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almost unlimited power, and an ambitious man might having entirely cancelled all debts, and as having only easily have abused it to make himself master of the disguised the violence of this proceeding under a soft state, Solon's friends exhorted him to seize the oppor- and attractive mien. It does not appear that the antunity of becoming tyrant of Athens; and they were cients saw anything to censure in his conduct accordnot at a loss for fair arguments to colour their foul ad- ing to either view. But the example of Solon cannot vice, reminding him of recent instances-of Tynnon-fairly be pleaded by those who contend that either das in Euboea, and Pittacus at Mytilene, who had ex-public or private faith may be rightly sacrificed to exercised a sovereignty over their fellow-citizens without pediency. He must be considered as an arbitrator, to forfeiting their love. Solon saw through their sophis-whom all the parties interested submitted their claims, try, and was not tempted by it to betray the sacred with the avowed intent that they should be decided trust reposed in him; but, satisfied with the approba- by him, not upon the footing of legal right, but accordtion of his own conscience and the esteem of his coun- ing to his own view of the public interest. It was in trymen, instead of harbouring schemes of self-aggran- this light that he himself regarded his office, and he dizement, he bent all his thoughts and energies to the appears to have discharged it faithfully and discreetly. execution of the great task which he had undertaken. The strongest proof of the wisdom and equity of his This task consisted of two main parts: the first and measures is, that they subjected him to obloquy from most pressing business was to relieve the present dis- the violent spirits of both the extreme parties. But tress of the commonalty; the next to provide against their murmurs were soon drowned in the general apthe recurrence of like evils, by regulating the rights probation with which the disburdening ordinance was of all the citizens according to equitable principles, received; it was celebrated with a solemn festival; and fixing them on a permanent basis. In proceeding and Solon was encouraged, by the strongest assurances to the first part of his undertaking, Solon held a mid- of the increased confidence of his fellow-citizens, to dle course between the two extremes-those who proceed with his work; and he now entered on the secwished to keep all, and those who were for taking ev- ond and more difficult part of his task. He began by erything away. While he resisted the reckless and repealing all the laws of Draco, except those which extravagant demands of those who desired all debts to concerned the repression of bloodshed, which were, be cancelled, and the lands of the rich to be confis- in fact, customs hallowed by time and by religion, and cated and parcelled out among the poor, he met the had been retained, not introduced, by his predecesreasonable expectations of the public by his disbur- sor. As a natural consequence, perhaps, of this measdening ordinance (Zeiσúxoeia), and relieved the debt- ure, he published an amnesty, or act of grace, which or, partly by a reduction of the rate of interest, which restored those citizens who had been deprived of their was probably made retrospective, and thus, in many franchise for lighter offences, and recalled those who cases, would wipe off a great part of the debt, and had been forced into exile; and it seems probable that partly by lowering the standard of the silver coinage, this indulgence was extended to the house of Megaso that the debtor saved more than one fourth in ev- cles, the Alcmaonids, as they were called from a reery payment. (Plut., Sol., 15.—Vid. Boeckh, Staatsh., mote ancestor, the third in descent from Nestor, and 2, p. 360.) He likewise released the pledged lands to the partners of his guilt and punishment: the city, from their encumbrances, and restored them in full now purified and tranquillized, might be supposed to property to their owners; though it does not seein cer- be no longer either polluted or endangered by their tain whether this was one of the express objects of presence; and it was always liable to be disturbed by the measure, or only one of the consequences which their machinations so long as they remained in banit involved. Finally, he abolished the inhuman law ishment. The four ancient tribes were retained, with which enabled the creditor to enslave his debtor, and all their subdivisions; but it seems probable that Sorestored those who were pining at home in such bond-lon admitted a number of new citizens; for it is said age to immediate liberty; and it would seem that he that he invited foreigners to Athens by this boon, compelled those who had sold their debtors into for- though he confined it to such as settled their whole eign countries to procure their freedom at their own family and substance, and had dissolved their connexexpense. The debt itself, in such cases, was of ion with their native land. The distinguishing feature course held to be extinguished. Solon himself, in a of the new constitution was the substitution of properpoem which he afterward composed on the subject of ty for birth, as a title to the honours and offices of the his legislation, spoke with a becoming pride of the state. (Compare Niebuhr, Rom. Hist., 2, 305, 2d ed., happy change which this measure had wrought in the Camb. trans.) This change, though its consequences face of Attica, of the numerous citizens whose lands were of infinite importance, would not appear so viohe had discharged, and whose persons he had eman-lent or momentous to the generation which witnesscipated, and brought back from hopeless slavery in strange lands. He was only unfortunate in bestowing his confidence on persons who were incapable of imitating his virtue, and who abused his intimacy. At the time when all men were uncertain as to his intentions, and no kind of property could be thought secure, he privately informed three of his friends of his determination not to touch the estates of the land-owners, but only to reduce the amount of debt. He had afterward the vexation of discovering, that the men to whom he had intrusted this secret had been base enough to take advantage of it, by making large purchases of land-which at such a juncture bore, no doubt, a very low price-with borrowed money. Fortunately for his fame, the state of his private affairs was such as to exempt him from all suspicion of having had any share in this sordid transaction. He had himself a considerable sum out at interest, and was a loser in proportion by his own enactment. This seems the most probable and accurate account of Solon's measures of relief. There was, however, another, adopted by some ancient writers, which represented him as

