The question of internal evidence for the lost plays of the major Greek tragedians is not easy Perhaps it is most difficult with Sophocles who, unlike the other two, is known to us only by the works of his maturer days We cannot get even a vague idea of what the dramatist might have been in the unknown pieces, of which the remaining fragments are so lamentably few However a thorough study of internal evidence is more rewarding than it would appear at first sight, especially when it is conducted in the light of all the accessible sources of information For instance the Niobe is said to have been produced before 422 B C on the strength of the quotation in Aristophanes' Wasps But in fact it is obvious that the play should be dated much earlier, perhaps among Sophocles' earliest, once it has been shown that the whole story is of a simple theomachia, that the scenes are likely to be filled mostly with lyrical narratives and descriptions, that the general scheme of the play does not seem to afford any chance for the action to be developed by dialogues and that the audience must have been treated to such strikingly spectacular views as deaths on the stage If further attention is paid to the fact that the play was written using the same material which Aeschylus had successfully exploited before, it will be seen that the play is suggestive of the general attitude of the dramatist in his youthful works The Niobe of Aeschylus, as Aristophanes derides it in his Frogs, is clearly marked with the typically Aeschylean onkos-breath-taking theatrical effect long and enthusiastic performances of the chorus, richly imageful verbiage of the dramatis personae and so on In contrast to this, Sophocles' Niobe is a concentrated study of how a human being fell from happiness to misery The chorus no longer dwells on how the inherited arrogance of Tantalus' daughter was punished The heroine does not give a defiant tirade in undaunted protest to the gods Nothing of the sort But the proud mother suddenly finds herself deprived of all her fourteen children by the revengeful hand of Leto of whom she had spoken contem tuously, as the goddess was a mother of only two children Niobe goes through all the degiees of agony as she first learns of the misfortune, then has the last surviving daughter expire in her own arms, hears the report of the suicide of the grief-stricken father and finally receives the announcement of her seven sons' deaths From the countless scenes of the legendary tale, the most suitable ones have been chosen and combined into a compact piece of tragedy with perfect skill and infallible dramatic economy It may safely be concluded that considerable effort has been exerted in order to bring about what is essentially dramatic Here is a determined new step towards the genuinely Sophoclean sphere of tragic art The predominance of the influence of Aeschylus in his earliest dated plays including the Niobe, is undeniable However at the same time there is traceable in them, appearing in varied manifestations, the distinct awakening of the dramatist in his pursuit of the quintessence of drama He became more and more sure of the path he was following, and in pursuing it, he gradually outgrew the overpowering spell of his great predecessor The Niobe is an unmistakable illustration of these strenuous endeavours of Sophocles in his youthful days
