Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/881

Rh Graec. vol. ii. p. 592; Editio Minor, p. 233.) And if the last line is not specific enough for those who are curious to know the details of the death of such a man, we venture to say that the want may be supplied by those exquisite verses in which the poet himself relates the decease of Oedipus, when restored by a long expiation to that religious calm in which he himself had always lived—a description so exactly satisfying our idea of what the death of Sophocles must and ought to have been, that we at once perceive, by a sort of instinct, that it was either written in the direct anticipation of his own departure, or perhaps even thrown into its present form by the younger Sophocles, to make it an exact picture of his grandfather's death—where Oedipus, having been summoned by a divine voice from the solemn recesses of the grove of the Eumenides, in terms which might well be used to the poet of ninety years of age (''Oed. Col.'' 1627, 1628):—

having taken leave of his children and retired from the world, and having offered his last prayers to the gods of earth and heaven, departs in peace, by an unknown fate, without disease or pain (1658, foll.):—

If any reader thinks that the application of these lines to the death of Sophocles himself is too fanciful, let him take the last words of the quotation as our answer; and let us be left still further to indulge the same fancy by imagining, not the applause, but the burst of suppressed feeling, with which an Athenian audience first listened to that description, applying it, as we feel sure they did, to the poet they had lost.

The inscription placed upon his tomb, according to some authorities, celebrated at once the perfection of his art and the graces of his person (Vit. Anon.):—

Among the epigrams upon him in the Greek Anthology, there is one ascribed to Simmias of Thebes, which is perhaps one of the most exquisite gems in the whole collection for the beauty and truthfulness of its imagery (Brunck, Anal. vol. i, p. 168; Jacobs, Anth. Graec. vol. i. p. 100; Anth. Pal. vii. 22, vol. i. p. 312, ed. Jacobs):—

Among the remains of ancient art, we possess several portraits of Sophocles, which, however, like the other works of the same class, are probably ideal representations, rather than actual likenesses. Philostratus (Imag. 13) describes several such portraits by different artists, and an account of those which now exist will be found in Müller's Archäologie der Kunst, § 420, n. 5, p. 731, ed. Welcker.

The following chronological summary exhibits the few leading events, of which the date can be fixed, in the life of Sophocles:—

The following genealogical table exhibits the family relations of Sophocles, omitting the three sons, of whom we only know the names (see above):—



All these descendants of Sophocles seem to have been occupied, to some extent, with tragic poetry, Iophon was of some celebrity as a tragedian []. There is some doubt about Ariston; the probability is that he was a tragic poet, but that he generally preferred the reproduction of his father's works to the exhibition of his own dramas. [, literary, No. 1.] (Comp. Kayser, Hist. Crit. Trag. Graec. pp. 74—76.) Respecting the younger Sophocles see below, No. 2.

ii. The Personal Character of Sophocles.—In that elaborate piece of dramatic criticism, the purpose of which is undoubtedly serious, though the form is that of the broad mirth and bitter satire of the Old Comedy, we mean the Frogs, it is extremely interesting to notice both the respectful reserve with which Sophocles is treated, as if he were almost above criticism, and the particular force of the few passages in which Aristophanes more expressly refers to him. (Aristoph. Ran. 76—82, 786—794, 1515—1519). —"Even tempered alike in