It was natural that Sophocles should use many Homeric concepts with reference to the condition of men and the life after death. In the Antigone alone is there any personal hope of future happiness. It may well be that the poet’s sense of what was fitting dramatically is responsible for his conservative attitude; he was dealing with traditional material, and using themes and incidents which were far remote in time from his audience. It may have seemed to him that fidelity to his subject and the requirements of artistic unity prevented his putting into the mouths of his characters sentiments which an early age could hardly have conceived. Sophocles was not animated by the iconoclasm which we shall find in the bolder Euripides; but if the future life is not pictured in Sophocles’ extant tragedies, we need not doubt for a moment that he believed in immortality. He had been initiated into the Mysteries and one of the finest expressions of the ecclesiastical confidence which the initiates felt came from his pen: “Thrice blessed are those mortals who have seen these rites and then go to the house of Hades, for they alone have life there; but all others have only woe.”[153] Such, in brief, were the teachings of some of the greatest poets of the sixth and fifth centuries before our era. But these represent only one side of Greek thought in this time. In Athens there were influences, political, social, and intellectual, which were working profound changes. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles belonged to an older order; the voices of the new age will concern us in our next lecture. FOOTNOTES: [96] Xen. ap. Stob., _Flor._ 88, 14. [97] 165 f.; 171 f. [98] _Frg._ 61. [99] _Frg._ 56. [100] _Frg._ 74, 5 ff. [101] 167 f.; 1075 ff. (cf. 583 f.). [102] 425-431. [103] 383 ff. [104] 319 ff. [105] 1029 ff. [106] _Frg._ 88. [107] _Frg._ 4, 1-16. [108] 13, especially vv. 11-32. [109] 373-380. [110] 731 ff. [111] Solon 13, 31 f. [112] _Pyth._ 3, 78 f. [113] _Nem._ 6, 1 ff. [114] Cf. _Ol._ 13, 83; _Pyth._ 10, 49; _Frg._ 142. [115] _Pyth._ 2, 49 ff. [116] _Pyth._ 9, 44 ff. [117] _Frg._ 140. [118] _Ol._ 1, 64. [119] _Isth._ 3, 5 f. [120] _Ol._ 10, 3; _Frg._ 205; _Pyth._ 3, 29. [121] _Ol._ 1, 52. [122] _Isth._ 6, 71. [123] _W. and D._ 694. [124] _Isth._ 5, 13 ff. [125] _Nem._ 11, 13 ff. [126] Bacch. 14, 50-63 (Jebb). [127] _Frg._ 131. [128] _Ol._ 2, 63 ff. [129] _Supp._ 524 f.; 574. [130] _Ag._ 160 ff. [131] _Frg._ 70. [132] _Pers._ 827 ff. [133] _Sept._ 597-608. [134] _Choeph._ 1065 ff. [135] _Choeph._ 306 ff.; 400 ff. [136] _Eum._ 264 ff. [137] _Antig._ 621 ff. [138] _O. C._ 1381 f. [139] _Phil._ 446 ff. [140] _Frg._ 103. [141] _Frg._ 226. [142] _Phil._ 1440 ff. [143] _Ant._ 1347 ff. [144] _Ai._ 127 ff. [145] _O. C._ 495 ff. [146] _O. T._ 863 ff. [147] _Ai._ 1343 f. [148] _Ant._ 450 ff. [149] Plato, _Apol._ 37 E. [150] _Tr._ 1136. [151] _Frg._ 600. [152] _O. C._ 1267 ff. [153] _Frg._ 753. IV