Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/400

* SOPHOCLEB. 346 SOKA. disgusting wound, had been abandoned by the Greeks on the desert shore of Lennios. After many 3'ears an oracle declares that lie, the pos- sessor of the bow of Hercules, is indispensable to the besiegers of Troy. Odysseus and Xeoptol- nieus, the son of Achilles, are sent to fetch him if need be against his will. Very beautiful are the descriptions of nature and the aceovnit of Philoctetes's lonely life. But the chief interest of the play lies in the psychological study of the final revolt of the frank nature of Neoptol- enuis against the treachery which Odysseus re- quires him to practice upon the unsuspecting Philoctetes. (7) The CEdipiis at Colonus (first produced in 401) depicts the reconciliation of Uidipus with destiny and his sublime and mys- terious death at Colonus after year.s of wander- ing as a blind exile, sustained by the loving ten- dance of his daughter, Antigone. As a poet Sophocles cannot vie with the im- aginative, sublimity of iEschylus. As a thinker he may be less fertile in suggestion than the ingenious Euripides. But regarded as a Greek artist, shaping Greek legends in the conventional molds of Attic tragedy, he holds the just and perfect mean between the titanic symbolism of the older poet and the sentimental, rhetorical real- ism of the yoiuiger. He is reported to have said that -Eschylus did right without knowing it, and that Euripides painted men as they are, while he himself represented them as they ought to be. A slight plot suffices him for the creation of a masterpiece because his subtle dramatic art and his e.xliaustive psychological anal3'sis elicit from a simple situation a complete revelation of character and destiny. Fate, the prime motive of ancient tragedy, is no longer felt as a ca- pricious external power, but as the inevitable outcome of character and the unavoidable con- dition of life. Tragic pathos is refined to a sense of the universal human fellowship in frailty and suffering. And beauty, tlie all-per- vading, gracious serenity of an unfailing and unolitvusive art, takes from pathos and tragedy their sting and dismisses us from the scene calmed, elevated, and reconciled. Sophocles is the most truly Hellenic of the Greek tragedians, and for those who have drunk deeply of the Hellenic spirit the most lunuan too. The best edition is that of Jebb, in seven vol- umes, with elaborate commentary and English translation facing the Greek. There is a good annotated edition by Campbell, and an excellent monograph by the same author. Plumptre's verse translation is much esteemed. That of Whitelaw is perhaps better. SOPHOCLES, EVANGELINUS APO.STOLIDES (1807-S.3). A Greek-American scholar, born at Tsangaranda, near Mount Pelion, in Thessaly. As a youth he spent much time in Egj'pt, and re- ceived his earlier education at the Convent on Mount Sinai. In 1829 he emigrated to the United States and continued his studies at Am- herst College. He was tutor at Harvard College, ■with a short intermission, from 1842 to 1849. In this year he was appointed assistant professor of Greek, and in 1860 he became professor of Ancient, Byzantine, and Modern Greek. His pub- lications include a Greek CInnnninr (1838; 3d ■ed. 1847), First Lessons in Creek (1839), Greek Exercises (1S41), Greek Lessons for Befjintiers il8i3), Catalogue of Greek Verbs {SU) , History of the Greek Alphabet (1848), Olossar^i of Later a)iii By::antine Greek (18(50), revised and pub- lislieil under the title, Greek Lexico.i of the Hoiudn mid Hij:antine Periods (1870). SO'PHONIS'BA (Lat., from Gk. So0ii/i(r;3a). The daugliter of the Carthaginian Hasdrubal, son of Gisco. When young her father promised her in marriage to the Numidian prince Masinissa (q.v. ), but subsequently gave her to Masinissa's rival, Sj-phax. When Masinissa in the Second Punic War overthrew Syphax, Sophonisba fell into his hands and he soon made her his ite, to the displeasure of Scipio, who insisted that he should surrender her. In order to save her from captivity, her husband sent her poison with which she put an end to her life. Her history forms the theme of a large number of tragedies, among them, in English, those by Thinnson (1729), Nathaniel Lee [Sophonisba, or B'lnni- bal's Overthrow, 1676), Marston, i Sophonisba, or The Wonder of Women, 1602) ; in French, under the title Sophonisbe, by Mairet (1030) and by Corneille (1663) ; in Italian, as Sofonis- 6n, bv Galeotto del Carretto (1502), Trissino (1529), and Alfieri (1783). SO'PHKON (Lat., from Gk. 'S.iirjipav) OF SYRACUSE (B.C. 460-420). A Greek writer of mimes. Though from time immemorial the Cireeks of Sicily had practiced the mimes at their public festival, Sophron was the first to reduce them to the form of a literary composition. They consisted in the representation of scenes from actual life, chiefly in the lower classes, brought out by a dramatic dialogue, interspersed" with munerous colloquial forms of speech. These pieces of Sophron, which were in the Doric-Gi'eek dialect and in a kind of cadeneed prose, were great favorites with Plato, who made use of them for the dramatic form of his dialogues (Quint., i. 10, 17; Diog. Laert., iii. 13). It is said that Theocritus borrowed his second and fifteenth idyls from Sophron. Very unsat- isfactory fragments have been preserved. Con- sult Botzon's collection (Marienburg, 1867) and his De Sophrone et Eenarcho Mimographis (Lyck, 1856). SOPRANO (It., treble, high, supreme). The highest species of female- voice, whose range normal- ly extends from With the exception of those at either extrem- ity, all the tones are common to both the head and chest registers. A voice sometimes distin- guished as intermediate between alto and soprano is the mezzo-soprano. See Mezzo. SO'RA. A city in the Province of Caserta, Italy, on the Garigliano, 62 miles east-southeast of Rome (IIap: Italy, H 6), The river is here spanned by two bridges. There are remains of walls and castle ruins above the town. It manu- factvires woolen cloth and paper and trades in wine, oil, fruits, and cattle. Sora, originally a Volscian town, was colonized by the Romans in B.C. 303. Population (commune), in 1881, 13,- 208; in 1901, 16,001. SORA. A small rail (q.v.) : especially, in the jNIiddle States, the Carolina rail ( Porzana Caro- linn), which is very abundant in the marshes of the Atlantic Coast in the early fall and gives fine sport and a welcome delicacy. It is eight or nine inches long, olive brown above varied