The

ed it, since at this time these two claims general-
ly concurred in the same person. Solon divided the
citizens into four classes, according to the grada-
tions of their fortunes, and regulated the extent of
their franchise and their contributions to the public
necessities by the amount of their incomes.
first class, as its name expressed, consisted of persons
whose estates yielded a nett yearly income, or rent,
of 500 measures of dry or liquid produce (Пɛvтaкoσ-
couédiuvoi). The qualification of the second class was
three fifths of this amount: that of the third, two thirds,
or, more probably, half of the latter. The members of
the second class were called knights, being accounted
able to keep a warhorse; the name of the third class,
whom we might call yeomen, was derived from the
yoke of cattle for the plough, which a farm of the ex-
tent described was supposed to require (Zevyirai).
The fourth class comprehended all whose incomes fell
below that of the third, and, according to its name,
consisted of hired labourers in husbandry (Oñτεç).
The first class was exclusively eligible to the highest
offices, those of the nine archons, and probably to all

But

others which had hitherto been reserved to the nobles; anchors, as Plutarch expresses it, on which the ves they were also destined to fill the highest commands sel of state might ride safely in every storm. These in the army, as it later times, when Athens became a were the two councils of the Four Hundred and the maritime power, they did in the fleet. Some lower Areopagus. The institution of the council of the offices were undoubtedly left open to the second and Four Hundred was uniformly attributed to Solon; and, third class, though we are unable to define the extent if this opinion be correct, which has, however, been of their privileges, or to ascertain whether, in their po- made the subject of some dispute, then, according to litical rights, one had any advantage over the other. the theory of Solon's constitution, the assembly of the They were at least distinguished from each other by people will appear to have been little more than the the mode of their military service; the one furnishing organ of that council, as it could only act upon the the cavalry, the other the heavy-armed 'infantry. But, proposition laid before it by the latter. But the judifor their exclusion from the dignities occupied by the cial power which Solon had lodged in the hands of the wealthy few, they received a compensation in the people was the most powerful instrument on which comparative lightness of their burdens. They were he relied for correcting all abuses and remedying all assessed, not in exact proportion to the amount of mischiefs that might arise out of the working of his their incomes, but at a much lower rate; the nominal constitution. A body of 6000 citizens was every year value of their property being for this purpose reduced created by lot to form a supreme court, called Heliæa below the truth, that of the knights by one sixth, that which was divided into several smaller ones, not limitof the third class by one third. The fourth class was ed to any precise number of persons. The qualificaexcluded from all share in the magistracy, and from tions required for this were the same with those which the honours and duties of the full-armed warrior, the gave admission into the general assembly, except that expense of which would, in general, exceed their means: the members of the former might not be under the age by land they served only as light troops; in later times of thirty. It was therefore, in fact, a select portion of they manned the fleets. In return, they were exempt- the latter, in which the powers of the larger body were ed from all direct contributions, and they were permit-concentrated, and exercised under a judicial form. ted to take a part in the popular assembly, as well as Passing over the other features of the Athenian conin the exercise of those judicial powers which were stitution, as settled by Solon, on which our limits will now placed in the hands of the people. We shall not allow us to dwell, we proceed at once to the reshortly have occasion to observe how amply this boon mainder of his