he last
crisis in the life of Heracles.

4. Of the three Theban plays, the Antigone was first composed,
although its subject is the latest. Aeschylus in the Seven against
Thebes had already represented the young heroine as defying the
victorious citizens who forbade the burial of her brother, the rebel
Polynices. He allowed her to be supported in her action by a band of
sympathizing friends. But in the play of Sophocles she stands alone,
and the power which she defies is not that of the citizens generally,
but of Creon, whose will is absolute in the State. Thus the struggle
is intensified, and both her strength and her desolation become more
impressive, while the opposing claims of civic authority and domestic
piety are more vividly realized, because either is separately embodied
in an individual will. By the same means the situation is humanized to
the last degree, and the heart of the spectator, although strained to
the uttermost with pity for the heroic maiden whose life when full of
brightest hopes was sacrificed to affection and piety, has still some
feeling left for the living desolation of the man, whose patriotic
zeal, degenerating into tyranny, brought his city to the brink of
ruin, and cost him the lives of his two sons and of his wife, whose
dying curse, as well as that of Haemon, is denounced upon him.

In the Oedipus Tyrannus, Sophocles goes back to the central crisis of
the Theban story. And again he fixes our attention, not so much on the
fortunes of the city, or of the reigning house, as on the man Oedipus,
his glory and his fall.--

'O mirror of our fickle state
Since man on earth unparalleled!
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen[2].

The horror and the pity of it are both enhanced by the character of
Oedipus--his essential innocence, his affectionateness, his
uncalculating benevolence and public spirit;--while his impetuosity
and passionateness make the sequel less incredible.

The essential innocence of Oedipus, which survives the ruin of his
hopes in this world, supplies the chief motive of the Oedipus at
Colonos. This drama, which Sophocles is said to have written late in
life, is in many ways contrasted with the former Oedipus. It begins
with pity and horror, and ends with peace. It is only in part founded
on Epic tradition, the main incident belongi