phocles preferred to rest on the simpler Homeric narrative, not, however, as embodied in the Iliad or Odyssey, but in the wider cycle of later and inferior epic poetry, now lost. It does not follow from this that the Iliad and the Odyssey were unknown to Sophocles. Tennyson does not take his subjects from Chaucer or Shakespeare, yet his poetry derives many hues from both. Even if confessedly inferior, the Cyclus may have been thought "good to steal from," just as the writer of a Greek tragedy in the present day might select his subject from Hyginus or Apollodorus rather than from Euripides. Or, on the other hand, the Iliad and Odyssey may have existed and yet not have been popular in Attica at a particular time. Such popularity would depend less upon the beauty or force of the poetry than upon the real or imaginary relation of the subject to the interests of the hearers. The "Wrath of Ajax" would have more charm for the men of Salamis than the "Wrath of Achilles." At all events many strange phenomena would be less strange than that the Iliad and Odyssey should be the productions of nameless poets in historic times, and that the life in them, so unrivalled in vividness and clearness, yet so different from the life of the fifth century, should be the artificial reproduction (with whatever aids from ballad poetry) of a forgotten age.[1]
For the tragic poet the motives of selection were as varied as the motives of dramatic interest. A fable may have been preferred, (1) because of its association with some popular worship; (2) because of national or political interests attaching to the scene; (3) because the hero represented some Pan-Hellenic or (4) Athenian feeling; (5) because it had been already made popular through epic recitation; or (6) because of some essential aptitude for tragic handling. This last consideration can never have been absent; the others
- ↑ Our thanks are, notwithstanding, due to Professor Paley for the learning and ingenuity which he has expended in supporting his theory, and for his original and valuable suggestions respecting the history of writing and of the fine arts in Hellas.
