Tunes her nocturnal note.
Again, just as the whole scheme suggests King Lear, so does the simple vigour of Theseus’ words,[373] when he enters at the terrific close amid the bellowing of the unnatural tempest:—
πάντα γὰρ θεοῦ
τοιαῦτα χειμάζοντος εἰκάσαι πάρα,
recall the “pelting of this pitiless storm”.[374] So too the divine summons[375] which comes “many times, and manifold” to Œdipus brings to mind the call “Samuel! Samuel!” The mystery of Œdipus’ tomb suggests the passing of another august soul: “No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day,”[376] and of Joseph, named among the faithful, who “when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones”.[377]
This play is deeply religious in the very details of its theme as well as in its tone. Besides the usual orthodox background there is the lovely presentation of a minor local worship—the cult of the Eumenides at Colonus, Sophocles’ native village. The aged poet in his last years seems to have returned with special affection to the simple observances which he had learnt as a boy, and which evoke one of his most characteristic phrases:—[378]
τοιαῦτά σοι ταῦτ’ ἐστίν, ὦ ξέν’, οὐ λόγοις
τιμώμεν’, ἀλλὰ τῇ ξυνουσίᾳ πλέον,
the piercing simplicity of which, as well as the theme, suggests Wordsworth. The lustral bowls, he is careful to tell us, are “the work of a skilled craftsman”;[379] he is almost on the point of telling us his name—one can imagine the boy of eighty years ago gazing on these cups, and his first sense of beauty in workmanship. Those who would offer sacrifice will find dwelling on the spot a sacristan to instruct and aid them.[380] Everything on this ground is both familiar and hallowed; the mysterious “brazen threshold,” the statues of local deities and heroes, the hollow pear-tree, and the other local sanctities are carefully particularized, so that the calm beauty of the country-side and the terrors of religion are strangely and beautifully interwoven. As for religion in the broader, profounder sense, we have as elsewhere a reference of human suffering merely to an inscrutable, divine purpose.[381] But the dramatist indicates carefully the contribution of human nature to the fulfilment of the oracles; Polynices[382] becomes subject to his father’s curse because his own sense of honour forbids him to relinquish his foredoomed enterprise. Œdipus himself has attained to a wiser conception of sin[383] than that which rules him at the close of the Tyrannus. He has acted wrongly, therefore his suffering is just; but he is morally innocent, and his past actions afflict him as sorrows, not as crimes.[384]
The fragments of the lost plays are on the whole disappointing; a large proportion are single rare words quoted by ancient lexicographers, and most of the rest are short sentences or phrases. There remain the few longer fragments, to which in recent years important additions have been made.