Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/46

xliv a new thought. Borrowing from Æschylos, who had used nearly the same words in the "Prometheus Bound," (l. 739,) Sophocles speaks of writing what we wish to remember in the "tablets of our soul."

The departure of Æschylos left his rival master of the field, and for the twenty-nine years that followed we may think of him as holding an almost undisputed sway. During that long period we have hardly any intimation as to his life, and are left to fill up the blank between B.C. 468, the date of the contest with Æschylos, and B.C. 440, when he in his turn had to see the prize snatched from him by Euripides, as we can. Of this we may, at least, be sure, that this period was one in which all his marvellous powers were reaching their perfection, and devoted with a deliberate purpose to the attainment of the highest excellence. The fullest harvest was indeed to come yet later; but the period of which we are now speaking was marked by thirty-two tragedies; and this in one to whom each was a work of consummate art, requiring thought, care, revision, implied no small labour.

It must be remembered, too, that the dramatic system of Greece threw on the author the added labours of the manager, and often of the actor. He had to choose the two or three persons who had skill or genius to divide between them all the characters of his play, to train the chorus of twenty-four, or, in the