Two Notes on Sophocles

Extract

I HAVE lately spent some time in the locality in endeavouring to ascertain the true meaning of the passages concerned, which are as follows :

Three commentators, a Scholiast, Col. Leake, and Sir R. C Jebb, have devoted some attention to this matter, the two latter following the first, in part or altogether, in conclusions, with which I find myself at variance. The wrong view was blindly followed by myself in my translation.

I doubt if sufficient attention has been paid to the dramatic conditions of the problem to be solved. What had Sophocles in view, in planning this incident, and in writing these passages? He was proposing (1) to add interest to the action of the play by the conduct, behind the scenes, of a flight and capture along roads well known to his audience; and (2) to utilise this incident so as to bring out in Theseus the characteristic of thorough practical efficiency as a putter down of violence. Interpretations which make Theseus appear incompetent, or which militate against obvious facts of topography, should not be lightly hazarded; neither must we conclude, however we may be unable to explain the allusions, that they were not clear to an Athenian audience, or that Sophocles and his audience did not care that they should be clear.