The three recommended plays of Sophocles are ali about the same family, that of King Oedipus, but they were not writ- ten as a trilogy. The order of their composition is Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus. (The last, written by a very old man of undiminished powers, was produced in 401 b.c.e. after Sophocles's death.) If you wish, you may read them in the order of the chronology suggested by their action: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Together they are often called the Oedipus Cycle or the Theban Plays.
In his Poetics, Aristotle [13] tells us that Sophocles said he portrayed people as they ought to be, Euripides portrayed them as they are. He might have added that Aeschylus portrayed people as demigods driven by single outsize passions. Sophocles is particularly noted for the lyrical beauty of his choruses.
Aristotle considers Oedipus Rex the ideal play, admiring it especially for its plot and construction. Today we might stress other qualities. There is no doubt, however, that it is the most influential Greek tragedy in existence, the one most often revived, the one most universally studied. Its basic myth, that of a man who killed his father and married his mother, suggested to Freud [98] the name for the Oedipus complex. (Max Beerbohm called the Oedipuses "a tense and peculiar family.,>)
After reading Oedipus Rex, you may find yourself asking two profound questions that continue to be asked down to our own day: First, Is man free or bound? Second, If the intelli- gence brings tragedy, to what degree is it good? Technically the effect of the play depends in large part on the masterly use of dramatic irony—the device whereby the audience is in pos- session of crucial facts hidden from the protagonist.
Oedipus at Colonus is a difficult play, even for the learned reader. Unlike Oedipus Rex, it is not well knit; its interest does not lie in its plot. Perhaps it should be approached as a kind of miracle or mystery play, a study of a man more heavily bur- dened with guilt and knowledge than is normal, whose life is at last vindicated and given meaning by both the gods and the city of Athens. In the end Oedipus becomes a kind of transcendent hero, like King Arthur, and, also like him, comes to a mysteri- ous end.
The Antigone is psychologically the most complex of the three plays. It has been viewed as a study of the conflicting claims of convention and a higher law of conduct, or, differ- ently phrased, of the state and the individual. It is also one of the many Greek plays about hubris, or excessive pride—in this case, the pride of Creon—and the ruin that attends such immoderacy of feeling. You will encounter this notion again in Herodotus [8]. Before you start the Antigone, keep in mind that to the ancient Greeks the proper burial of the dead was a matter of overwhelming importance. Also you must accept the Greek idea (or at least Antigone's idea) that a husband or child is replaceable, a brother never.
In the Oedipus Cycle, Sophocles deals with the downfall of greatness. But he is inspired as much by the greatness as by the downfall. We might say that the special Sophoclean emotion comes from the tension between his sad recognition of man's tragic fate and his admiration for man's wondrous powers.
C.F.
EU R1 PI D ES
EURIPIDES
484-406 B.C.E.
Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, The Trojan Women, Electra, The Bacchae
Though possibly fewer than fifteen years jъnior to Sophocles [6], Euripides inherited a different Greek world, torn by intel- lectual doubt and civil strife. His work seems to reflect the change. In Sophocles's sense of tragedy, there is a certain grave serenity; not so with Euripides.
He was born at Salamis, where the famous naval battle was fought. He appears to have led a retired, perhaps even an embit- tered life. One story has him living alone in a cave by the sea. Of his possibly ninety-two plays, nineteen survive, if Rhesus is genuine. Though they were popular, he won the prize, according to one account, only five times to Sophocles^ eighteen.
Of the three great Attic tragedians, Euripides is the most interesting in the sense that his mental world is least alien to our own. A son of the all-questioning Sophists, swayed by the irony of Sуcrates, he, like us, felt the uncertainty of ali moral and religious values. His later career contemporary with the suicidai Peloponnesian War, he, too, lived in a crisis period marked by fear, pessimism, and political confusion. The devel- opment of his genius was irregular and his thought is not con- sistent, but we can say that his outlook was rationalistic, skepti- cal, and, even if not in the exalted Sophoclean pattern, tragic. He would understand without difficulty certain existentialist and vanguard writers of today.
His plays are generally, though not always, marked by the- atricality, even an operatic luridness; by exaggerated coinci- dence; by the employment of a knot-resolving "god from the machine"; by dialogue that is often debate and oration rather than impassioned speech; by a mixture of tones (Is Alcestis a serious or a comic play?); by unconventional, even radical
ideas—The Trojan Women empties war of its glory, the Medea can be taken as a feminist tract, other plays portray the gods as either delusive or unlovely; by a remarkable talent for the depiction of women—the portraits of Phaedra and Medea are miracles of feminine psychology; and finally by a pervading interest, not in the relations between human beings and some supernal force, but in the weaknesses and passions of our own natures. As a psychologist and vendor of ideas, Euripides is the ancestor of Ibsen [89] and Shaw [99].
And yet he eludes formulas. His plays at times seem to be the broken record of a search for certainties that were never found. He can write realistic, even down-to-earth dialogue but also choruses and speeches of rare beauty. Plutarch tells us that certain Athenians, taken prisoner at Syracuse, were freed because they recited so enchantingly some passages from Euripides. He seems often to be a skeptic, almost a village atheist; yet in his masterpiece, his last play, the Bacchae, he delves profoundly and with strange sympathy into humanity^ recurrent need for irrationality, even for frenzy. Euripides is not of a piece. Perhaps therein lies part of his fascination for a time that, like ours, specializes in damaged souls.
I have suggested six plays. They are arranged in the probable order of their composition or at least representation. But many oth- ers repay study, among them Heracles, Hecuba and Andromache.
As you read Euripides, see whether you can understand why Aristotle [13] called him "the most tragic of the poets."
C.F.
8
HERODOTUS
ca. 484-ca. 425 B.C.E. The Histories
Of Herodotus we know mainly that he was born of good family in Halicarnassus, a city in Asia Minor, originally a Greek colony, but under Persian control for half his life. We know also that he traveled widely throughout the entire Mediterranean world, presumably amassing the materiais that went into his Histories, a word that in the original Greek means inquiries or investigations. His work was famous during his lifetime and has never ceased to be so.
Herodotus states his purpose: to preserve "from decay the remembrance of what men have done" and to prevent "the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory." The latter part of his book fulfills his purpose. It gives us as full and objective an account of the titanic struggle between Pйrsia and Greece as was possible for this pioneer historian. With these "actions" we associate such glorious names as Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, battles in a war in possible consequence of which we are today a part of Western rather than Asiatic culture.