07 co/.m:-j: UNlVEilSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library PA 4413.07 1920 Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles 3 1924 026 676 860 'OUN UBRARV - ORCUl DATE DUE A^^ON f i ling i^fl&^F . nt . s^-. PRINTEDINU.S.A. B Cornell University 9 Library The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924026676860 THE OEDIPUS TYRANNUS OF SOPHOCLES CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON : FETTER LANE, E.G. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY \ CALCUTTA I MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. MADRAS j TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-K^USHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE OEDIPUS TYRANNUS OF SOPHOCLES TRANSLATED AND EXPLAINED BY J. T. SHEPPARD, M.A. FELLOW OF king's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920 f)So3^430 K.^ ■sTa V To , CRT. SUMMARY OF THE PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION PAGE PREFACE • ix The moral of three performances of the Oedipus: the sensationalism of Professor Reinhardt : the restraint of the Cambridge performance : the art of M. Mounet-Sully. The aim of this translation and commentary. The controversy of the modem interpreters : tragic justice or tragedy : the theory of the irrelevant chorus : the importance of the Creon scene : the general efiFect of the lyrics: the 'sin' of Oedipus: the 'intolerable' end. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I. THE PREPARATION OF THE AUDIENCE xv The legend of Oedipus: the outline familiar, the detail vague: the re- miniscences of epic: the riddle: the Theban trilogy of Aeschylus: the inherited evil : the first scene of the Septem, and its analogy to the opening scene of the Oedipus: the importance of 'good words' and the self- abandonment of Eteocles recalled in our play : the moral contrast, analogous to the contrast between the Electra and the Oresteia. CHAPTER II. THE INNOCENCE OF OEDIPUS . . xxiv Oedipus recognises that he is polluted and infectious : the taint of bloodshed, parricide and incest: how far is this relevant to our enquiry? Attempts to find some adequate i/iaprla have failed: Sophocles has made the hero even technically innocent. The clear distinction drawn between the involuntary acts and the self-blinding : the notion of unintentional crime : the doctrine of Simonides: its truth: its inadequate expression : it is not incompatible with morality. If innocence then suffers, what of the justice of the gods? The ancient problem of evil : how far the various solutions appear in our play : the tr^ic gods of Sophocles, the personification of 'circumstance': the SaXiuav of Oedipus. The higher and the lower moral application : Theognis and Pindar: the higher application summed up by the word Sophrosyne: the truth of the tragic religion. CHAPTER III. THE TYRANT xli The chorus 863 fF. variously interpreted : does not express the view of Sophocles : does not refer to contemporary politics, but deals with old and familiar themes: has been thought to be half-relevant, but discursive: this view forbidden by the form of the composition : the truth is that it expresses the fears of the chorus for Oedipus : irreverence and impurity suggested by the preceding dialogue: but 'no criticism in the world' can allege that Oedipus SUMMAR y OF THE PREFA CE AND JNTROD UCTJON vii PAGE is a lover of unjust gains. The key to the difficulty is the traditional con- ception of the tyrant, or bad king : the stock character in later Greek : not invented by any Single author, but derived from popular prejudice: the vague use of the word ripavvos in tragedy : the bad king is simply a bad man who is rich and powerful. All men love gain: kings are proverbially rich: bad kings are proverbially greedy: Homer's good and bad kings alike lend qualities to Oedipus: the greed of kings in Pindar: Solon's refusal to be tyrant : Thucydides and economic motives : Thucydides on the Peisistratids and the Athenian hegemony : his artistic treatment of this theme : the same theme in Aeschylus : Agamemnon, Aegisthus and Orestes. The three kinds of wrong: the tyrant robs the gods, violates the chastity of his subjects, and grasps at wealth and power: the application to Oedipus. The relation of this theme to Sophrosyne: the Creon scene and the 'gains that are really gains.' CHAPTER IV. SOPHROSYNE lix The last scene sometimes called harsh : the need for beauty in production : the last words of Oedipus to his children generally misinterpreted. The prayer for the Modest Measure: its modern form: the maxim of Solon teaches the same lesson : it is the lesson taught by Apollo at Delphi : Solon and Croesus in Herodotus: Solon and Croesus analogous to Creon: the antiquity of the doctrine : the reference in Aeschylus, Agamemrum and Supplices: in Alcman: the proverbial and familiar nature of the material of lyric: the art of Pindar and Bacchylides: Croesus and Hiero in Bacchylides and Pindar : the many applications of the doctrine. After the prayer for the