perhaps the greatest tragedian of ancient times, was the son of Sophilus, and was born at Colonus, an Attic village, which lay rather more than a mile to the north-west of Athens. The only respectable ancient biography which now remains of the great tragedian assigns his birth to Olymp. 71. 2, B.C. 495. The Parian marble makes it occur two years earlier; but this date is rejected by the majority of biographers, on account of its not harmonising well with the other recognised dates of the poet's life. Supposing, then, that Sophocles was born in 495 B.C., Sophocles was five years old at the battle of Marathon, fifteen when Euripides first saw the light; and when the battle of Salamis was fought; and ere he had completed his eleventh year, all Greece rang with the fame of Æschylus, the father of the Greek drama. Æschylus, who was the cotemporary of Simonides and Pindar, was born in 525 B.C., or thirty years before Sophocles. Some have made the father of the tragedian a common carpenter, a common smith, and a common sword-maker; while others, equally uninformed, have made him a master sword-maker, a master smith, or a master carpenter. Without attempting to determine the precise trade or profession of Sophocles, it is obvious that he must have held a very good position among the inhabitants of Colonus, for he gave his son an education very little, if at all inferior to what was commonly received by the sons of the most distinguished citizens of Athens. In music and gymnastics, the two leading branches of a Greek education, Sophocles gained much distinction, and received the prize of a crown of garland. So great an adept was he in music, and so much was his youthful beauty esteemed, that he was selected by the Athenians, in his sixteenth year, to lead the chorus and dance naked, with lyre in hand, round the trophy of the victory of Salamis.

Sophocles, doubtless, had his attention early directed to the triumphs of Æschylus in the drama; but it does not appear that he ever received any more special instruction from that dramatist than the study of his tragedies might be supposed to bestow. In the year 468 B.C., when Sophocles had reached his twenty-seventh year, he came forward at the solemnities of the great Dionysia to oppose the veteran Æschylus in a trial of dramatic skill. Cimon, who had just returned from a successful expedition against the pirates of Scyros, and who had brought back to Athens the bones of Theseus, happened to enter the theatre at the time, along with his nine colleagues, to pay the accustomed offering to the god Dionysus, when Aphesion, the archon, whose duty it was to elect judges for the dramatic contests, thought that he could not better exercise the trust which had devolved on him, than by administering to these warriors the oath appointed for the dramatic judges. Cimon and his colleagues accordingly took their place on the judges' bench; and after the recital was heard, Sophocles received the first prize, and Æschylus the second. The veteran dramatist, who had never known rivalry for a generation, is said to have been so mortified at this defeat that he left Athens, and retired to Sicily. The drama which Sophocles exhibited on this occasion is supposed to have been the *Triptolemus*. (See Welcker, *Die Griechischen Tragödien.*)

For the next eight-and-twenty years Sophocles must have held the supremacy of the Athenian stage, until a formidable rival arose in Euripides, who gained the first prize for the first time in 441 B.C. Sophocles gained in all twenty times the first prize, several times the second, but never the third. Nothing is known regarding this period of his life. He brought out the *Antigone*, the first of his extant dramas, in 440 B.C. The shrewd reflections on public matters expressed in this play induced the Athenians to number him among the ten *Strategi*, of whom Pericles was the chief. The war which the *Strategi* had then to conduct was that against the aristocratical faction of Samos, which lasted for more than a year, during 440 B.C. and 439 B.C. It was on this occasion that Sophocles became acquainted with Herodotus, who was then residing at Samos; and he is said to have written a lyrical poem for the father of historians. The dramatist seems to have preserved his cheerfulness of temper, and his wonted tranquillity of mind, amid the din and bustle of war. He quietly contemplated human affairs, if he did not take an active share in conducting them. As Pericles said of him, he understood the making of poetry, but not the commanding of an army. This is one of the numerous testimonies which may be brought forward in evidence of the position, that a man, Sophocles whose genius runs freely in the channel of reflection, can never be a man of action in any high and emphatic sense. To speak of what men are originally capable can never be brought to the test of proof; and while human nature remains as it is, no amount of preconceived theory can reverse the palpable evidence of fact. It was the case of Sophocles, as it had been before of Æschylus, that poetry was the business of his life, and to it he devoted his entire strength.

