LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 355 It cannot have escaped any attentive reader how much in this mythus, so treated, is applicable not merely to the old hero OEdipus, but also to the destiny of man in general, and how a gentle longing for death, as a deliverance from all worldly troubles and as a clearing up of our ex- istence, runs through the whole; and certainly the political references to the position of Athens at that time in regard to other states, even though they are more prominent in this than in other pieces, are quite subordinate in comparison with these leading ideas.* § 13. Thus the tragedies of Sophocles appear to us as pictures of the mind, as poetical developements of the secrets of our souls and of the laws to which their nature makes them amenable. Of all the poets of antiquity, Sophocles has penetrated most deeply into the re- cesses of the human heart. He bestows very little attention on facts ; he regards them as little more than vehicles to give an outward mani- festation to the workings of the mind. For the representation of this world of thought, Sophocles has contrived a peculiar poetical language. If the general distinction between the language of poetry and prose is that the former gives the ideas with greater clearness and vividness, and the feelings with greater strength and warmth ; the style of Sophocles is not poetical in the same degree as that of iEschylus, because it does not strive after the same vivid description of sensible impres- sions, and because his art is based upon a delineation of the manifold delicate shades of feeling, and not on an exhibition of the strong and uncontrollable emotions. Accordingly, the style of Sophocles comes a good deal nearer to prose than that, of iEschylus, and is distinguished from it less by the choice, of words than by their use and connexion, and by a sort of boldness and subtilty in the employment of ordinary ex- pressions. Sophocles seeks to make his words imply something which people in general would not expect in them : he employs them ac- cording to their derivation rather than according to iheir actual use ; and thus his expressions have a peculiar pregnancy and obscurityf which easily degenerates into a sort of play with words and significa-
- It is true that the whole piece is full of references to the Peloponnesian war
and to the devastations to which Attica was subjected, though they spared the country ahout Colunus and the Academy, and the lioly olive-trees. Difficulties, too. are occasioned hy the tone of commendation in which Theseus sneaks of the character of Thebes in general (v. 919), for Thebes was certainly at this period one of the foes of Athens ; and it might be supposed that this passage was added by the younger Sophocles alter Thrasybulus had liberated Athens with the aid of the Thebans. The drama, however, is too much of one character to give any room for such a snrmi-e ; and we must therefore conclude, that Sophocles knew there existed among the people of Thebes a disposition favourable to Athens, whereas the aristocrats who had the upper hand in the government were hostile to that city. After the termination of the Peloponnesian war, the democratic parly at Thebes showed themselves more and more in favour of Athens and opposed to Sparta. f Especially also one, of which the speakers themselves are unconscious; so that, without knowing it. they often describe the real sb>te of the case. This belongs es- sentially to the tragical irony of Sophocles, of which we have spoken above ($ 8.) 2 a 2
