Athens: Its Rise and Fall Part 40

Both are examples of fort.i.tude under suffering--of the mind's conflict with its fate. In either play a dreary waste, a savage solitude, const.i.tute the scene. But the towering sublimity of the Prometheus dwarfs into littleness every image of hero or demiG.o.d with which we contrast it. What are the chorus of mariners, and the astute Ulysses, and the boyish generosity of Neoptolemus--what is the lonely cave on the sh.o.r.es of Lemnos--what the high-hearted old warrior, with his torturing wound and his sacred bow--what are all these to the vast t.i.tan, whom the fiends chain to the rock beneath which roll the rivers of h.e.l.l, for whom the daughters of Ocean are ministers, to whose primeval birth the G.o.ds of Olympus are the upstarts of a day, whose soul is the treasure-house of a secret which threatens the realm of heaven, and for whose unimaginable doom earth reels to its base, all the might of divinity is put forth, and Hades itself trembles as it receives its indomitable and awful guest! Yet, as I have before intimated, it is the very grandeur of Aeschylus that must have made his poems less attractive on the stage than those of the humane and flexible Sophocles. No visible representation can body forth his thoughts--they overpower the imagination, but they do not come home to our household and familiar feelings. In the contrast between the "Philoctetes" and the "Prometheus" is condensed the contrast between Aeschylus and Sophocles. They are both poets of the highest conceivable order; but the one seems almost above appeal to our affections--his tempestuous gloom appals the imagination, the vivid glare of his thoughts pierces the innermost recesses of the intellect, but it is only by accident that he strikes upon the heart. The other, in his grandest flights, remembers that men make his audience, and seems to feel as if art lost the breath of its life when aspiring beyond the atmosphere of human intellect and human pa.s.sions. The difference between the creations of Aeschylus and Sophocles is like the difference between the Satan of Milton and the Macbeth of Shakspeare. Aeschylus is equally artful with Sophocles--it is the criticism of ignorance that has said otherwise. But there is this wide distinction--Aeschylus is artful as a dramatist to be read, Sophocles as a dramatist to be acted. If we get rid of actors, and stage, and audience, Aeschylus will thrill and move us no less than Sophocles, through a more intellectual if less pa.s.sionate medium. A poem may be dramatic, yet not theatrical--may have all the effects of the drama in perusal, but by not sufficiently enlisting the skill of the actor--nay, by soaring beyond the highest reach of histrionic capacities, may lose those effects in representation. The storm in "Lear" is a highly dramatic agency when our imagination is left free to conjure up the angry elements,

"Bid the winds blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters."

But a storm on the stage, instead of exceeding, so poorly mimics the reality, that it can never realize the effect which the poet designs, and with which the reader is impressed. So is it with supernatural and fanciful creations, especially of the more delicate and subtle kind. The Ariel of the "Tempest," the fairies of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the Oceanides of the "Prometheus," are not to be represented by human shapes. We cannot say that they are not dramatic, but they are not theatrical. We can sympathize with the poet, but not with the actor. For the same reason, in a lesser degree, all creations, even of human character, that very highly task the imagination, that lift the reader wholly out of actual experience, and above the common earth, are comparatively feeble when reduced to visible forms. The most metaphysical plays of Shakspeare are the least popular in representation. Thus the very genius of Aeschylus, that kindles us in the closet, must often have militated against him on the stage. But in Sophocles all--even the divinities themselves-- are touched with humanity; they are not too subtle or too lofty to be submitted to mortal gaze. We feel at once that on the stage Sophocles ought to have won the prize from Aeschylus; and, as a proof of this, if we look at the plays of each, we see that scarcely any of the great characters of Aeschylus could have called into sufficient exercise the powers of an actor. Prometheus on his rock, never changing even his position, never absent from the scene, is denied all the relief, the play and mobility, that an actor needs. His earthly representative could be but a grand reciter. In the "Persians," not only the theatrical, but the dramatic effect is wanting--it is splendid poetry put into various mouths, but there is no collision of pa.s.sions, no surprise, no incident, no plot, no rapid dialogue in which words are but the types of emotions. In the "Suppliants" Garrick could have made nothing of Pelasgus. In the "Seven before Thebes" there are not above twenty or thirty lines in the part of Eteocles in which the art of the actor could greatly a.s.sist the genius of the poet. In the'

trilogy of the "Agamemnon," the "Choephori," and the "Orestes,"

written in advanced years, we may trace the contagious innovation of Sophocles; but still, even in these tragedies, there is no part so effective in representation as those afforded by the great characters of Sophocles. In the first play the hypocrisy and power of Clytemnestra would, it is true, have partially required and elicited the talents of the player; but Agamemnon himself is but a thing of pageant, and the splendid bursts of Ca.s.sandra might have been effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. In the second play, in the scene between Orestes and his mother, and in the gathering madness of Orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. But in the last play (the Furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the Furies sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to the end in which an eminent actor could exhibit his genius.