measure, the appeal for restraint in grief: the modest measure in relation to the wisdom of men and gods : the due measure in speech : in the exercise of power. The importance of this doctrine for the structure of the whole play. The last word of Sophrosyne. The tragic confidence of the lucky man : the 'thoughts above mortality' : Oedipus at the crisis of the play was hailed as son of a god. A frail thing is this Intelligence, spread through our bodies, andmanyarethe shocks calamitous that dim our thoughts. Alittle span of life that is not life men look upon, and then, so swift are they to perish, like a smoke they are carried off, and lo ! they have flown away: and nothing have they learnt to know save that which each has happened on, as all are driven all ways. Yet every man makes his vain boast that he has discovered the All — though that cannot be seen of men nor heard nor compre- hended. You, then, since you also have travelled hither, shall learn no more than mortal wits can see. EMPEDOCLES. Wise was the Lacedaemonian Cheilon who wrote these words: — In nothing seek excess: only to the Just Measure belongeth every good. AUCTOR INCERTUS. Quietness is a charming lady. And she dwells near Modesty of Mind. Epicharmus. PREFACE SOME years ago; in writing a short introduction to Greek tragedy, I ventured to say that ' the Oedipus Tyrannus de- pends for its effect upon qualities which are apparent, even in translation, to all readers who care for poetry and drama.' Soon after I had written thus boldly, I was fortunate enough to see Professor Murray's translation produced by Reinhardt. That performance taught me that the strength of the plot makes the play great and exciting even in the worst conditions that a bad producer can invent. But it also showed how little the real great- ness of the play is appreciated even by scholars and artists : for many of them praised that unhappy production. The Sophoclean Oedipus depends for its finest effects upon the restraint of the performance: Reinhardt's production was lavish, barbaric, turbu- lent. The Greek actor was masked and stately : the words are so composed that their full effect can be appreciated only through the clear and rhythmical enunciation of an actor who relies mainly on his voice. Reinhardt's actors, not altogether, I suspect, of their own free will, raged and fumed and ranted, rushing hither and thither with a violence of gesticulation which, in spite of all their effort, was eclipsed and rendered insignificant by the yet more violent rushes, screams, and contortions of a quite gratuitous crowd. The tragedy was intended to be enacted in broad day- light, and the background should have been a pleasant palace. Nature should be cheerful and splendid at the beginning and until the end, indifferent to the sufferings of mortals, even as the lord of light, Apollo, himself Reinhardt gave us for a palace a black cavern of mystery, for the sunshine the great arc lamps which spluttered as they followed the actors in their mad career, and, to add to our discomfort, he posted his assistants behind, above, and around the stage and audience, to utter meaningless yells and to clash strange cymbals and other instruments of brazen music. The appeal was to our senses. Imagination and the tragic emotion were left, so far as the greatness of the drama X PREFACE allowed, unmoved. Finally, I am compelled to add, the dialogue of the Oedipus is clear-cut, unmetaphorical, and, though fraught with double meaning, never vague. The verse of Professor Murray, though beautiful and vigorous, is highly charged with metaphor, and very often vague. Sophocles had good reason for avoiding ornament. The inind of the speaker is always felt at work behind the words ; and the words move us precisely because our imagina- tion is stirred to realise the accumulating emotion which lies behind the clear and logical simplicity. Then, in strong contrast with the dialogue, the chorus supervenes, full of metaphor, rich in the direct and musical expression of emotion. The chorus, in its place, and at the right time, fills the atmosphere with the mysterious voices of oracles and of vague foreboding. Try to make the dialogue romantic, and you miss the effect of the chorus as well as of the dialogue itself. So much I learnt from Reinhardt's performance. I learnt more from a later performance, in Greek, at Cambridge. The rehearsals gave me the opportunity of hearing every verse intelli- gently recited many times. That taught me that there is no pointless phrase in the play. Often a sentence, to which at first the actor despaired of giving a dramatic meaning, proved, in the end, to be highly charged with emotion. The purpose of my translation is to give the reader a faithful version, which, at least, adds nothing, though, of course, at every moment I am aware that I omit half the effect. Ishall be content if I can give, by my failure, the clue which may enable English readers to see by what sort of method Sophocles succeeded. Professor Murray's