Page:Sophocles (Classical Writers).djvu/38

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32
SOPHOCLES.
[CHAP. IV.

the motive of the Trachiniæ is almost purely dramatic; that of the Philoctetes is largely ethical, but the poet has here passed from the general notion of an "unwritten law," to the more psychological conception of a principle of honourable feeling, which the ingenuous soul finds it impossible to violate.