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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 Excerpt:...that overhangs the 1 This is one of the justifications for what appears at first sight a superfluous passage (lines 412 ff.): other reasons for its appearance I shall mention later; cf. below, p. 122. myths of gods and demigods in which they had their origin. The tragedies of Sophocles do not take place on the mountain heights of Aeschylus nor on the often humdrum plains of Euripides; they occupy a midway position. They are not pervaded by that mysterious atmosphere of supernatural awe which almost terrifies the reader of Aeschylus, nor do they descend to the vulgarity of Euripides, which is so incongruous to the noble spirit of the ancient legends. Electra is maltreated, but she is not debased, as by Euripides, into the farmer's wife, disturbed by petty domestic cares. The Philoctetes of Euripides, we gather from the slur upon him in the Acharnians of Aristophanes,1 was one of those squalid wrecks of humanity with whom he loved to fill the stage. Sophocles makes his Philoctetes an even more horrible sufferer, and influenced by his rival, spares no detail in depicting his woes; but he elevates him above the level of abject realism by adding such redeeming qualities as his superb will, his affection for Neoptolemus, and his patriotism.2 Sophocles is here an exponent of his classical age, which laid stress upon the golden mean in action, and avoiding excess on one side and the other, exemplifies the virtue of moderation or o-oxooo-vvi;, which was to the Greek as charity to the Christian. He does not climb so high as Aeschylus, and yet disdains the banalite of Euripides. All this was put epigramatically, according to Aristotle,8 by Sophocles himself: SocoxAiJs ijij airros ixiv oiovs 8ei iroieiv, EvpiiriBrjs Si 0I01 tun. His characters, even though they are in...