But when we come to the plays of Sophocles, we feel that a new era in the drama is created; we feel that the artist poet has called into full existence the artist actor. His theatrical effects [375] are tangible, actual--could be represented to-morrow in Paris--in London-- everywhere. We find, therefore, that with Sophocles has pa.s.sed down to posterity the name of the great actor [376] in his princ.i.p.al plays.

And I think the English reader, even in the general a.n.a.lysis and occasional translations with which I have ventured to fill so many pages, will perceive that all the exertions of subtle, delicate, and pa.s.sionate power, even in a modern actor, would be absolutely requisite to do justice to the characters of Oedipus at Coloneus, Antigone, Electra, and Philoctetes.

This, then, was the distinction between Aeschylus and Sophocles--both were artists, as genius always must be, but the art of the latter adapts itself better to representation. And this distinction in art was not caused merely by precedence in time. Had Aeschylus followed Sophocles, it would equally have existed--it was the natural consequence of the distinctions in their genius--the one more sublime, the other more impa.s.sioned--the one exalting the imagination, the other appealing to the heart. Aeschylus is the Michael Angelo of the drama, Sophocles the Raffaele.

XIII. Thus have I presented to the general reader the outline of all the tragedies of Sophocles. In the great length at which I have entered in this, not the least difficult, part of my general task, I have widely innovated on the plan pursued by the writers of Grecian history. For this innovation I offer no excuse. It is her poetry at the period we now examine, as her philosophy in a later time, that makes the individuality of Athens. In Sophocles we behold the age of Pericles. The wars of that brilliant day were as pastimes to the mighty carnage of oriental or northern battle. The reduction of a single town, which, in our time, that has no Sophocles and no Pericles, a captain of artillery would demolish in a week, was the proudest exploit of the Olympian of the Agora; a little while, and one defeat wrests the diadem of the seas from the brows of "The Violet Queen;" scanty indeed the ruins that attest the glories of "The Propylaea, the Parthenon, the Porticoes, and the Docks," to which the eloquent orator appealed as the "indestructible possessions" of Athens; along the desolate site of the once tumultuous Agora the peasant drives his oxen--the champion deity [377] of Phidias, whose spectral apparition daunted the barbarian Alaric [378], and the gleam of whose spear gladdened the mariner beneath the heights of Sunium, has vanished from the Acropolis; but, happily, the age of Pericles has its stamp and effigy in an art more imperishable than that of war--in materials more durable than those of bronze and marble, of ivory and gold. In the majestic harmony, the symmetrical grace of Sophocles, we survey the true portraiture of the genius of the times, and the old man of Coloneus still celebrates the name of Athens in a sweeter song than that of the nightingale [379], and melodies that have survived the muses of Cephisus [380]. Sophocles was allegorically the prophet when he declared that in the grave of Oedipus was to be found the sacred guardian and the everlasting defence of the city of Theseus.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] "c.u.m consuetudine ad imperii cupiditatem trahi videretur."--Nepos in Vit. Milt., cap. 8.

[2] Corn. Nepos in Vit. Milt., cap. 7.

[3] Nepos. in Vit. Milt., cap. 7.

[4] Herod., lib. vi., cap. cx.x.xvi.

[5] Nepos says the fine was estimated at the cost of the navy he had conducted to Paros; but Boeckh rightly observes, that it is an ignorant a.s.sertion of that author that the fine was intended for a compensation, being the usual mode of a.s.sessing the offence.

The case is simply this--Miltiades was accused--whether justly or unjustly no matter--it was clearly as impossible not to receive the accusation and to try the cause, as it would be for an English court of justice to refuse to admit a criminal action against Lord Grey or the Duke of Wellington. Was Miltiades guilty or not? This we cannot tell. We know that he was tried according to the law, and that the Athenians thought him guilty, for they condemned him. So far this is not ingrat.i.tude--it is the course of law. A man is tried and found guilty--if past services and renown were to save the great from punishment when convicted of a state offence, society would perhaps be disorganized, and certainly a free state would cease to exist. The question therefore shrinks to this--was it or was it not ungrateful in the people to relax the penalty of death, legally incurred, and commute it to a heavy fine? I fear we shall find few instances of greater clemency in monarchies, however mild. Miltiades unhappily died. But nature slew him, not the Athenian people. And it cannot be said with greater justice of the Athenians, than of a people no less ill.u.s.trious, and who are now their judges, that it was their custom "de tuer en amiral pour encourager les autres."