Regarding the second period of Sophocles' greatest poetical activity, from his fifty-sixth year till his death, or from 439 B.C. to 406 B.C. or 405 B.C., very little personal is known. He is said to have written 130 dramas; but Aristophanes, the grammarian, pronounced 17 of them spurious, which leaves 113 genuine tragedies and satirical dramas. More than two-thirds of his works belong to the latter part of his life. The chronological order of his extant dramas, so far as it can be ascertained, is as follows:—*Antigone*, *Electra*, *Trachinian Women*, *King Oedipus*, *Ajax*, *Philoctetes*, and *Oedipus at Colonus*. The last play was brought out by the grandson of the dramatist in 401 B.C., some years after the author's death. Those who may care to see a careful analysis of these plays can refer to Müller's *History of the Literature of Ancient Greece*, and to A.W. Schlegel's *Lectures on Dramatic Literature*. Sophocles likewise wrote an elegy, several odes, and other minor poems, and a prose work on the chorus. There is a beautiful story, bearing strong marks of authenticity, which usually accompanies all biographies of Sophocles. His family consisted of two sons, Sophon, the offspring of Nicostrate, a free Athenian woman, and Ariston, the son of Theoris of Scyros. Ariston had a son named Sophocles, to whom allusion has just been made, and to whom his grandfather showed the greatest affection. Sophon, who, by the laws of Athens, was his father's rightful heir, dreading an alienation of the paternal property in behalf of young Sophocles, summoned the old dramatist before the *phratria*, and urged a plea of mental incapacity, induced by old age. Sophocles at once answered, "If I am Sophocles, I am not beside myself; and if I am beside myself, I am not Sophocles." He then read from the magnificent *parodos* to his unpublished play, *Oedipus at Colonus*, beginning, Ἐξαρτοῦ, ἐνε, τάρδε χόρος; and when he had finished, the judges dismissed the case, and rebuked the ungrateful prosecutor. The poet was allowed to pass the remainder of his days in peace. He died either towards the end of 406 B.C., or the beginning of 405 B.C., at the extreme age of ninety. The reports of his death vary. Some would have us believe that he was choked by a grape-stone, some that he died of an affection of the throat, occasioned by a public recitation of his *Antigone*; while others, with equal improbability, would make him die of joy at the announcement of a victory obtained by one of his dramas. He was buried in the tomb of his ancestors, near Deceleia.

The mind of Sophocles was as full and as symmetrical in its development as his bodily form was handsome and his expression beautiful. His passions, in the early stage of his career, appear to have been wild and turbulent, and it was only when he brought the weight of experience to balance them that he was able to keep in check that tendency to sensual pleasure in which his enemies accuse him of having indulged. The solidity which a man gains by years, if not seasonably checked, is apt to crystallize, and the idle scandal-mongers of Athens, who could no longer gleat over the youthful follies of the successful dramatist, sought to tarnish the lustre of his genius by whispering the avarice of the poet into the ears of his fellow-citizens. The comic poets of his day ranked Sophocles with Simonides, both, as they said, prostituting the divine gift which The editio princeps of Sophocles was printed by Aldus at Venice, in 1502. The best of the subsequent editions are those of Stephens, 1568; Brunck, 2 vols., 1786; Musgrave, 2 vols., 1800; Erfurt, 7 vols., 1802-25; Bothe, 2 vols., 1806; Elmsley, 8 vols., 1826; G. Hermann, 7 vols., 1830-51. All subsequent to Brunck have based their text upon his edition. A useful issue for students is that of Wunder, 1831-41; also one based on Dindorf's text, London, 2 vols., 1854. The editions, translations, &c., &c., of single plays of Sophocles are almost countless. There are besides many versions of the whole of Sophocles' tragedies both into English and other continental languages. The English prose translations are those by Adams, 2 vols., 1729; by Franklin, 2 vols., 1758-59; by Potter, 1788; by Dale, 1824; and a revision of the Oxford translation by Buckley, 1849.