that she must die, and hanged herself. Œdipus himself meant to slay her if she had not anticipated him. Why did he not follow her? Any free composition would have made him do so; but Sophocles was bound to the saga, and the saga was perfectly certain that Œdipus was alive and blind a long time afterwards. Euripides avoided the awkwardness in an ingenious way. In his Œdipus*[1] the hero is overpowered and blinded by the retainers when he has murdered Iocasta and is seeking to murder his children and himself. As a mere piece of technique, the Œdipus of Sophocles deserves the position given to it by Aristotle, as the typical example of the highest Greek tragedy. There is deep, if not very original, thought; there is wonderful power of language, though no great lift of imagination; and for pure dramatic strength and skill, there are few things in any drama so fine as the last exit of Iocasta, when she alone sees the truth that is coming.
The Ajax—called by the grammarians Ajax the Scourge-Bearer, in distinction to another Ajax the Locrian*—is a stiff and very early play. It is only in the prologue and in the last scene that it has three actors, and it does not really know how to use them, as they are used, for instance, in the Electra and the Antigone. Ajax, being defeated by Odysseus in the contest for the arms of Achilles, nursed his wrath till Athena sent him mad. He tried to attack Odysseus and the Atridæ in their tents, and, like Don Quixote, fell on some sheep and oxen instead. He comes to his mind again, goes out to a solitary place by the sea, and falls upon his sword. All the last five hundred lines
- ↑ Frag. 541, which seems misplaced in Nauck.