history. Solon was not one of those compensated for the loss of all the privileges that were reformers who dream that they have put an end to inwithheld from them. Solon's classification takes no novation, and that the changes they have wrought are notice of any other than landed property; yet, as the exempt from the general condition of mutability. example of Solon himself seems to prove that Attica the very provisions which he made for the continual must already have carried on some foreign trade, it is revision and amendment of his laws, seems to show not unlikely that there were fortunes of this kind equal the improbability of Plutarch's account: that he ento those which gave admission to the higher classes. acted them to remain in force for no more than a cenBut it can hardly be supposed that they placed their tury. They were inscribed on wooden tablets, arpossessors on a level with the owners of the soil; it ranged in pyramidal blocks turning on an axis; which is more probable that these, together with the newly-were kept at first in the Acropolis, but were afteradopted citizens, without regard to their various de- ward, for more convenient inspection, brought down grees of affluence, were all included in the lowest to the Prytaneum. According to Plutarch, Solon, afclass. Solon's system then made room for all free- ter the completion of his work, found himself exposed men, but assigned to them different places, varying to such incessant vexation from the questions of the with their visible means of serving the state. His curious and the cavils of the discontented, that he general aim in the distribution of power, as he himself obtained permission to withdraw from Athens for ten explains it in a fragment which Plutarch has preserved years, and set out on the travels in which he visited from one of his poems, was to give such a share to the Asia Minor, Cyprus, and Egypt, collecting and difcommonalty as would enable it to protect itself, and to fusing knowledge, and everywhere leaving traces of the wealthy as much as was necessary for retaming his presence in visible monuments or in the memtheir dignity; in other words, for ruling the people ories of men. But there is some difficulty in reconci. without the means of oppressing it. He threw his ling this story with chronology, since it supposes him strong shield, he says, over both, and permitted neither to have found Croesus in Lydia, who did not mount to gain an unjust advantage. The magistrates, though the throne within twenty or thirty years after; and the elected upon a different qualification, retained their an- alleged occasion of the journey is very doubtful, though cient authority; but they were now responsible for it is in substance the same with that assigned by Herodthe exercise of it, not to their own body, but to the otus. It is probable that Solon remained for several governed. The judicial functions of the archons were years at Athens, to observe the practical effect of his perhaps preserved nearly in their full extent; but ap- institutions, and to second their operation by his perpeals were allowed from their jurisdiction to courts sonal influence. He was, undoubtedly, well aware numerously composed, and filled indiscriminately from how little the letter of a political system can avail unall classes. (Plut, Sol., 18) Solon could not fore-til its practice has become familiar, and its principles see the change of circumstances by which this right of appeal became the instrument of overthrowing the equilibrium which he hoped to have established on a solid basis, when that which he had designed to exercise an extraordinary jurisdiction became an ordinary tribunal, which drew almost all causes to itself, and overruled every other power in the state. He seems to have thought that, while he provided sufficiently for the security of the commonalty by permitting the lowest of its members to vote in the popular assembly, and to sit in judgment on cases in which the parties were dissatisfied with the ordinary modes of proceeding, he had also ensured the stability of his new order of things by two institutions, which appeared to be sufficient guards against the sallies of democratical extravagance