trans- lation has qualities of poetry to which mine can make no pretension, but I hope that through my version, if it be read' in the light of my commentary, the reader will be helped to see more clearly the qualities of Sophocles. Finally I witnessed the performance of M. Mounet-Sully' in Paris, the proof that the French nation possesses Sophocles, as at present the English nation, unfortunately, does not. The verse, the production, the acting, are beautiful: and it was the destruc- tion of formal beauty that made Reinhardt's performance so lamentable. Because of its formal beauty the French production is an inspiration to all who care for drama, and a proof that Greek 1 These sentences were written before the death of the great actor. PREFACE xi drama, not bolstered up by sensationalism, and not watered with sentimentality, has power to hold and to move a modern audience. If you doubt whether in these days Greek tragedy still matters, you may learn the answer in Paris. The accuracy of my interpretation depends, of course, upon many minute points of textual criticism and grammar. On these matters I have not, I hope, formed my opinion without due con- sideration of the available evidence. Where I accept Jebb's text, I print it without critical comment. Where I disagree, my reasons are briefly stated in the notes. The questions with which I am mainly concerned cannot, indeed, be answered without a sound linguistic method, but are often ignored by scholars, and certainly cannot be answered by any critic who is content to say, with the famous schoolmaster: ' Boys, you are to have the privilege of reading the Oedipus Tyrannus, a storehouse of grammatical peculiarities.' In my introduction and commentary I have tried to apply the results of the linguistic study to the dramatic interpretation of the play. My method is the study of the normal Greek ideas, and in this respect my debt to Walter Headlam's work on Aeschylus will be apparent. I hope to prove that Sophocles, by playing on a set of simple and familiar notions, has created in the Oedipus a poem whose meaning is not disputable and a drama in which every part contributes to the tragic beauty of the whole. For, although scholars agree in praising the Oedipus, they differ strangely about its merits and its purpose. In every genera- tion there are found some champions of what I may call a 'moral' interpretation, who think that Sophocles composed his play, as Aeschylus certainly composed his trilogies, ' to justify the ways of God to man.' These critics imagine that our play presents an extreme example of 'Tragic Justice.' Oedipus sinned and was duly purtished, and the audience are indirectly warned: 'Sin not, since the sin of Oedipus was so terribly requited.' With that school of criticism I have little sympathy, but I think the refutation offered by most scholars is inadequate. An appeal to plain good sense can always be eluded by the suggestion that, perhaps, after all, the moral point of view of Sophocles was different from ours : perhaps to him and to his audience, steeped in superstition, Oedipus seemed guilty and the play seemed a. xii PREFACE triumphant vindication of the divine vengeance upon sin. We can only silence such absurdities by showing, in regard to each detail of the play, what effect it must have had on an Athenian audience, not merely what effect it has on a modern reader. This can only be accomplished if we consent to study the normal Greek ideas involved ; and the study of these ideas has been neglected by the best of the linguistic scbolars. The champions of common sense have also, for the most part, underestimated the importance of the chorus. In particular, they tend to treat as irrelevant the famous ode which describes the growth of a 'tyrant' (863 ff.), a poem which those who find 'tragic justice' in the play regard as the very centre of its teaching, and as the final proof that Sophocles looked at this question of moral responsibility from an ancient, and a barbaric, standpoints The more enlightened critics reply that the chorus is irrelevant to the drama. 'No criticism in the world,' they say, "can make line 889 apply to Oedipusl' And so, they say, the ode 'though impressive, and suited to the general atmosphere, is an irrelevant poem,' ' a beautiful embolimon'.' Such an assertion plays into the enemy's hands. Aristotle, who is constantly thinking of the Oedipus as he writes his Poetic, must have been strangely forgetful when he declared that the chorus ' should take the part of an actor in the drama, in the manner of Sophocles, not in that of Euripides,' and added that ' Agathon was the first to introduce irrelevant inter- ludes.' Still, in spite of Aristotle, the critics make the poem irrelevant. It is ' an indictment of contemporary Athenian ten- dencies.' Indeed, some have sought, for the particular political events to which Sophocles is irrelevantly referring, an obscure scandal connected with the treasures of Delphi, the famous mutilation of the Hermae, and so forth*! So long as critics do not expound the normal Greek ideas and so long as they treat the choral odes as irrelevant, they must not be surprised at the constant revival of the heresy which makes our play a drama of sin and punishment. The truth is ' See {e.g.) S. Sudhaus Konig Odipus' Schuld, Kiel 1912. 