immediately felt control of the gods and of fate. There is, indeed, no collision of forces so abrupt as in Æschylus; since the ampler unfolding of character serves to foreshow, and sometimes to delay, the catastrophe. On the other hand, there is no trace of that competition between free thought and the principle of authority which is often so jarring in the plots of Euripides. In the dramas of Sophocles there is perfect unity of moral government; and the development of human motives, while it heightens the interest of the action, serves to illustrate the power of the gods.
The method by which Sophocles thus combines humanity with idealism may be seen in the cases of Ajax, of Œdipus, and of Heracles.
Ajax had been deprived of the arms of Achilles by the award of the Atreidæ. The goddess Athene, whom he had angered by arrogance, had seized the opportunity of his disappointment and rage to strike him with madness. In this frenzy he had fallen upon the flocks and herds of the Greek army on the plain of Troy, and had butchered or tortured them, thinking that he was wreaking vengeance on his enemies. When he comes to his senses, he is overpowered by a sense of his disgrace, and destroys himself.
The central person of this drama becomes human in the hands of Sophocles by the natural delineation of his anguish on the return to sanity. Ajax feels the new shame added to his repulse as any man of honour would feel it. At the same time he stands