have gained a hold on the opinions and feelings of the people, and that this must be a gradual process, and hable to interruption and disturbance. Hence it could not greatly disappoint or afflict him to hear voices raised from time to time against himself, and to perceive that his views were not generally or fully comprehended. But he may at length have thought it prudent to retire for a season from the public eye, the better to maintain his dignity and popularity; and, as he himself declared, that age, while it crept upon him, still found him continually learning, we need not be surprised if, at an unusually late period of life, he set out on a long course of travels. On his return, he found that faction had been actively labouring to pervert and undo his work, and was compelled eventually

to witness the partial overthrow of his system in the usurpation of Pisistratus. (Vid. Pisistratus.)-It is not certain how long he survived this inroad upon his institutions; one account, apparently the most authentic, places his death in the year following that in which the revolution occurred (B.C. 559). The leisure of his retirement from public life was to the last devoted to the Muses: and if we might trust Plalo's assertions on such subjects, he was engaged at the time of his death in the composition of a great poem, in which he had designed to describe the flourishing state of Attica before the Ogygian flood, and to celebrate the wars which it waged with the inhabitants of the vast island which afterward sank in the Atlantic Ocean. On the fragments of this poem, preserved in the family, Plato, himself a descendant of Solon, professes to have founded a work which he left unfinished, but in which he had meant to exhibit his imaginary state in life and action. It is certainly not improbable that Solon, when the prospect of his country becaine gloomy, and his own political career was closed, indulged his imagination with excursions into an ideal world, where he may have raised a social fabric as unIke as possible to the reality which he had before his eyes at home, and perhaps suggested by what he had seen or heard in Egypt. It is only important to observe that the fact, if admitted, can lead to no safe conclusions as to his abstract political principles, and can still less be allowed to sway our judgment on the design and character of his institutions. (Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 2, p. 23, seqq )—Solon is generally ranked under the gnoinic poets, and some fragments of his productions in this department have been preserved by the ancient writers. Of these the finest is his Prayer to the Muses." The fragments of Solon are found in the collections of H. Stephens, Winterton, Brunck, Gaisford, and Boissonnade. (Scholl, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 1, p. 238.)

SOLYMI, a people of Lycia, of whom an account is given under the head of Lycia.

SOMNUS, son of Erebus and Nox, was one of the deities of the lower world, and the god of Sleep. The Latin poet Ovid (Met., 11, 592, seqq.), probably after some Grecian predecessor, as was usually the case, gives a beautiful description of the Cave of Sleep, near the land of the Cimmeriaus, and of the cortége which there attended on him, as Morpheus, Icelos or Phorbêter, and Phantasos; the first of whom takes the form of man to appear in dreams, the second of animals, the third of inanimate objects. (Keightley's Mythology, p. 200.)

SONUS, a river of India, falling into the Ganges, and now the Saone or Son. As this river towards its origin is called Ando-nadi, it appears that the name Andomatis (given also in Arrian), or, rather, Ando-natis, can denote no other than it. (Plin., 6, 18.)

ciency is recorded in the fact that when, after the bat. tle of Salamis, the population of Athens stood in solemn assembly around the trophy raised by their valour, Sophocles, at the age of sixteen, was selected to lead, with dance and lyre, the chorus of youths who performed the pæan of their country's triumph. (Athen., 1, p. 20, e) The commencement of his dramatic career was marked not more by its success than by the singularity of the occasion on which his first tragedy appeared. The bones of Theseus had been solemnly transferred by Cimon from their grave in the isle of Scyros to Athens (B.C 468.- Marm. Arund, No. 57). An eager contest between the tragedians of the day ensued. Sophocles, then in his twenty-fifth year, ventered to come forward as one of the candidates, among whom was the veteran Eschylus, now for thirty years the undoubted master of the Athenian stage. Party feelings excited such a tumult among the spectators, that the archon Aphepsion had not balloted the judges, when Cimon advanced with his nine fellow-generals to offer the customary libations to Bacchus. No sooner were these completed, than, detaining his colleagues, he directed them to take with him the requisite oath, and then seat themselves as judges of the performance. Before this self-constituted tribunal Sophocles exhibited his maiden drama, and by their decision was proclaimed first victor. This remarkable triumph was an carnest of the splendid career before him. From this event, B.C. 468, to his death, B.C. 405, during a space of three-and-sixty years, he continued to compose and exhibit. Twenty times did he obtain the first prize, still more frequently the second, and never sank to the third. An accumulation of success which left the victories of his two great rivals far behind. Eschylus won but thirteen dramatic contests. Euripides was still less fortunate.

