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III. Sophocles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

Papyri have produced much less new information about Sophocles than about the other two tragic poets. Fragments of the Manteis or Polyidos (P. Oxy. 2453) tell us extremely little; fragments ascribed to the Theseus (P. Oxy. 2452) give a lyric dialogue between Ariadne and Eriboia, one of the Athenian maidens, and Theseus describing his labours to a sympathizer. The difficulty is that Sophocles’ Theseus is very badly attested, and in one of the fragments the language is extremely like Euripides, into whose Theseus the fragments would fit admirably. These fragments may therefore have to be given to Euripides like the papyri formerly attributed to Sophocles’ Assembly of Achaeans.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 5: Greek Tragedy , 1971 , pp. 19 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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References

page no 19 note 1 See below p. 28 n. 4.

page no 19 note 2 Page, Greek Literary Papyri, Loeb Classical Library, 1942, no. 6. On the new papyrus see Friis-Johansen, H., Lustrum vii (1962), 281 fGoogle Scholar. Add Dale, A. M., Collected Papers, 137 Google Scholar. The vase: Boston oo.366, MTS, 149, Callimachus, Hymn iii. 69.

page no 19 note 3 On the Telepheia inscription see most recently Luppe, W., Archiv für Papyrusforschung xix (1969), 147 Google Scholar. For Sophocles in general add to Lesley’s History of Greek Literature, Greek Tragedy, and Tragische Dichtung der Hellenen (noted above) his article in Anzeiger der Altertumswissenschaft xx (1967), 193, and Friis-Johansen, H., Lustrum vii (1962), 94 ff.Google Scholar, an immensely valuable critical survey in English of Sophocles scholarship, 1939-59. My Introduction to Sophocles 2 (London, 1969) has an appendix, 195 ff., on the early plays. In what follows I do not refer to bibliography which can be easily found in these, unless for some special reason. Recent commentaries: Ajax, Trachiniae, Oedipus Tyrannus, Kamerbeek, J. C. (Leiden, 1953, 1959, 1967)Google Scholar; Ajax, Stanford, W. B. (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Trachiniae, Easterling, P. J. (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar; Philoctetes, Webster, T. B. L. (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar.

page no 21 note 1 Scenes from Greek Drama, 59 ff.

page no 21 note 2 Cf. my The Tragedies of Euripides, 25.

page no 21 note 3 Cf.Barrett, W. S., Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford, 1964), 12 Google Scholar.

page no 22 note 1 To place Sophocles’ Electra before Euripides’ Electra, and therefore before 418, as is done by Schwinge, E. R., Rh Mus cxii (1969), 1 Google Scholar, is to make the distance from the Philoctetes much too big.

page no 23 note 1 I have been greatly helped by three papers by Gellie, G. H., AUMLA xx (1963), 241 ff.Google Scholar; BICS xi (1964), 1 ff.; AJP lxxxv (1964), 113. I think my general position is near that of Kirkwood, G. M., A Study of Sophoclean Drama (Ithaca, 1958)Google Scholar. One aspect of language, Sophocles’ use of abstracts, is studied by Long, A. A., Language and Thought in Sophocles (London, 1968)Google Scholar. For sound pattern cf.Stanford, W. B., The Sound of Greek (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar.

page no 23 note 2 Of interpreters in English Waldock, A. J. A., Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge, 1951)Google Scholar comes nearest to the position of von Wilamowitz, Tycho, Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles (Berlin, 1917)Google Scholar.

page no 24 note 1 Podlecki, A. J., TAPA xcvii (1966), 359 Google Scholar, interestingly suggests a connection between the picture of Kreon and the tyrant in Herodotus iii. 80-2.

page no 24 note 2 Calder, W. M. III, GRBS ix (1968), 389 Google Scholar.

page no 25 note 1 Easterling, P. J., BICS xv (1968), 68 Google Scholar (the conclusion of a very important paper).

page no 25 note 2 Cf.Dodds, E. R., Greece and Rome xiii (1966), 37 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in O’Brien, M. J., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex (Englewood Cliffs, 1968)Google Scholar, a useful collection which includes also an excerpt of R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Tragedy and Greek Archaic Thought’.

page no 26 note 1 Friis-Johansen, H., Classica et Mediaevalia xxv (1964), 8 ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. also A. M. Dale, Collected Papers, 231 ff. and Segal, C. P., TAPA xcvii (1966), 473 Google Scholar.

page no 26 note 2 For two recent articles taking different views cf.Hinds, A. E., CQ xvii (1967), 169 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, D. B., CQ xix (1969), 45 ffGoogle Scholar.