ABSTRACT

F R.OM the Oresteia to the Philocteles may seem to be ades-perate leap, hut there is a reason for making it. If there is anything of value in the foregoing treatment of the Oresteia it was arrived at by following a very simple hypothesis, namely that Aeschylus knew wh at he was doing, and that everything that he does in the trilogy is a logical part of a coherent plan. But Aeschylus is not the onIy Greek dramatist who does things which, at first sight, seem odd, and which tempt the critic to propose ad hoc explanations, such as incompetence on the part of the dramatist, or the harn pe ring effect of tradition, or of the theatrieal conditions. Sophocles does nothing so startling as what Aeschylus does with Cassandra, hut he does many things w hieh, calml y considered, are even more difficult to explain away. Considering what renown he has always enjoyed as a master of construction, he makes a surprising nunlber of e1ementary mistakes. He allovvs the Ajax and the Trachiniae to fall into two distinct parts, and it does not occur to hirn to tighten the unity of the Antigone by bringing back the heroine's body with Haemon's, at the end of the play. In the Antigone there is also the problem of the Second Burial, for which same surprising solutions have been proposed. 'fhe Tyrannus has its well-known 'irrationality' which attracted the notice of Aristotle. In the Coloneus there is the curious uncertainty about the banishment of Oedipus from I'hebes: füur references to it, each of them implying a slightly different version üf the event. Finally, there is the Phz'Zoctetes, w hieh is just as uncertain about something much more important to the play, namely the exact terms of the oracle about the taking of Troy. Only the Electra has escaped criticism on the grounds of construction-für the casual, and perfectly natural, anachronism about the Pythian Games is different from these constructional blemishes.