Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/44

xlii their arrival with a great dramatic contest. The Archon Apsephion presided, and the usual order would have led him to appoint by lot the arbitrators who should decide the prize. As it was, however, there were signs that the audience were already divided into parties warmly excited on behalf of their respective favourites, some clinging to the name of Æschylos, and to the conservative policy with which he was now allying himself, some to the new and all but untried writer, of wider thoughts and more consummate skill, whose name and person were already familiar to them. The Archon, afraid of a tumult, had recourse to an unusual expedient. When Kimon and the generals who had served with him entered the theatre and made the accustomed libations, he stopped them before they withdrew, and bound them by an oath to act as judges themselves, representing, as they did, the ten tribes, and free from the least suspicion of unfairness. The result was a decision in favour of the new-comer against the veteran. How great was the triumph, how bitter the defeat, we may judge from the fact that, according to the popular tradition, Æschylos left Attica not long afterwards in disgust, went to Sicily and died.

Few studies would have been more instructive to