at the death of no other citizen of Athens."

Thrice happy Sophocles! in good old age, Blessed as a man, and as a craftsman blessed, He died: his many tragedies were fair, And fair his end, nor knew be any sorrow. --PHRYN'ICHUS.

Wind, gentle evergreen, to form a shade Around the tomb where Sophocles is laid; Sweet ivy wind thy boughs, and intertwine With blushing roses and the clustering vine. Thus will thy lasting leaves, with beauties hung, Prove grateful emblems of the lays he sung, Whose soul, exalted by the god of wit, Among the Muses and the Graces writ. --SIM'MIAS, the Theban.

EURIP'IDES.

Contemporary with Sophocles was Euripides, born in 480 B.C., the last of the three great masters of the drama--the three being embraced within the limits of a single century. Under Sophocles the principal changes effected in the outward form of the drama were the introduction of a third actor, and a consequent limitation of the functions of the chorus. Euripides, however, changed the mode of handling tragedy. Unlike Sophocles, who only limited the activity of the chorus, he disconnected it from the tragic interest of the drama by giving but little attention to the character of its songs. He also made some other changes; and, as one writer expresses it, his innovations "disintegrated the drama by destroying its artistic unity." But although perhaps inferior, in all artistic point of view, to his predecessors, the genius of Euripides supplied a want that they did not meet. Although his plays are all connected with the history and mythology of Greece, in them rhetoric is more prominent than in the plays of either Æschylus or Sophocles; the legendary characters assume more the garb of humanity; the tender sentiments--love, pity, compassion--are invoked to a greater degree, and an air of exquisite delicacy and refinement embellishes the whole. These were the qualities in the plays of Euripides that endeared him to the Greeks of succeeding ages, and that gave to his works such an influence on the Roman and modern drama.

Of Euripides MR. SYMONDS remarks: "His lasting title to fame consists in his having dealt with the deeper problems of life in a spirit which became permanent among the Greeks, so that his poems never lost their value as expressions of current philosophy. Nothing strikes the student of later Greek literature more strongly than this prolongation of the Euripidean tone of thought and feeling. In the decline of tragic poetry the literary sceptre was transferred to comedy; and the comic playwrights may be described as the true successors of Euripides. The dialectic method, which he affected, was indeed dropped, and a more harmonious form of art than the Euripidean was created for comedy by Menan'der, when the Athenians, after passing through their disputatious period, had settled down into a tranquil acceptation of the facts of life. Yet this return to harmony of form and purity of perception did not abate the influence of Euripides. Here and there throughout his tragedies he had said, and well said, what the Greeks were bound to think and feel upon important matters; and his sensitive, susceptible temperament repeated itself over and over again among his literary successors. The exclamation of Phile'mon that, if he could believe in immortality, he would hang himself to see Euripides, is characteristic not only of Philemon, but also of the whole Macedonian period of Greek literature." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." Second Series, p. 300.]

Euripides wrote about seventy-five plays, of which eighteen have come down to us. The Me-de'a, which is thought to be his best piece, is occupied with the circumstances of the vengeance taken by Medea on the ungrateful Jason, the hero of the Argonautic expedition, for whom she had sacrificed all, and who, after his return, abandoned her for a royal Corinthian bride. [Footnote: See Argonautic Expedition, p. 81.] But the most touching of the plays of Euripides is the Alces'tis, founded on the fable of Alcestis dying for her husband, Adme'tus. MILTON thus alludes to the story, in his sonnet on his deceased wife:

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

The substance of the story is as follows:

Admetus, King of Phe'ræ, in Thessaly, married Alcestis, who became noted for her conjugal virtues. Apollo, when banished from heaven, received so kind treatment from Admetus that he induced the Fates to prolong the latter's life beyond the ordinary limit, on condition that one of his own family should die in his stead. Alcestis at once consented to die for her husband, and when the appointed time came she heroically and composedly gave herself to death. Soon after her departure, however, the hero Hercules visited Admetus, and, pained with the profound grief of the household, he rescued Alcestis from the grim tyrant Death and restored her to her family. The whole play abounds in touching scenes and descriptions; and the best modern critics concede that there is no female character in either Æschylus or Sophocles, not even excepting Antig'one, that is so great and noble, and at the same time so purely tender and womanly, as Alcestis. "Where has either Greek or modern literature," says MAHAFFY, "produced a nobler ideal than the Alcestis of Euripides? Devoted to her husband and children, beloved and happy in her palace, she sacrifices her life calmly and resignedly--a life which is not encompassed with afflictions, but of all the worth that life can be, and of all the usefulness which makes it precious to noble natures." [Footnote: "Social Life in Greece, p. 189.] We give the following short extract from the poet's account of the preparations made by Alcestis for her approaching end:

Alcestis Preparing for Death.

When she knew The destined day was come, in fountain water She bathed her lily-tinctured limbs, then took From her rich chests, of odorous cedar formed, A splendid robe, and her most radiant dress. Thus gorgeously arrayed, she stood before The hallowed flames, and thus addressed her prayer: "O queen, I go to the infernal shades; Yet, ere I go, with reverence let me breathe My last request: protect my orphan children; Make my son happy with the wife he loves, And wed my daughter to a noble husband; Nor let them, like their mother, to the tomb Untimely sink, but in their native land Be blessed through lengthened life to honored age."

Then to each altar in the royal house She went, and crowned it, and addressed her vows, Plucking the myrtle bough: nor tear, nor sigh Came from her; neither did the approaching ill Change the fresh beauties of her vermeil cheek. Her chamber then she visits, and her bed; There her tears flowed, and thus she spoke: "O bed To which my wedded lord, for whom I die, Led me a virgin bride, farewell! to thee No blame do I impute, for me alone Hast thou destroyed: disdaining to betray Thee, and my lord, I die: to thee shall come Some other woman, not more chaste, perchance More happy." As she lay she kissed the couch, And bathed it with a flood of tears: that passed,