The papyrus which contained the other play, the _Eurypylus_,[395] is in tiny fragments, but some of these, combined with our independent knowledge of the story, enable us to give an outline of the plot. Astyoche, mother of Eurypylus, was induced by Priam to allow her son to help the Trojans against the Greeks. He met Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, in battle and was slain. A messenger related the encounter to (it seems) his mother Astyoche. The body was received by Priam with lamentation as if for a son of his own. This fragment is much the most striking of the collection. Sophocles’ position in literary history has already been indicated.[396] We shall here discuss his mind and his art in general outline. Of his political opinions little is known. Though his work abounds in saws of statecraft, these are of quite general application;[397] and it would be dangerous to declare which side, if any, he took in the political crises which were so numerous and so grave in fifth-century Athens; there is perhaps one hint[398] that he did not approve the ascendancy of Pericles. As for religion, he seems to have accepted both the orthodox cults of his country and the current beliefs of the ordinary Athenian with little reserve or none. This brings us at once to a fact which must not be ignored—the feeling among readers of our own day, that Sophocles for all his merits is a little too complacent, too urbane, lacking somehow in profundity and real grip upon the soul. The answer is that we come to Sophocles pre-occupied by the religious questionings which fill our own time and which, moreover, interest both Æschylus and Euripides; but there is no reason why Sophocles should share our disquiet or that of his fellow-craftsmen. That which for Æschylus is the foreground of his work, forms for Sophocles only the background. He is not especially interested in religion itself, but in humanity. For Æschylus religion is an affair of the intellect; for Euripides it is an affair of morals; for Sophocles it belongs to the sphere of emotion. And the two great instruments with which he constructs his plays are human emotions and human will. For all the plays which we possess the same genesis exists: the chief character experiences some mighty appeal to the emotions—the feeling of self-respect in Ajax and Œdipus at Athens, of family love in Antigone and Electra, of revengefulness in Philoctetes, of wifely dignity and affection in Deianira, of pity in Œdipus at Thebes; and then creates drama by the magnificent pathetic staunchness wherewith the will, taking its direction from the emotion so aroused, presses on ruthlessly in its attempt to satisfy this impulse. Nothing seems so dear to him as a purpose which flaunts cold reason, the purpose of any others, and indeed every other emotion save that which has started the action upon its course. He sets before us a person determined on some striking act, and subjects him to all conceivable assaults of reason and preachments