the wise sit in the clouds and mock them." A long train of disastrous consequences often follows from a single impious speech, or guilty deed—nay, even from a hot word or a hasty blow. Thus the idea of Destiny passes into that of retribution. Punishment surely follows sin, if not in a man's own day, yet descending, like an heirloom of misery, upon his children.
"In life there is a seesaw; if we shape
Our actions to our humours, other hands
May shape their consequences to our pain."[1]
In fact, Sophocles seems to have asked himself the question put by Nisus to Euryalus in the Æneid, and to have answered it in his treatment of men in their relations to God:—
"Dîne hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,
Euryale? an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?"[2]
In each of his plays he shows how passion works out its own end—whether it be the pride of Œdipus, the stubbornness of Creon, the insane fury of Ajax, or the
- ↑ So says Sophocles, Ajax, 1085 (translated in Mr D'Arcy Thompson's 'Sales Attici'), anticipating the well-known words of Shakspeare:—
"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us."
—King Lear, Act v. sc. 3. - ↑ Virgil, Æn. ix. 184. Professor Conington translates the passage thus:—
'Can it be Heaven,' said Nisus then,
'That lends such warmth to hearts of men?
'Or passion surging past control
'That plays the god to each man's soul?'
