Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/63

Rh as we may well do, that the lost plays contained like allusions, it is not difficult to think of the old poet as using every opportunity to assert the policy and principles of Pericles, whom he had known and loved, against the sceptical young oligarchs on the one side, and the rampant reactionary fanaticism, the rash, incautious ambition of the demagogues, on the other.

What is worthy of special notice throughout, is the fondness with which he clung to his country and his birthplace. Other poets might be tempted to seek elsewhere for greater honour or larger gifts, Æschylos closed his life in Sicily under the patronage of Hiero. Agathon and Euripides were attracted to Macedonia by the offers of Archelaos; and the lavish liberality of that king, in his efforts to bring a half