Œta, and there, without tear or groan, to apply the torch to his funeral pile, he leads the spectators to the reflexion which solves all difficulties, and melts all discords into the clearest harmony. Dejanira's wishes have been fulfilled, not indeed in her own sense, but in an infinitely higher one. The gods have decreed to bestow on Hercules not merely length of days, but immortality; not merely ease and quiet, but celestial bliss. She indeed has lost him, but only as she must have done in any case sooner or later; and instead of forfeiting his affection, she has been enabled to put the most unequivocal seal upon her faith and devotedness.
That this last scene should appear tedious to a modern reader, is not surprising: but this may be owing to causes which have nothing to do with its dramatic merits. We are accustomed to view Hercules either through the medium of the arts, as a strong man, or through that of some system of mythology, as a political or ethical personification, or it may be as a mundane genius, a god of light. But it is probable that a very different impression was produced by his appearance on the Athenian stage, and that a representation of the last incidents of his mortal state, was there witnessed with lively sympathy. This interest may have extended to details which in us cannot produce the slightest emotion, and hence the introduction of the concluding injunction about Iole, which is the most obscure as well as repulsive passage in the whole piece, may have had an adequate motive, which we cannot fully comprehend. It certainly ought not to prevent us from enjoying the beauty of the whole composition, which though perhaps inferior to the other works of Sophocles, is not unworthy of the author of the greatest among them.
In the Ajax the poet may seem to have made a singular exception to his own practice as well as to that of all other great dramatic writers, by distinctly expounding the moral of his play, and that not at the end, but at the beginning of it. If we should suppose him to have done so, we must also believe that he at the same time determined the point of view from which he meant the whole to be considered. The irony of Minerva first draws Ajax into a terrible exhibition of his miserable phrenzy, and she then takes occasion from it to pronounce a solemn warning against the arrogance which had