2 Sq Bruhn p. 36 of his Introduction to the nth edition of Schneidewin-Nauck (1910). ' This phrase is used by Dr H. F. Miiller in an excellent article (Berliner Phil. Wockenschrift 1913 pp.5i3ff.)in which he conclusivelydisposesofthe theory of Sudhaus. * See, for this kind of criticism, Bruhn's Introduction p. 37. PREFACE xiii that the ode in question plays upon a perfectly familiar set of ancient ideas ; so far is it from being irrelevant, that every word has reference to Oedipus. It expresses, not indeed the opinion of Sophocles, but the fear of the chorus, as felt at J;he precise moment which the drama has reached, thatOedipus may after all be a bad man, deserving evil. The chorus is mistaken. Oedipus is a good man, and here lies the greatness of his tragedy. He suffers as a bad man should suifer, and his quali- ties and defects are such as to suggest to some minds, at some moments — though not in the latter scenes of the play — that he may really be a villain. In fact he is noble, and suffers in spite j of his nobility, partly as a result of it. Exactly how all that is j plain to a Greek audience, exactly how the chorus is relevant and ■' how the details of the drama lead up to the chorus and yet refute/ it, I shall try to show. Incidentally I hope to be able to show the dramatic value of those parts of the play for which most critics find it necessary to apologise. The Creon scene, ' the only part of the play,' as Professor Murray writes, ' which could possibly be said to flag,' even Creon's frigid argument which has disappointed and puzzled most of us, is for a Greek a vital and essential part of the tragic development. The choral odes, as generally misinterpreted, ' move their wings less boldly' than those of Euripides. I shall try to show their place in the economy of the drama. They are im- portant, though they do not, as in Aeschylus, contain the central thought of the play. We shall find, I hope, a satisfactory answer to the much debated question of the ' sin ' of Oedipus. Finally, I hope that we shall be able to dispose of the common criticism of the end of the play, criticism which really implies that Sophocles has failed. Wilamowitz, for instance, finds the last scenes so painful as to be for a modern audience intolerable: he thinks that Sophocles regarded them with complacence because, unlike us, he was a pious pagan'. Professor Murray thinks that if the final scenes were acted ' for all they are worth,' they would send the audience away 'cursing the author and producer, and wishing they had never corned' If we ask what were the preconceived notions 1 Odipus pp. 12 ff. '^ In an interesting notice of the Cambridge performance published in the Cambridge Review, December 1912. xiv PREFACE with which a Greek audience listened to each sentence, we shall find a new relevance in the Creon scene, and in the choral odes ; we shall better understand the noble but imperfect character of the hero ; and we shall see a new, though tragic, beauty, trans- forming the very painfulness into an artistic satisfaction, in the conclusion. We shall find, also, and this is most important — because, were it otherwise, we should have proved that Greek tragedy was indeed of little importance to modern readers — that the notions with which Sophocles and his audience approach the play are, in spite of some admixture of superstition, fundamentally true. EDITORIAL NOTE In publishing this book, which was begun before the war and finished in the early months of 191 5, the author desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr C. F. Taylor, who gene- rously undertook the task of verifying references and preparing the manuscript for the press, at a time when the author was unavoidably prevented from attending tp such work. In general, to Mr Taylor's encouragement and criticism he owes more than any phrase of acknowledgment can indicate. He desires also to thank Mr A. S. F. Gow for very kindly reading the whole book in proof and for suggesting many valuable criticisms and corrections, Mr Leonard Whibley, who has been good enough to criticise the Introduction, Miss W. M. L. Hutchin- son, who has made the Index, and the learned staff of the University Press, to whose accurate proof-reading the book is greatly indebted. The long delay in publication has been due to circumstances connected with the war. J.T.S. King's College, Cambridge. February 1920. