A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

866 SOPHOCLES. SOPHOCLES.
Alexandrian literature, there were many treatises most distinguished citizens of Athens. To both of
respecting him, besides those on the general subject the two leading branches of Greek education, music
of tragedy; but of these stores of information, the and gymnastics, he was carefully trained, in comonly remnants we possess are the respectable ano- pany with the boys of his own age, and in both he
nymous compilation, Blos E:~opocVAeovs, which is gained the prize of a garland. He was taught
prefixed to the chief editions of the poet's works, music by the celebrated Lamprus ( Vit. Anon.). Of
and is also contained in Westermann's Vitarum the skill which he had attained in music and
Scriptores Graeci loinoores, the very brief article of dancing in his sixteenth year, and of the perfection
Suidas, and the incidental notices scattered through of his bodily form, we have conclusive evidence ill
the works of Plutarch, Athenaeus, and other ancient the fact that, when the Athenians were assembled
writers. Of the numerous modern writers who in solemn festival around the trophy which they
have treated of the life, character, and works of had set up in Salamis to celebrate their victory
Sophocles, the chief are:- Lessing, whose Leben over the fleet of Xerxes, Sophocles was chosen
des Sophokles is a masterpiece of aesthetic disqui- to lead, naked and with lyre ill hand, the chorus
sition, left unfortunately incomplete; Schlegel, in which danced about the trophy, and sang the
his Lectures on Dranmatic Art and Criticism, which songs of triumph, B. c. 480. (Ath. i. p. 20, f.
are now familiar to English readers; F. Schultz, Vit. Anon.)
de Vita Sop/soclis, Berol. 1836, 8vo.; Schill, Sopslo- The statement of the anonymous biographer, that
kles, sein Leben und Wirken, Frankfort, 1842, Sophocles learnt tragedy from Aeschylus, has been
8vo., with the elaborate series of reviews by C. F. objected to on grounds which are perfectly concluHermann, in the Berliner JahrbUcher, 1843: to sive, if it be understood as meaning any direct and
these must be added the standard works on Greek formal instruction; but, from the connection in
tragedy by Bickh (Poet. Tray. Graec. Princ.), which the words stand, they appear to express
XVelcker (die Griechischen Traygodien), and Kayser nothing more than the simple and obvious fact,
(Hist. Crit. Tragicoirum Graec.), and also the that Sophocles, having received the art in the
standard histories of Greek Literature in general, form to which it had been advanced by Aeschylus,
and of Greek Poetry in particular, by Miiller, made in it other improvements of his own.
Ulrici, Bode, and Bernhardy. His first appearance as a dramatist took place in
i. The Life of Sophocles. — Sophocles was a native the year B. C. 468, under peculiarly interesting cirof the Attic village of Colonus, which lay a little cumstances; not only from the fact that Sophocles,
more than a mile to the north-west of Athens, and at the age of twenty-seven, came forward as the
the scenery and religious associations of which rival of the veteran Aeschylus, whose supremacy
have been described by the poet, in his last and had been maintained during an entire generation,
greatest work, in a manner which shows how but also from the character of the judges. It was,
powverful an influence his birth-place exercised on in short, a contest between the new and the old
the whole current of his genius. The date of his styles of tragic poetry, in which the competitors
birth, according to his anonymous biographer, was were the greatest dramatists, with ONE exception,
in O1. 71. 2, B.c. 495; but the Parian Marble whoever lived, and the umpires were the first men,
places it one year higher, B. c. 496. Most in position and education, of a state in which
modern writers prefer the former date, on the almost every citizen had a nice perception of the
ground of its more exact agreement with the other beauties of poetry and art. The solemnities of the
passages in which the poet's age is referred to (see Great Dionysia were rendered more imposing by
Clinton, F. H. s. a.; Miiller, Hist. Lit. p. 337, the occasion of the return of Cimon from his exEng. trans.). But those passages, when closely pedition to Scyros, bringing with him the bones of
examined, will be found hardly sufficient to deter- Theseus. Public expectation was so excited remine so nice a point as the difference of a few specting the approaching dramatic contest, and
months. With this remark by way of caution, we party feeling ran so high, that Apsephion, the
place the birth of Sophocles at B. c. 495, five years Archon Eponymus, whose duty it was to appoint
before the battle of Marathon, so that he was about the judges, had not yet ventured to proceed to the
thirty years younger than Aeschylus, and fifteen final act of drawing the lots for their election, when
years older than Euripides. (The anonymous bio- Cimon, with his nine colleagues in the command,
grapher also mentions these differences, but his having entered the theatre, and made the customary
numbers are obviously corrupt.) libations to Dionysus, the Archon detained them at
His father's name was Sophilus, or Sophillus, the altar, and administered to them the oath aprespecting whose condition in life it is clear from pointed for the judges in the dramatic contests.
the anonymous biography that the grammarians Their decision was in favour of Sophocles, who
knew nothing for certain. According to Aristoxe- received the first prize; the second only being
nus, he was a carpenter or smith; according to awarded to Aeschylus, who was so mortified at his
Ister, a swordmaker; while the biographer refuses defeat that he left Athens and retired to Sicily.
to admit either of these statements, except in the (Plut. Ciim. 8; 1al/1urm. Par. 57.) The drama which
sense that Sophilus had slaves who practised one Sophocles exhibited on this occasion is supposed,
or other of those handicrafts, because, he argues, it from a chronological computation in Pliny (II. N.
is improbable that the son of a common artificer xviii. 7. s. 12), to have been the Triptolemus, reshould have been associated in military command specting the nature of which there has been much
with the first men of the state, such as Pericles and disputation: Welcker, who has discussed the
Thucydides, and also because, if he had been low- question very fully, supposes that the main subject
born, the comic poets would not have failed to of the drama was the institution of the Eleusiniall
attack him on that ground. There is some force mysteries, and the establishment of the worship of
in the latter argument. Demeter at Athens by Triptolemus.
At all events it is clear that Sophocles received From this epoch there can be no doubt that Soan education not inferior to that of the sons of the phocles held the supremacy of the Athenian stage