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Updated: June 1, 2025


One drama, at least, was acted in Athens in that year 440 B.C. which you, I doubt not, know well "Antigone," that of Sophocles, which Mendelssohn has resuscitated in our own generation, by setting it to music, divine indeed, though very different from the music to which it was set, probably by Sophocles himself, at its first, and for aught we know, its only representation; for pieces had not then, as now, a run of a hundred nights and more.

Under the corn-bin lies a lady who had two husbands and fifteen children, Antigone in parentes, Porcia in conjuges, Sempronia in liberos; while a few yards further east, less agreeably placed, is an ecclesiastic of the Gorrevod family, who reckoned Prince and Bishop and Baron among his titles.

So the guard departed; but as he went he said to himself, "Now may the Gods grant that the man be found; but however this may be, thou shalt not see me come again on such errand as this, for even now have I escaped beyond all hope." Notwithstanding, after a space he came back with one of his fellows; and they brought with them the maiden Antigone, with her hands bound together.

At the present day, when all our girls go to Girton and enter for the classical tripos, I need hardly translate the word belemnite 'for the benefit of the ladies, as people used to do in the dark and unemancipated eighteenth century; but as our boys have left off learning Greek just as their sisters are beginning to act the 'Antigone' at private theatricals, I may perhaps be pardoned if I explain, 'for the benefit of the gentlemen, that the word is practically equivalent to javelin-fossil.

But something better soon offered itself. The Duke Grimaldi had had a small theatre constructed in the Spanish palace, his residence as Ambassador from the Catholic King, and a small company of high-born amateurs had been playing in it translations of French comedies and tragedies. To these ladies and gentlemen Alfieri offered his Antigone, which was accepted with fervour.

The opposition may come from nature, as in The Grammarian's Funeral; from fate, as in the Oedipus; from social and political interests, as in Antigone; that is of little moment; it is important solely that the battle be accepted and waged unflinchingly to the issue.

Desire: imeros. Eros. There was the chorus in the Antigone: "Eros anikate machan, Eros os en ktaemasi pipteis." There was Swinburne: "...swift and subtle and blind as a flame of fire, Before thee the laughter, behind thee the tears of desire." There was the song Minna Acroyd sang at the Sutcliffes' party. "Sigh-ing and sad for des-ire of the bee." How could anybody sing such a silly song?

At the king's command the unhappy maiden was taken from his presence and thrust into a sepulchre, where she was condemned to perish in hunger and loneliness. But Antigone was not without her advocate. She had a lover, almost the only one in Greek literature.

There are the Victors in the intellectual wrestlings of the world, the thinkers, poets, sages; the Victors in great sorrows, who conquer the savage pain of heart and desolation of spirit which arise from heroic human grief, Oedipus and Antigone, Iphigenia, Perseus, Prometheus, King Lear, Samson Agonistes, Job, and David in his penitential psalm.

We have therefore the king's wife, who had not even been named before, brought at last on the stage, that she may hear the misfortunes of her family, and put an end to her own existence. To Grecian feelings it would have been impossible to consider the poem as properly concluding with the death of Antigone, without its penal retribution. The case is the same in Ajax.

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