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE PREPARATION OF THE AUDIENCE It is a mistake to begin the study of a drama by piecing to- gether from the hints of the dialogue a laborious reconstruction of the incidents assumed by the author as antecedents of the action. Yet that is the usual introduction to editions of the Oedipus. We are expected by the critics to carry in our heads a very compli- cated story; The audience of Sophocles knew the main outlines of the hero's tragedy, and some of them knew — and knew well — the details of earlier presentations, in narrative and in drama, of that tragedy: but none of them knew how Sophocles would develop and modify the familiar theme. Knowing that an Oedipus was to be produced, they knew, through epic, lyric, and drama, as well as through the tales of strange old days which they had learnt from parents and nurses in their childhood, a story something like this. In ancient times, Laius was king of Thebes. For some reason, he was destined to be slain by his own son. Apollo's oracle of Delphi warned him, forbidding him, some say, to beget a son, merely revealing to him, say others, the fate which he could not escape. Anyhow, a child was born, and Laius, thinking to avoid the possibility of death at his hands, exposed the baby to die. Of course, the child was saved, grew to manhood without know- ledge of his parentage, and in due time, without knowledge, met his father and, in a quarrel, slew him. But worse than this, accord- ing to the poets, was reserved for Oedipus. He came, unknown and ignorant, to Thebes, the city of his birth, and rid his country- men of the ravages of a pestilent monster called the Sphinx. For this exploit he was rewarded with the hand of the king's widow, and with the throne of Thebes. Sooner or later the truth came to light. He learnt that he had murdered his own father and married his own mother. xvi INTRODUCTION With this main outline of the story the whole audience, we must assume, is familiar. Many, perhaps most, of the spectators are familiar also with the details of different versions, which for us are in part made known by allusions in Homer, Pindar or later writers, in part irrevocably lost. We are reminded, for instance, by an allusion in the Odyssey^ that the legend took its familiar shape before the deepening religious sense of Greece — connected partly with the development of the worship of Apollo at Delphi — had made it seem intolerable that Oedipus should continue, after such a tragedy, to reign at Thebes. When Odysseus visited the land of the dead, he saw, we are told, the mother of Oedipus, ' the beautiful Epicaste, who did a great wrong in the ignorance of her heart, for she married her own son: and he, when he married her, had slain his own father. Then suddenly^ the gods brought these things to light among men. So Oedipus reigned on over the Kadmeians in lovely Thebes, suffering anguish because of the dreadful counsels of the gods. But she fastened on high a noose from the lofty roof-beam of the hall, and so passed to the house of Hades, that strong gaoler: thus did her agony prevail upon her: and for him she left behind sufferings full many, yea, all that a mother's avenging Furies bring to pass.' This ancient version has, in some respects, a remarkable likeness to the account of Sophocles. The epic poet has seized, like Sophocles, the tragic significance of the moment of discovery. In Sophocles, moreover, when Jocasta passes swiftly and silently into the palace where she is presently to be found hanging in her bridal-chamber, the emotion is made more poignant by a touch of reminiscence which is surely not accidental ^ But in Sophocles, although the gods are felt in the background as mysteriously potent, the anguish comes, not simply ' because of the dreadful counsels of the gods,' but as the result of a perfectly normal human process of enquiry. The hero himself unravels his own tragic secret. And in Sophocles, though Jocasta leaves indeed much suffering behind, she calls upon no Furies to avenge her. The ban which is upon Oedipus 1 Od. XI 271 ff. " It is uncertain, as Jebb remarks, whether 4^op means 'presently' or 'suddenly.' ' See line 1072 ri irore ^i^i\Kai...inr ar^fias f^aaa \6wt)s i) ywii. And then SiSouca liii...avapp^^a KaK&. The words in the Odyssey XI 277 fF. are these: ^ S" ipi)--V "■X" axoiiivi) TV S' aKyea KoKKiir' iirla series of speeches composed by the orator and statesman Antiphon as a model for pleaders in Athenian courts^ This is the kind of argument to which a jury will respond : It is against your own advantage that this person, so blood-stained and so foul, should have access to the sacred precincts of your gods and should pollute their purity ; should sit at the same table with yourselves, and should infect the guiltless by his presence. It is this that causes barrenness in the land. It is this that brings misfortune upon men's undertakings. You must consider that it is for yourselves you are acting when you take vengeance for this murder.... The notion of the potent and disastrous blood-pollution is alive in Athenian society, no mere archaistic and imaginative revival of the poet. Though the clear vision of human love enables the Theseus of Euripides" to see the essential innocence and harmless- ness of his friend, even he does not deny