[6] The taste of a people, which is to art what public opinion is to legislation, is formed, like public opinion, by habitual social intercourse and collision. The more men are brought together to converse and discuss, the more the principles of a general national taste will become both diffused and refined. Less to their climate, to their scenery, to their own beauty of form, than to their social habits and preference of the public to the domestic life, did the Athenians, and the Grecian republics generally, owe that wonderful susceptibility to the beautiful and harmonious, which distinguishes them above all nations ancient or modern. Solitude may exalt the genius of a man, but communion alone can refine the taste of a people.

[7] It seems probable that the princ.i.p.al Bacchic festival was originally held at the time of the vintage--condita post frumenta.

But from the earliest known period in Attica, all the triple Dionysia were celebrated during the winter and the spring.

[8] Egyptian, according to Herodotus, who a.s.serts, that Melampus first introduced the Phallic symbol among the Greeks, though he never sufficiently explained its mysterious significations, which various sages since his time had, however, satisfactorily interpreted. It is just to the Greeks to add, that this importation, with the other rites of Bacchus, was considered at utter variance with their usual habits and manners.

[9] Herodotus a.s.serts that Arion first named, invented, and taught the dithyramb at Corinth; but, as Bentley triumphantly observes, Athenaeus has preserved to us the very verses of Archilochus, his predecessor by a century, in which the song of the dithyramb is named.

[10] In these remarks upon the origin of the drama, it would belong less to history than to scholastic dissertation, to enter into all the disputed and disputable points. I do not, therefore, pause with every step to discuss the questions contested by antiquarians--such as, whether the word "tragedy," in its primitive and homely sense, together with the prize of the goat, was or was not known in Attica prior to Thespis (it seems to me that the least successful part of Bentley's immortal work is that which attempts to enforce the latter proposition); still less do I think a grave answer due to those who, in direct opposition to authorities headed by the grave and searching Aristotle, contend that the exhibitions of Thespis were of a serious and elevated character. The historian must himself weigh the evidences on which he builds his conclusions; and come to those conclusions, especially in disputes which bring to unimportant and detached inquiries the most costly expenditure of learning, without fatiguing the reader with a repet.i.tion of all the arguments which he accepts or rejects. For those who incline to go more deeply into subjects connected with the early Athenian drama, works by English and German authors, too celebrated to enumerate, will be found in abundance. But even the most careless general reader will do well to delight himself with that dissertation of Bentley on Phalaris, so familiar to students, and which, despite some few intemperate and bold a.s.sumptions, will always remain one of the most colossal monuments of argument and erudition.

[11] Aeschylus was a Pythagorean. "Veniat Aeschylus, sed etiam Pythagoreus."--Cic. Tusc. Dis., b. ii., 9.

[12] Out of fifty plays, thirty-two were satyrical.--Suidas in Prat.

[13] The Tetralogy was the name given to the fourfold exhibition of the three tragedies, or trilogy, and the Satyric Drama.

[14] Yet in Aeschylus there are sometimes more than two speaking actors on the stage,--as at one time in the Choephori, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra (to say nothing of Pylades, who is silent), and again in the same play, Orestes, Pylades, and Clytemnestra, also in the Eumenides, Apollo, Minerva, Orestes. It is truly observed, however, that these plays were written after Sophocles had introduced the third actor. [The Orestean tetralogy was exhibited B. C. 455, only two years before the death of Aeschylus, and ten years after Sophocles had gained his first prize.] Any number of mutes might be admitted, not only as guards, etc., but even as more important personages. Thus, in the Prometheus, the very opening of the play exhibits to us the demons of Strength and Force, the G.o.d Vulcan, and Prometheus himself; but the dialogue is confined to Strength and Vulcan.

[15] The celebrated temple of Bacchus; built after the wooden theatre had given way beneath the mult.i.tude a.s.sembled to witness a contest between Pratinas and Aeschylus.

