Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/35

Rh has drawn, to follow the boyhood of Sophocles in its daily life. To go with the other boys of his deme, marching in due order, bareheaded and unclothed, even though it might snow fast and thick, to the house of the music-teacher, there to learn a manly and vigorous music, free from all tricks and affectations; to pass from that lesson to the school of the trainer, to gain in wrestling, running, leaping, the clear complexion, the blooming health, the well-developed form, which gave promise of a vigorous manhood; to honour father and mother, and pay all due reverence to age; to blush with a genuine shamefastness; to be pure in the midst of the floods of impurity that were beginning to creep in; to be each of them in his own person as a very statue of modesty,—this was the training of the men who fought at Marathon, and this, with somewhat more of intellectual culture, must have been that of Sophocles. And the boy was father of the man. The prize dramatist in many later contests was crowned with garlands in his youth, as successful in both branches of education, gymnastic and music. And then, for the life that lay outside the school-hours, was there not the race under the olive-trees of the Academeia, and the contest with companions vigorous and pure-hearted as himself, and the prize of wreathed boughs, and the sweet delights of spring, when the plane-tree whispered to the elm? Were