Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/880

868 was then in his eighty-third year, it is not likely that he took any active part in their proceedings, or that he was chosen for any other reason than to obtain the authority of his name. All that we are told of his conduct in this office is that he contented to the establishment of the oligarchical Council of Four Hundred, B. C. 411, though he acknowledged the measure to be an evil one, because, he said, there was no better course (Aristot. Rhet. iii. 18, Pol. vi. 5). The change of government thus effected released him, no doubt, from all further concern with public affairs.

One thing at least is clear as to his political principles, that he was an ardent lover of his country. The patriotic sentiments, which we still admire in his poems, were illustrated by his own conduct; for, unlike Simonides and Pindar, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Plato, and others of the greatest poets and philosophers of Greece, Sophocles would never condescend to accept the patronage of monarchs, or to leave his country in compliance with their repeated invitations. (Vit. Anon.) His affections were fixed upon the land which had produced the heroes of Marathon and Salamis, whose triumphs were associated with his earliest recollections; and his eminently religious spirit loved to dwell upon the sacred city of Athena, and the hallowed groves of his native Colonus. In his later days he filled the office of priest to a native hero, Halon, and the gods were said to have rewarded his devotion by granting him supernatural revelations, (, &c. Vit. Anon.)

The family dissensions, which troubled his last years, are connected with a well-known and beautiful story which bears strong marks of authenticity, and which, if true, not only proves that he preserved his mental powers and his wonted calmness to the last, but also leaves us with the satisfactory conviction that his domestic peace was restored before he died. His family consisted of two sons, Iophon, the offspring of Nicostrate, who was a free Athenian woman, and Ariston, his son by Theoris of Sicyon ; and Ariston had a son named Sophocles, for whom his grandfather showed the greatest affection. Iophon, who was by the laws of Athens his father's rightful heir, jealous of his love for the young Sophocles, and apprehending that Sophocles purposed to bestow upon his grandson a large proportion of his property, is said to have summoned his father before the, who seem to have had a sort of jurisdiction in family affairs, on the charge that his mind was affected by old age. As his only reply, Sophocles exclaimed, "If I am Sophocles, I am not beside myself; and if I am beside myself, I am not Sophocles;" and then he read from his Oedipus at Colonus, which was lately written, but not yet brought out, the magnificent parodos, beginning—

whereupon the judges at once dismissed the case, and rebuked Iophon for his undutiful conduct. (Plut. An Seni sit Gerend. Respub. 3. p. 775, b.; Vit. Anon.) That Sophocles forgave his son might almost be assumed from his known character; and the ancient grammarians supposed that the reconciliation was referred to in the lines of the Oedipus at Colonus, where Antigone pleads with her father to forgive Polyneices, as other fathers had been induced to forgive their bad children (vv. 1192, foll.).

Whether Sophocles died in, or after the completion of, his ninetieth year, cannot be said with absolute certainty. It is clear, from the allusions to him in the Frogs of Aristophanes and the Musae of Phrynichus, that he was dead before the representation of those dramas at the Lenaea, in February, B. C. 405, and hence several writers, ancient as well as modern, have placed his death in the beginning of that year. (Diod. xiii. 103; Marm. Par. No. 65; Arg. III. ad Oed. Col.; Clinton, F. H., s. a.) But, if we make allowance for the time required for the composition and preparation of those dramas, of which the Frogs, at least, not only refers to his death, but presupposes that event in the very conception of the comedy, we can hardly place it later than the spring of B. C. 406, and this date is confirmed by the statement of the anonymous biographer, that his death happened at the feast of the Choës, which must have been in 406, and not in 405, for the Choës took place a month later than the Lenaea. Lucian (Macrob. 24) certainly exaggerates, when he says that Sophocles lived to the age of 95.

All the various accounts of his death and funeral are of a fictitious and poetical complexion; as are so many of the stories which have come down to us respecting the deaths of the other Greek poets: nay, we often find the very same marvel attending the decease of different individuals, as in the cases of Sophocles and Philemon [, p. 263, b]. According to Ister and Neanthes, he was choked by a grape (Vit. Anon.); Satyrus related that in a public recitation of the Antigone he sustained his voice so long without a pause that, through the weakness of extreme age, he lost his breath and his life together (ibid.); while others ascribed his death to excessive joy at obtaining a victory (ibid.). These legends are of course the offspring of a poetical feeling which loved to connect the last moments of the great tragedian with his patron god. In the same spirit it is related that Dionysus twice appeared in vision to Lysander, and commanded him to allow the interment of the poet's remains in the family tomb on the road to Deceleia (Vit. Anon.; comp. Paus. i. 21). According to Ister, the Athenians honoured his memory with a yearly sacrifice (Vit. Anon.).

No doubt the ancient writers were quite right in thinking that, in the absence of details respecting the matter of fact, the death of Sophocles was a fair subject for a poetical description; but, instead of resorting to trifling and contradictory legends, they might have found descriptions of his decease, at once poetical and true, in the verses of contemporary poets, who laid aside the bitter satire of the Old Comedy to do honour to his memory. Thus Phrynichus, in his, which was acted with the Frogs of Aristophanes, in which also the memory of Sophocles is treated with profound respect, referred to the poet's death in these beautiful lines:—

(Arg. III. ad Oed. Col.; Meincke, Frag. Com.