the fifth century poets—Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides—are at one concerning it; and the finest of their lyric odes mourn the feebleness, the friendlessness, and the hopelessness of declining years.
87. Prophets and heralds are seldom agreeable personages in his plays. There is, indeed, a highly-cultivated and politically-trained herald in the Supplices, who argues about constitutions with Theseus; but elsewhere heralds are bold and violent assertors of injustice (Copreus), or mere slaves to carry out the worst commands of their masters (Talthybius). There is no other prominent prophet upon his stage. In the Bacchæ and Phœnissæ, Teiresias is treated with respect; and the prophetess Theonoe (Helena) is a merciful and tender woman. But in many plays the outspoken contempt for this profession seems to indicate the poet's feelings.
It must be remembered, before we leave these minor characters, that they occupied by no means so important a place in the Greek drama as they do in modern plays. The plays of Æschylus and Sophocles only admit (with rare exceptions) of three actors, and any additional parts must either be undertaken (with change of dress) by one of the three, or be quite insignificant. Hence a talented young actor had no opportunity of making his character by a fine reading of a small part, nor do we find that the poets attempted any elaborate character drawing by stray touches in such figures, as is often the case in good modern plays. These are the sort of contrasts which made Greek plays far more different from ours than is apparent at first reading. What we consider delicacy in play of feature, and grace of gesture, must have been impossible under the mask and tragic inflation of the figure which the Greeks thought necessary
βρωτοῖσι καὶ ποτοῖσι καὶ μαγεύμασι
παρεκτρέποντες ὄχετον ὥστε μὴ θανεῖν·
οὓς χρῆν, ἐπειδὰν μηδὲν ὠφελῶσι γῆν,
θάνοντας ἔρρειν κἀκποδὼν εἶναι νέοις.
