Sophocles

"And children, to a man who has died, are tokens of fame;

as Sophocles says.

It is not, then, only white silver or gold that is currency, but virtue too for mortals,

since even against these very verses one of the very philosophers has spoken in opposition — one whom no one, it seems to me, would ever say spoke against these out of contentiousness, and against what was said by Sophocles about wealth — against the former a little, against those of Sophocles more — yet not, as we now, at length, since he was not expounding offhand with great licence, but writing in books.

And Sophocles seems to be midway between the two, having neither the boldness and simplicity of Aeschylus, nor the exactness and keenness and political quality of Euripides, but a poetry august and magnificent, most tragic and most beautiful in diction, so that there is the greatest pleasure together with loftiness and dignity.

Others say that Sophocles made the shooting of the arrow come before its proper time, while they were still crossing the river;

But the Athenians despatched the forty ships to Sicily, as they had been preparing to do, and the remaining generals, Eurymedon and Sophocles;

When, on their voyage, they were off Laconia, and heard that the Peloponnesian ships were already at Corcyra, Eurymedon and Sophocles were for hastening thither, but Demosthenes desired them to touch first at Pylus, and after doing what was necessary, then to proceed on their voyage.

And the Athenian generals contributed no small share to such a result—that the pretext seemed strictly true, and its contrivers took it in hand more securely—by showing that they would not wish the men to be conveyed to Athens by another party, (they themselves being bound for Sicily,) and so to confer the honour on those who took them there.

' From such men I so far dissent that, although Sophocles wrote his Electra with the utmost excellence, I yet think the poor translation by Atilius worth my reading — Atilius of whom Lucilius says,

For just now, as I came hither, that Colonean spot turned me toward itself, whose inhabitant Sophocles dwelt before my eyes — Sophocles, whom you know how I admire and how I delight in him.

\" (Pacuvius does this better than Sophocles;

What words does he utter in Sophocles, in the Trachiniae!

And so that Oïleus in Sophocles, who had before consoled Telamon over the death of Ajax, when he had heard of his own son, was broken.

And Sophocles son of Sophillus:

There follows for you, then, according to Sophocles, the wage of your choice:

For as Sophocles has said in his Hippodamia, “The soul is bound to greater caution by the addition of an oath.

In the Tragedy of the Suppliants, Euripides calls it the law of the Gods, and in the Antigone of Sophocles, the heroine makes the following reply to Creon, who had forbidden any one under pain of death, to give the rites of burial to Polynices, “A prohibition, like this, was not revealed by the supreme will, nor by that heaven-born justice, which has established those laws of respect for the dead:

This is how Sophocles outrages me in his tragedies.

Take the instance of Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes of Sophocles.

And there are some who fail to abide by their resolves from some other cause than lack of self-restraint, for instance, Neoptolemus in the PhiIoctetes of Sophocles.

Or is it because Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and many others give delight, men who expressed not the words but the force of the Greek poets—how much more will the philosophers delight us, if, as those poets imitated Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, so these were to imitate Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus!

Aeschines did not quote any of these lines for his own instruction on his embassy.

But Sophocles’ Antigone was frequently acted by Theodorus, and also by Aristodemus;

Now you shall weigh the merits of the verses which were specially written by the poet for the character of Creon-Aeschines, though he forgot to repeat them to himself in connection with his embassy, and did not quote them to the jury.

Sophocles, Trachiniae.

[Grotius refers to the Trachiniae of Sophocles, but probably from memory, for there is no such reference in that play.

So Sophocles would say that the man exhibited the preliminaries of tragedy, not tragedy itself, and Acumenus that he knew the preliminaries of medicine, not medicine itself.

And what if someone should go to Sophocles or Euripides and should say that he knew how to make very long speeches about a small matter, and very short ones about a great affair, and pitiful utterances, if he wished, and again terrible and threatening ones, and all that sort of thing, and that he thought by imparting those things he could teach the art of writing tragedies?

But in fact I have ere now met with others who do not feel in this way, and in particular I remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked, How about your service of Aphrodite, Sophocles—is your natural force still unabated?

But the elder contestant is no more confuted by the younger than the drama of Sophocles by the drama of Shakespeare, than youth by age or spring by autumn.

When the people of Athens had lost a golden crown from the citadel, the tragedian Sophocles by dreaming found it again.

in tragedy, Sophocles;