Such a continuation of poetic exertion and triumph is the more remarkable, from the circumstance that the powers of Sophocles, so far from becoming dulled and exhausted by these multitudinous efforts, seem to have contracted nothing from labour and age save a mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweet and gentle character of thought and expression. The life of Sophocles, however, was not altogether devoted to the service of the Muses. In his fifty-seventh year he was one of the ten generals, with Pericles and Thucydides among his colleagues, and served in the war against Samos. But his military talents were probably of no high order, and his generalship added no brilliancy to his dramatic fame. At a more advanced age he was appointed priest to Alon, one of the ancient heroes of his country; an office more suited to the peaceful temper of Sophocles. In the civil duties of an Athenian citizen he doubtless took a part. Nay, in extreme age, we find him one of the committee of the póbovλot, appointed, in the progress of the SOPHENE, a country of Armenia, between the prin- revolution brought about by Pisander, to investigate cipal stream of the Euphrates and Mount Masius. It is the state of affairs, and report thereon to the people asnow called Zoph. (Dio Cass., 36, 36.— Plin., 5, 12) sembled on the hill of Colonus, his native place. (ArisSOPHOCLES, a celebrated tragic poet, born at Colo- tot., Rhet., 3, 18.) And there, as póbovλoç, he asnus, a village little more than a mile from Athens, sented, with characteristic easiness of temper, to the B.C. 495. He was, consequently, thirty years junior establishment of oligarchy, under the council of four to Eschylus, and fifteen senior to Euripides, the for- hundred, "as a bad thing, but the least pernicious measmer having been born B.C. 525, and the latter B.C. ure which circumstances allowed." The civil dissen480.-Sophilus, his father, a man of opulence and re- sions and extreme reverses which marked the concluspectability, bestowed upon his son a careful educa- ding years of the Peloponnesian war must have fallen tion in all the literary and personal accomplishments heavily on the mind of one whose chief delight was in of his age and country. The powers of the future domestic tranquillity, and who remembered that proud dramatist were developed, strengthened, and refined by day of Salaminian triumph in which he bore so cona careful instruction in the principles of music and poe-spicuous a part. His sorrows as a patriotic citizen were try; while the graces of a person eminently handsome aggravated by the unnatural conduct of his own famiderived fresh elegance and ripened into a noble man-ly. (Vit. Anon.—Cic., de Sen., § 7.) Jealous at the hood amid the exercises of the palæstra. The gar- old man's affection for a grandchild by a second wife, lands which he won attested his attainments in both an elder son or sons endeavoured to deprive him of these departments of Grecian education. A still more the management of his property, on the ground of dostriking proof of his personal beauty and early profi- tage and incapacity. The only refutation which the

