Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/24

xxii scattered here and there in the dialogues of Plato, in the rhetoric of Cicero, in the literary gossip of Athenæus. Fuller lives that were once extant have perished utterly, and all that we know of them is the record of the names of those who wrote them, preserved by the unknown compiler. Those names, themselves once conspicuous in the list of philosophers or critics, tantalise us with the fact, that the life of Sophocles was once treated by men possibly able to do justice to their high theme. Modern critics have done their best to collect, sift, and classify the materials which thus remain to us. At the head of the results of their labours we must place the masterly fragment of a Life of Sophocles by Gottfried Lessing, and the more complete but less elaborate work of Adolf Schöll. The article on Sophocles in Dr Smith's Dictionary of Classical Biography, by Mr Philip Smith, deserves also a special mention.

Two courses are open to one who ventures on a task which others have so often undertaken, and in which there seems so little room for discovery or re-arrangement. He may content himself with bringing the few facts, or the anecdotes that pass for facts, into something like chronological order, noting, where it may be necessary, the degree of trustworthiness