Page:On the Sublime 1890.djvu/70

 

suited to his heroic themes: as when he says of his "Seven against Thebes"—

 

"Seven mighty men, and valiant captains, slew
Over an iron-bound shield a bull, then dipped
Their fingers in the blood, and all invoked
Ares, Enyo, and death-dealing Flight
In witness of their oaths,"^[1]

 

and describes how they all mutually pledged themselves without flinching to die. Sometimes, however, his thoughts are unshapen, and as it were rough-hewn and rugged. Not observing this, Euripides, from too blind a rivalry, sometimes falls under the same censure. 6Aeschylus with a strange violence of language represents the palace of Lycurgus as possessed at the appearance of Dionysus—

 

"The halls with rapture thrill, the roof's inspired."^[2]

 

Here Euripides, in borrowing the image, softens its extravagance^[3]—

 

"And all the mountain felt the god."^[4]

 

7Sophocles has also shown himself a great master of the imagination in the scene in which the dying Oedipus prepares himself for burial in the midst of a tempest,^[5] and where he tells how Achilles appeared to the Greeks over his tomb just as they were

 

1. Sept. c. Th. 42.
2. Aesch. Lycurgus.
3. Lit. "Giving it a different flavour," as Arist. Poet. ήδνσμένῳ λόγῳ χώρις ἑκάσιῳ τῶν, ii. 10.
4. Bacch. 726.
5. Oed. Col. 1586