c that minute touches of characterization and of
contrast are omitted as superfluous. Whereas in Sophocles, it is at
once the finish of the chief figure and the studied harmony of the
whole, which have led his work to be compared with that of his
contemporary Phidias. Such comparison, however, is useful by way of
illustration merely. It must never be forgotten that, as Lessing
pointed out to some who thought the Philoctetes too sensational,
analogies between the arts are limited by essential differences of
material and of scope. All poetry represents successive moments. Its
figures are never in repose. And although the action of Tragedy is
concentrated and revolves around a single point, yet it is a dull
vision that confounds rapidity of motion with rest.

3. Sophocles found the subjects of his dramas already embodied not
only in previous tragedies but in Epic and Lyric poetry. And there
were some fables, such as that of the death of Oedipus at Colonos,
which seem to have been known to him only through oral tradition. For
some reason which is not clearly apparent, both he and Aeschylus drew
more largely from the Cyclic poets than from 'our Homer'. The inferior
and more recent Epics, which are now lost, were probably more
episodical, and thus presented a more inviting repertory of legends
than the Iliad and Odyssey.

Arctinus of Lesbos had treated at great length the story of the House
of Thebes. The legend of Orestes, to which there are several
allusions, not always consistent with each other, in the Homeric
poems, had been a favourite and fruitful subject of tradition and of
poetical treatment in the intervening period. Passages of the Tale of
Troy, in which other heroes than Achilles had the pre-eminence, had
been elaborated by Lesches and other Epic writers of the Post-Homeric
time. The voyage of the Argonauts, another favourite heroic theme,
supplied the subjects of many dramas which have disappeared. Lastly,
the taking of Oechalia by Heracles, and the events which followed it,
had been narrated in a long poem, in which one version of that hero's
multiform legend was fully set forth.

The subjects of the King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonos, and Antigone,
are taken from the Tale of Thebes, the Aias and the Philoctetes are
founded on incidents between the end of the Iliad and the taking of
Troy, the Electra represents the vengeance of Orestes, the crowning
event in the tale of 'Pelops' line', the Trachiniae recounts t