LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 341 obscurity which Sophocles objected to in himself; the Ajax and Plii- ioctetes, as well as the two CEdipuses, show, in a manner which cannot be mistaken, an easier flow of language than his earlier plays, and do not require so great an effort on the part of the reader. Nevertheless, the tragic art of Sophocles is fully shown in all of them, and is like nothing but itself; Sophocles must have hit upon the changes which he introduced into the tragedy of iEschylus, long before he wrote any one of those plays, and must have already made, in accordance with his principles, a complete change in the whole constitution of tragedy. § 4. We have mentioned these alterations, as far as concerns the details, in the two preceding chapters : we must here consider their connexion with the change of the whole essence and organiza- tion of tragedy effected by Sophocles. The foundation and corner- stone of this new edifice, which was erected on the same area as the old building, but according to a different plan, was always this, that, though Sophocles still followed the old usages aud laws, and always, or as a general rule, exhibited at one time three tragedies and a satyrical drama, he nevertheless loosened the connexion of these pieces with one another, and presented to the public not one great dramatic poem, but four separate poetical works, which might just as well have been brought forward at different festivals* The tragic poet, too, no longer proposed to himself to exhibit a series of mythical actions, the develope- mentof the complicated destinies of families and tribes, which was in- consistent with the compass and unity of plan required by separate tra- gedies ; he was obliged to limit himself to one leading fact, and, to take the example of the Orestea, could only oppose to such a trilogy fragments of itself, like the Electra of Sophocles or Euripides, inwltfch everything is referred to the murder of Clyta?,mnestra. The tragedies subsequent to Olymp. 80 had indeed become considerably longer,t which is said to have originated with Aristarchus, a tragedian who made his appearance in Olymp. 81. 2. B.C. 454. J The Agamemnon of vEschylus, however, the first piece of his last trilogy, is considerably longer than the others, and nearly of the same length as a play of Sophocles. Still, this extension has not been effected by an increase in the action, which even in Sophocles turns upon a single point, aud very seldom, as in the Antigone, is divided into several important moments,
- As e. g. Euripides brought out in b.c. 431 the Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys, and
the satyrical drama " the Reapers" (e^itrrai) : in b.c. 414 Xenocles exhibited the CEdipus, Lycaon, Bacchae, and the satyrical drama " the Athamas." f E.g. the Persians, 1076; Suppliants, 1074; Seven against Thebes, 1078 Prometheus, 1093. On the other hand, the Agamemnon, 1G73; the Antigone, 1353 ; King (Edipus, 1530 ; CEdipus at Colonus, tii), according to the numbers in Dindorf's edition. [ Suidas V. , Apiorap%os....os ■xpuros us to vv» uItuv ft.YiX.ci to. o/JUfixra Kararrrnt Etisebius gives us the year of his first appearance.
