Page:Tragedies of Sophocles (Plumptre 1878).djvu/66

lxiv longer able to manage his own property. The incident just referred to connects itself with one of the few facts that are reported as to the poet's personal history. By Theoris, a woman of Sicyonian birth, and with whom, therefore, he could not contract a legal marriage, he had a son, Ariston, born probably at a comparatively early period in his life. Some years afterwards, a marriage with Nicostrate, a free Athenian, gave him four sons, the eldest of whom, Iophon, was his father's legal heir. Ariston, however, had grown up, and a son was born to him, named after his grandfather, and so manifestly the darling of the old man's age that the legitimate sons feared he might be led to enrich him at their expense, and brought him before the Phratores, who in such cases exercised a kind of equitable jurisdiction, as needing guardianship. His answer was to read the wonderful chorus in which he has described the beauty and the glory of his native place, from the play of "Œdipus at Colonos," as yet unfinished and unperformed, and to ask whether that gave any proof of a weakened or incapable intellect. The usual order of the Court