Sophoclean Trilogy

Abstract

The Greek dramatist of the best age, as we read on unquestionable authority, was wont to produce his tragedies in sets of three together—in trilogies; the addition to such a set of a comic—a so-called satyric play—completed a tetralogy, a combination of four arguments. It is much if we have in the Cyclops of Euripides a single example of a satyric drama. Among the numerous tragedies that have survived, with the exception of the Oresteia of Aeschylus, consisting of the three tragedies, Agamemnon, the Choephori, the Eumenides, not a single certified trilogy has come down to us complete. The satyric drama that belonged to this was entitled Proteus, but the name only has been preserved. Its argument and bearing on the original artistic whole are too absolutely matters of conjecture not to remain matters of ardent dispute. The Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus is a single play remaining out of a tetralogy of which the titles are preserved:—Laius, Oedipus, Seven against Thebes, Sphinx; titles from which it is clear that the subjects of this set—the Oedipodeia—followed on in sequence and connection as intimate as the preserved tragedies of the Oresteia. Such may also easily have been the case between a pair of dramas, the Edonae and Bassarides, which are recorded as pertaining to the trilogy of the Lycurgeia; and a Prometheus Unbound supplied originally the proper sequel of the Prometheus Bound that is preserved. Nor is such sequence absent virtually from the tetralogy of the Persica to which the preserved play of the Persae belongs, comprising in order; Phineus, Persae, Glaucus Potnieus, Prometheus purphoros, though it is effected in a manner abnormal and recondite. In my Age of Pericles I have set forth in detail the reference of the three successive tragic dramas to the great victories of Artemisium, Salamis and Plataea, and of the concluding satyric play to the sequel of those victories in the restoration of civil life and the arts of culture. The action of the Persae however, alone, is on proper historical basis; the other combined subjects become significant and are justified in their relation to it, on the strength of accepted poetical and mythical associations.