Page:Sophocles (Classical Writers).djvu/24

The religious elements that are most persistent in Sophoclean tragedy are—

1. The association of religion with the sanctities of domestic life. In this the powers of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, and the Erinyes are combined.

2. The recognition of Athena as the special protectress of cities.

3. The religious duty of protecting the stranger and the suppliant.

4. The importance of funeral rites.

5 . The close relation of the Divine working to the course of individual lives.

6. The tendency, which is most apparent in the latest dramas, insensibly to substitute the inward for the outward, the moral for the positive, in religious obligation.^[1]

1. The cry of Hyllus at the end of the Trachiniæ, and the complaint of Philoctetes on hearing of the death of Antilochus, are the chief expressions in Sophocles of the new feeling of perplexity about the gods, which so largely affects the work of Euripides. See also Fragm. 649 (Dind.).