[16] 1st. The rural Dionysia, held in the country districts throughout Attica about the beginning of January. 2d. The Lenaean, or Anthesterial, Dionysia, in the end of February and beginning of March, in which princ.i.p.ally occurred the comic contests; and the grand Dionysis of the city, referred to in the text. Afterward dramatic performances were exhibited also, in August, during the Panathenaea.

[17] That is, when three actors became admitted on the stage.

[18] For it is sufficiently clear that women were admitted to the tragic performances, though the arguments against their presence in comic plays preponderate. This admitted, the manners of the Greeks may be sufficient to prove that, as in the arena of the Roman games, they were divided from the men; as, indeed, is indirectly intimated in a pa.s.sage of the Gorgias of Plato.

[19] Schlegel says truly and eloquently of the chorus--"that it was the idealized spectator"--"reverberating to the actual spectator a musical and lyrical expression of his own emotions."

[20] In this speech he enumerates, among other benefits, that of Numbers, "the prince of wise inventions"--one of the pa.s.sages in which Aeschylus is supposed to betray his Pythagorean doctrines.

[21] It is greatly disputed whether Io was represented on the stage as transformed into the actual shape of a heifer, or merely accursed with a visionary phrensy, in which she believes in the transformation.

It is with great reluctance that I own it seems to me not possible to explain away certain expressions without supposing that Io appeared on the stage at least partially transformed.

[22] Vit. Aesch.

[23] It is the orthodox custom of translators to render the dialogue of the Greek plays in blank verse; but in this instance the whole animation and rapidity of the original would be utterly lost in the stiff construction and protracted rhythm of that metre.

[24] Viz., the meadows around Asopus.

[25] To make the sense of this detached pa.s.sage more complete, and conclude the intelligence which the queen means to convey, the concluding line in the text is borrowed from the next speech of Clytemnestra--following immediately after a brief and exclamatory interruption of the chorus.

[26] i. e. Menelaus, made by grief like the ghost of his former self.

[27] The words in italics attempt to convey paraphrastically a new construction of a sentence which has puzzled the commentators, and met with many and contradictory interpretations. The original literally is--"I pity the last the most." Now, at first it is difficult to conjecture why those whose adversity is over, "blotted out with the moistened sponge," should be the most deserving of compa.s.sion. But it seems to me that Ca.s.sandra applies the sentiments to herself--she pities those whose career of grief is over, because it is her own lot which she commiserates, and by reference to which she individualizes a general reflection.

[28] Perhaps his mere diction would find a less feeble resemblance in pa.s.sages of Sh.e.l.ley, especially in the Prometheus of that poet, than in any other poetry existent. But his diction alone. His power is in concentration--the quality of Sh.e.l.ley is diffuseness. The interest excited by Aeschylus, even to those who can no longer sympathize with the ancient a.s.sociations, is startling, terrible, and intense--that excited by Sh.e.l.ley is lukewarm and tedious. The intellectuality of Sh.e.l.ley destroyed, that of Aeschylus only increased, his command over the pa.s.sions.

[29] In the comedy of "The Frogs," Aristophanes makes it the boast of Aeschylus, that he never drew a single woman influenced by love.

Spanheim is surprised that Aristophanes should ascribe such a boast to the author of the "Agamemnon." But the love of Clytemnestra for Aegisthus is never drawn--never delineated. It is merely suggested and hinted at--a sentiment lying dark and concealed behind the motives to the murder of Agamemnon ostensibly brought forward, viz., revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and jealousy of Ca.s.sandra.

[30] In plays lost to us.

[31] I reject the traditions which make Aristides and Themistocles rivals as boys, because chronology itself refutes them. Aristides must have been of mature age at the battle of Marathon, if he was the friend and follower of Clisthenes, one of the ten generals in the action, and archon in the following year. But both Plutarch and Justin a.s.sure us that Themistocles was very young at the battle of Marathon, and this a.s.surance is corroborated by other facts connected with his biography. He died at the age of sixty-five, but he lived to see the siege of Cyprus by Cimon. This happened B. C. 449. If, then, we refer his death to that year, he was born 514 B. C., and therefore was about twenty-four at the battle of Marathon.

[32] Plut. in Vit. Them. Heraclides et Idomeneus ap. Athen., lib. 12.

[33] See Dodwell's "Tour through Greece," Gell's "Itinerary."

[34] "Called by some Laurion Oros, or Mount Laurion." Gell's Itinerary.

[35] Boeckh's Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurium.

[36] Boeckh's Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurium.

[37] On this point, see Boeckh. Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurion, in reference to the account of Diodorus.