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    Antigone: "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love"
    Antigone: "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love"
    Antigone: "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love"
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Antigone: "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love"

    By Sophocles .

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    About this ebook

    The village of Colonus, near Athens, was, in the year 495 BC, the birthplace of Sophocles. Sophocles place in Greek Tragedy is assured. His birth places him between the two other giants of Greek tragedy; Æschylus and Euripides. He was 30 years younger than Æschylus, the reigning master of drama and was fifteen years older than Euripides, who would, in turn, usurp Sophocles. Sophocles was a handsome and agile youth and selected, at the age of sixteen, to lead with dance and lyre the chorus which celebrated the triumph of Athens and its Allies over Persia at the battle at Salamis. Sophocles career as a dramatist was marked by a victory in competition with Æschylus, under exceptional circumstances. At the time the remains of the hero Theseus were being removed by Cimon from the isle of Scyros to Athens and, at the same time, a contest involving the two dramatists was being held. Æschylus was lauded at the time as the supreme dramatist but Sophocles was popular if inexperienced. The first prize was awarded to Sophocles, greatly to the disgust of the veteran Æschylus, who taking umbrage, soon afterward departed for Sicily. By all accounts Sophocles would now write and exhibit tragedies and satyric dramas for the next sixty years. The canon of his work varies to between 120 and 180 plays, naturally a number were fillers and not of his highest standard but the prodigious output is extraordinary. In the annual Dionysia, the number of first prizes he won is put at between eighteen and twenty-four, with many more second prizes. On this basis alone Æschylus and Euripides were left a long way behind. So far from being dulled with age and toil, his powers seem only to have assumed a mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweeter and gentler mode of thought and expression. Sophocles was spared the misery of witnessing the final overthrow of his country, dying, at the age or around 90 after a long life full of triumphs and honours, a few months before the defeat of Aegospotami brought the downfall of his beloved Athens. This naval Battle of Aegospotami took place in 405 BC and decisively determined the outcome of the Peloponnesian War. In the battle, a Spartan fleet under Lysander destroyed the Athenian navy. This effectively ended the war, since Athens could not import grain or communicate with its empire without control of the sea. There are only seven dramas of Sophocles that have survived. It can be argued that Sophocles and his works were the high-water mark of Athenian excellence. He is rightly lauded and we can only wonder at the splendours he wrote that are now lost to us.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribe Publishing
    Release dateMar 10, 2017
    ISBN9781787371682
    Antigone: "One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love"

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      Book preview

      Antigone - Sophocles .

      Antigone by Sophocles

      Translated from the Greek by Lewis Campbell

      The village of Colonus, near Athens, was, in the year 495 BC, the birthplace of Sophocles.

      Sophocles place in Greek Tragedy is assured. His birth places him between the two other giants of Greek tragedy; Æschylus and Euripides. He was 30 years younger than Æschylus, the reigning master of drama and was fifteen years older than Euripides, who would, in turn, usurp Sophocles. 

      Sophocles was a handsome and agile youth and selected, at the age of sixteen, to lead with dance and lyre the chorus which celebrated the triumph of Athens and its Allies over Persia at the battle at Salamis.

      Sophocles career as a dramatist was marked by a victory in competition with Æschylus, under exceptional circumstances. At the time the remains of the hero Theseus were being removed by Cimon from the isle of Scyros to Athens and, at the same time, a contest involving the two dramatists was being held.  Æschylus was lauded at the time as the supreme dramatist but Sophocles was popular if inexperienced. 

      The first prize was awarded to Sophocles, greatly to the disgust of the veteran Æschylus, who taking umbrage, soon afterward departed for Sicily.

      By all accounts Sophocles would now write and exhibit tragedies and satyric dramas for the next sixty years.

      The canon of his work varies to between 120 and 180 plays, naturally a number were fillers and not of his highest standard but the prodigious output is extraordinary.  In the annual Dionysia, the number of first prizes he won is put at between eighteen and twenty-four, with many more second prizes. On this basis alone Æschylus and Euripides were left a long way behind. So far from being dulled with age and toil, his powers seem only to have assumed a mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweeter and gentler mode of thought and expression.

      Sophocles was spared the misery of witnessing the final overthrow of his country, dying, at the age or around 90 after a long life full of triumphs and honours, a few months before the defeat of Aegospotami brought the downfall of his beloved Athens. This naval Battle of Aegospotami took place in 405 BC and decisively determined the outcome of the Peloponnesian War. In the battle, a Spartan fleet under Lysander destroyed the Athenian navy. This effectively ended the war, since Athens could not import grain or communicate with its empire without control of the sea.

      There are only seven dramas of Sophocles that have survived. 

      It can be argued that Sophocles and his works were the high-water mark of Athenian excellence.  He is rightly lauded and we can only wonder at the splendours he wrote that are now lost to us.

      Index of Contents

      Preface

      Prefactory Note

      The Persons

      Scene

      Note

      Introduction

      ANTIGONE

      Sophocles – A Short Biography

      Sophocles – A Concise Bibliography

      PREFACE

      In 1869, having read the Antigone with a pupil who at the time had a passion for the stage, I was led to attempt a metrical version of the Antigone, and, by and by, of the Electra and Trachiniae.[1] I had

      the satisfaction of seeing this last very beautifully produced by an amateur company in Scotland in 1877; when Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin may be said to have 'created' the part of Dêanira. Thus encouraged, I completed the translation of the seven plays, which was published by Kegan Paul in 1883 and again by Murray in 1896.

      The seven extant plays of Sophocles have been variously arranged. In the order most frequently adopted by English editors, the three plays of the Theban cycle, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus Coloneus, and Antigone, have been placed foremost.

      In one respect this is obviously convenient, as appearing to present continuously a connected story. But on a closer view, it is in two ways illusory.

      1. The Antigone is generally admitted to be, comparatively speaking, an early play, while the Oedipus Coloneus belongs to the dramatist's latest manner; the first Oedipus coming in somewhere between the two. The effect is therefore analogous to that produced on readers of Shakespeare by the habit of placing Henry VI after Henry IV and V. But tragedies and 'histories' or chronicle plays are not in pari materia.

      2. The error has been aggravated by a loose way of speaking of 'the Theban Trilogy', a term which could only be properly applicable if the three dramas had been produced in the same year. I have therefore now arranged the seven plays in an order corresponding to the most probable dates of their production, viz. Antigone, Aias, King Oedipus, Electra, Trachiniae, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonos. A credible tradition refers the Antigone to 445 B.C. The Aias appears to be not much later—it may even be earlier—than the Antigone. The Philoctetes was produced in 408 B.C., when the poet was considerably over eighty. The Oedipus at Colonos has always been believed to be a composition of Sophocles' old age. It is said to have been produced after his death, though it may have been composed some years earlier. The tragedy of King Oedipus, in which the poet's art attained its maturity, is plausibly assigned to an early year of the Peloponnesian war (say 427 B.C.), the Trachiniae to about 420 B.C. The time of the Electra is doubtful; but Professor Jebb has shown that, on metrical grounds, it should be placed after, rather than before, King Oedipus. Even the English reader, taking the plays as they are grouped in this volume, may be aware of a gradual change of manner, not unlike what is perceptible in passing from Richard II to Macbeth, and from Macbeth to The Winter's Tale or Cymbeline. For although the supposed date of the Antigone

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