the need for purification. His contempt for the danger of infection is for the audience a 1 Tetral. I 2. '' Euripides H.F. 1213 ff. The whole scene is significant. Line 1230 may help us to realise that in the Oedipus at lines 1424 fF. Creon behaves, not brutally, but as a normal and pious Athenian would behave : but at lines 1466 ff. and 1510 with him also human kindness prevails over superstitious fear. Less directly than Euripides, without the denial of the popular belief, Sophocles also points the way to the truth. xxvi INTRODUCTION revelation of generosity, a triumph of reason and of friendship over the current superstition. ' But we must make yet another admission. Though there are few traces here of the crude old superstition whose vitality is attested, for example, by the words of Plato's Laws^: 'He that has been slain by violence is angry against the doer, and pursues, his murderer with shocks and terrors,' there is certainly an appeal to the tragic notion that the dead man cries for vengeance. Though Sophocles has deliberately suppressed the Aeschylean and pre- Aeschylean notion of the ancestral curse and the inherited taint, we must not forget, in estimating the probable effect of his work, the ancient feeling, to which sanction was still given even by the enlightened practice of Athenian justice, that a killing was a wrong inflicted primarily on the family, and that it imposed, upon the kinsman, in the first place, the duty of requital. It is the family of a murdered man that demands the trial of his murderer. It is on a kinsman, who must claim first cousinship at least to the deceased, that the duty of prosecution falls*. This fact, and the frame of ijiind which it induces, must be remembered when we try to realise the emotional effect of the parricide of Oedipus. It may help us if we recall another passage of the Laws, in which Plato, prescribing for the good government of a typical Greek city, will have the parricide slain and his body thrown out naked and unburied at a crossroad beyond the precincts of the city. All the officials shall bring stones and shall stone the corpse, thus throwing upon its head the pollution of the state. 'The Justice that stands on watch, the avenger of kindred bloodshed, follows a law... ordaining that if any man hath done any such deed he suffer what he has inflicted. Hath a man slain his father? He must some day die at the hands of his children.... When the common blood is polluted, there is no other purification. The polluted blood will not be washed out until the life that did the deed has paid a like death as penalty for the death, and so propitiated and laid to rest the wrath of the whole kinship^.' In our play, I know, there is nothing quite so savage as this. Yet 1 IX 865 D. ' If the slayer is unknown a proclamation (Trpi^pijo-ts) must be made. The fact should be remembered when, in our play, Oedipus unconsciously proclaims himself an outlaw. s IX 873 E. THE INNOCENCE OF OEDIPUS xxvii the savage superstition is alive in Athens and we shall not appreciate the full .tragedy of Oedipus unless we take that fact into account. Of the incest I need say little. But here also we must re- member that for a Greek audience there comes into play, not merely the natural feeling which we share, but also the super- stitious sense of a taboo, which makes the tie of" family not less but more binding, the pollution not less but more horrible, than it is for us^ I will mention only the fact that an Athenian was held justified in killing an adulterer at sight if he were caught with the slayer's wife or mother or sister or daughter, or even with his concubine, if she, were the mother of children whom he had acknowledged as his own. So much depended on the purity of citizen blood that a man was forbidden to take back an unfaithful wife under penalty of the loss of citizen rights^. These differences between the normal ancient view and the modern view must, in frankness, be admitted. But do they really imply the sweeping corollary, for example, of Professor Murray? Is it true, that Sophocles expects and allows his audience to adopt that further superstition of 'the terrible and romantic past' which makes incest and parricide 'not moral offences capable of being rationally judged or even excused as unintentional'? Is it true that he has allowed 'no breath of later enlightenment to disturb the primaeval gloom of his atmosphere'? That is the question we have to face. For some of my readers, T hope, to put the question thus plainly is to answer it. flSophocles has, indeed, used all his con- structive art in the invention of a plot whose minor incidents as well as its broad effects reveal the hero's piety, his respect for the natural bond of the family, and his instinctive detestation of impurity. V But there are some critics who are somehow able to ignore the general impression, or to attribute it to a modern enlightenment which, they think, Sophocles did not share. Because Aristotle has remarked that the hero of a drama, if