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The Tragedy of Electra, According to Sophocles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. T. Sheppard
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Abstract

There is a note of uneasiness in many modern appreciations of Sophocles, and particularly of his Electra. A symptom is the familiar apology that, after all, he was the perfect artist. Jebb himself betrays a certain moral discomfort in the midst of his enthusiasm for the brightness of the morning sun that greets the righteous avenger. Professor Murray has the courage to state as a challenge the criticism which less candid writers hint by inuendo. By the very frankness of his indictment he helps us to face, instead of shirking, the issue. Unlike Euripides and Aeschylus, he says, Sophocles takes the story exactly as he finds it:

He knows that those ancient chiefs did not trouble about their consciences: they killed in the fine old ruthless way.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1918 , pp. 80 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1918

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References

page 81 note 1 πικρόν for αύστηρόν is evidence for the antiquity of this piece of criticism (v. Jebb, , Trach. Int. p. xlvi.)Google Scholar. The meaning is: ‘After I had played out the bombast of Aeschylus, and then the pungency and artificiality of my own style of composition, I discovered the form of expression which contains the highest degree of Ethos and is the best.’ That is no commonplace of the critical tradition. The ancient Life of Sophocles makes the obvious remark that he learnt tragedy in the school of Aeschylus, and gives the normal view of antiquity when it says that ‘he is called $$n$$δ$$v$$ς.’ It is his sweetness that earns him the name of the Attic bee. He has ἡ$$δονήν θαυμαστήν καὶ μεγαλοπρέπειαν. Just as in life he was ε$$u$$κóλος, so in his style. Dio Chrysostom says that he had neither the αύθαδ$$ε$$ς καὶ ἀπλοῦν of Aeschylus, nor the ἀκριβἑς καὶ δριμὺ καì πολιτικόν of Euripides, words which sufficiently indicate the relation between the normal stylistic criticism and the Frogs of Aristophanes. Dionysius Halicarnensis and others admit that he sometimes falls into ἀνωμαλία, but no one, when once the traditional criticisms were fixed, was likely to suggest that the blessed Sophocles had at any stage been πικρός or αύστηρός. Pindar, Aeschylus, Thucydides, are ‘austere.’ Euripides and Isocrates are ‘smooth.’ But Sophocles, like Homer, has the perfect style, ‘harmoniously blended,’ εǚκατον. Dion. Hal. de uerb. comp. XXI.-XXIV.

page 181 note 2 Cf. Headlam's, Walter note in C.R. vol. XVII. 1903, p. 248Google Scholar. It should also be remarked that there are, in accordance with the normal stylistic method of Sophocles, verbal reminis cences of Homer, Il. VIII. 485Google Scholar, and that line 19 significantly recalls Aesch. Ag. 276.

page 181 note 3 See Hesiod, , Works and Days, 577 sqq. and 568 sqq.Google Scholar; Ibycus, . fr. 7Google Scholar; Eur, . Phaethon fr. 773, 23 sqq.Google Scholar, recalling Hom, . Od. XIX. 522Google Scholar, Rhesus 546 sqq., Callim, . Hecale fr. in C.R. vol. VII p. 429Google Scholar, Xenophon, Oec. V, 4Google Scholar.

page 84 note 1 Line 141.

page 85 note 1 The scholiast is right.

page 86 note 1 See my remarks in Class. Quart. January, 1917.