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 place of honour. Euripides, however, has just come down; the newer graces of his style, which he lost no time in showing off, have taken the crowd; and their applause has moved him to claim the tragic throne. Æschylus refuses to yield. As the only way of settling the dispute, scales are brought; the weightiest things which the rivals can offer are compared; and at last the balance inclines for Æschylus. But where, in the meantime, is Sophocles? He, too, is in the world of the dead, having come down just after Euripides. "Did he" (asked Xanthias, the slave of Dionysus) "lay no claim to the chair?" "No, indeed, not he," answers Æacus: "No—he kissed Æschylus as soon as he came down, and shook hands with him; and Æschylus yielded the throne to him. But just now he meant, Cleidemides said, to hold himself in reserve, and, if Æschylus won, to stay quiet; if not, he said he would try a bout with Euripides."

It is in this placing of Sophocles relatively to the disputants, even more than in the account of the contest, that Aristophanes has shown his appreciativeness. While he seems to aim merely at marking by a passing touch the good-humoured courtesy of Sophocles, he has, with the happiness of a real critic, pointed out his place as a poet. The behaviour of Sophocles in the "Frogs" just answers to his place in the literary history of his age. This place is fixed chiefly by the fact that Sophocles was a poet who did not seek to be a