it is to produce in us the emotion proper to tragedy, must not be perfect, must have faults and make mistakes, such critics refuse to accept the broad presentation of the tragic figure of Oedipus, a hero not 1 See e.g. Plato Ijiws viii 838 A. ' Demosthenes Aristocrates 637 § 53, 1374 § 115. xxviii INTRODUCTION without faults, yet noble, involved, not because of his faults, but in spite of his virtue, in pollution. They must needs find some 'a/tapTia,' besides the tragic mistake, to justify the hero's fall. For such critics it is necessary to dwell for a moment on the detail which was devised by Sophocles, not to justify the catastrophe, but to make us admire the hero and realise his essential nobility. In Aeschylus, as we have remarked. ^ snffprp p ''" gpnprplly himself responsible fnrhU ralamity The tragedy comes from the fact that a tendency to evil is too strong for the sinner to resist. It is true, therefore, that the story of Oedipus might have been so presented as to suggest the guilt of the sufferer or some mysteriously inherited tendency to evil. Of that fact the Athenian audience was aware. But the Athenian spectators would not there- fore, like some modern critics, weigh and ponder every little incident of his story as it unfolded itself to see whether, in fact, Sophocles had made his hero guilty. Happily we can be certain that even had they applied that method the result would have been an acquittal. An Athenian jury would have been amused by the plea of a prosecuting critic who argued, like some modem scholars, that the hero is revealed at lines 779 ff. as a person pronp to criminality because he had been brought up as a spoilt young prince; that he must have been provocative in his behaviour since one of his companions was driven to insult him by the taunt of bastardy; that he was hasty and over-inquisitive in his appeal to Apollo, and was ungrateful in his neglect to inform his supposed parents of his departure ; or finally — for this plea has been urged by a critic who saw the futility of all the rest' — that his a/iapria consisted in the criminal negligence with which, in spite of the oracle's evasive answer, he killed an old man and married a com- paratively elderly woman. He ought, we are solemnly told, to have been put upon his guard. No jury, I venture to assert, and a fortiori no intelligent audience, would find him guilty on such grounds and assess such punishment for such offences. And however well the prosecuting counsel argued, the ad- vocate for the defence would have an easy task. As Wilamowitz showed'', the poet has been careful to leave no loophole for mis- understanding. It would have been so easy to make Oedipus the aggressor, as does Euripides, for instance, in the Phoenissae. In ' Klein die Mythopoiedes Sophokles etc. (Eberswalde, 1890). ' Hermes vol. 34. THE INNOCENCE OF OEDIPUS xxi?t-^ Sophocles he is attacked in a lonely mountain pass and defends himself against an unprovoked assault. For killing thus committed as an act of self-defence Athenian justice^ would have pronounced him innocent. After a ceremonial purification he would have been no further troubled by the affair. Unfortunately, ' against his will' — for the whole tragedy assumes that he could not naturally have suspected the truth — the njan whom he so justly slew was his own father, the woman whom he quite properly married was his mother. Thus, as an 'involuntary sinner,' he was plunged into calamities most terrible. But indeed an Athenian of the time of Sophocles would hardly have considered the detail with such care. To him the name of Oedipus suggests, not guilt, but chiefly misfortune. The moral fervour of Aeschylus had given a new interpretation to old stories. But for most Athenians the stories must have continued to illustrate, not the profound reflections of Aeschylus, but the perfectly reasonable, though unreflective, view which most people normally do take of stories. 'Oedipus was at first a happy man, the king of Thebes, the saviour of the state, blest with children, loved by his subjects... but afterwards he became, when he made the great discovery, of all men the most wretched''.' As for those critics who look for the afiapria in the course of the drama, not in its antecedents, it should be sufficient to answer that the plague which sets in motion the tragic events is itself the result of the pollution already incurred, and that at the outset, before ever he has insulted Teiresias or suspected Creon of dis- loyalty, the hero is already an itjces^uous^arricide. But I am aware that this answer will not satisfy the critics, and I shall have more to say on this part of the subject in my next chapter. Here I must insist on the clearness of the distinction made at the crisis of the tragedy between the 'involuntary' acts which have brought 1 He killed an adversary x"pui' ipiavra dSkwc (see Roberts and Gardner Jniro- duction to Greek Epigraphy vol. ii p. 66 and Hicks Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions p. 157) and also iv oS