father produced, was to read before the court his | ly have been a miser. A kindly and contented dispodipus at Colonus, a piece which he had just com-sition, however blemished by intemperance in pleasure, posed; or, according to others, that beautiful chorus was the characteristic of Sophocles: a characteristic only in which he celebrates the loveliness of his fa- which Aristophanes himself so simply and yet so beau vourite residence (Cic., de Fin., 5, 1). The admiring tifully depicts in that single line. judges instantly arose, dismissed the cause, and ac- 'O & evkoλos μèv évláď, evkoλoç 8′ ¿keï.—Ran., 82. companied the aged poet to his house with the utmost honour and respect. Sophocles was spared the mis- It was Sophocles who gave the last improvements to ery of beholding the utter overthrow of his declining the form and exhibition of tragedy. To the two percountry. Early in the year 405 B.C., some months formers of Eschylus he added a third actor; a numbefore the defeat of Egospotamos put the finishing ber which was never afterward increased. Under his stroke to the misfortunes of Athens, death came gen- directions the effect of theatric exhibitions was heighttly upon the venerable old man, full of years and glory. ened by the illusion of scenery carefully painted and The accounts of his death are very diverse, all tending duly arranged. The choral parts were still farther to the marvellous. Ister and Neanthes state that he curtailed, and the dialogue carried out to its full dewas choked by a grape; Satyrus makes him to expire velopment. The odes themselves are distinguished from excessive exertion, in reading aloud a long para- by their close connexion with the business of the play, graph out of the Antigone; others ascribe his death the correctness of their sentiments, and the beauty of to extreme joy at being proclaimed the Tragic victor. their poetry. His language, though at times marked Not content with the singularity of his death, the by harsh metaphors and perplexed constructions, is ancient recorders of his life add prodigy to his funeral pure and majestic, without soaring into the gigantic also. He died when the Athenians were cooped up phraseology of Æschylus on the one hand, or sinking within their walls, and the Lacedæmonians were in into the commonplace diction of Euripides on the possession of Decelea, the place of his family sepul- other. His management of a subject is admirable. chre. Bacchus twice appeared in a vision to Lysan- No one understood so well the artful envelopment of der, the Spartan general, and bid him allow the inter- incident, the secret excitation of the feelings, and the ment; which accordingly took place with all due so- gradual heightening of the interest up to the final crilemnity. Pausanias, however, tells the story some-sis, when the catastrophe bursts forth in all the force what differently (1, 21). Ister states, moreover, that of overwhelming terror or compassion. Such was the Athenians passed a decree to appoint an annual Sophocles; the most perfect in dramatic arrangesacrifice to so admirable a man. (Vit. Anon.)-Sev-ments, the most sustained in the even flow of dignien tragedies alone remain out of the great number fied thought, word, and tone, among the tragic triumwhich Sophocles composed; yet among these seven we probably possess the most splendid productions of his genius. Suidas makes the number which he wrote one hundred and twenty-three. Aristophanes, the grammarian, one hundred and thirty, seventeen of which he deemed spurious. Böckh considers both statements erroneous. It appears from the argument to the Antigone, that this play was exhibited a little before the generalship of Sophocles, B.C. 441, and that this was his thirty-second drama; and it is known that Sophocles began to exhibit B.C. 468. Hence Böckh argues that, as during the first twenty-seven years of his dramatic career he produced thirty-two tragedies, so during the remaining thirty-six years it is not probable he composed many more than this number. He therefore supposes that the true number is seventy, or nearly so. To Iophon, the son of Sophocles, he refers many of the plays which bore the father's name; others he ascribes to the favourite grandson, Sophocles, son of Ariston, by his wife or mistress Theoris. The result of Böckh's investigation is, that of the one hundred and six dramas whose titles remain, only twenty-six can, with any certainty, be assigned to the elder Sophocles. (Böckh, ad Trag. Græc., c. 8, seqq.)-The personal character of Sophocles, without rising into spotless excellence or exalted heroism, was honourable, calm, and amiable. In his younger days he seems to have been addicted to intemperance in love and wine. (Cic., Off, 1, 40.—Athen., 13, p. 603.) And a saying of his, recorded by Plato, Cicero, and Athenæus, while it confirms the charges just mentioned, would also imply that years had cooled the turbulent passions of his youth. "I thank old age," said the poet, "for delivering me from the tyranny of my appetites." Yet even in his later days, the charms of a Theoris and an Archippe are reported to have been too powerful for the still susceptible dramatist. Aristophanes, who, in his Rana, manifests so much respect for Sophocles, then just dead, had, fourteen years before, accused him of avarice; an imputation, however, scarcely reconcilable with all that is known or can be inferred respecting the character of Sophocles. The old man, who was so absorbed in his art as to incur a charge of lunacy from the utter neglect of his affairs, could hard

virate. Longinus, it is true, while bestowing the highest praises upon Sophocles, alleges a frequent inequality; but this is scarcely borne out by anything in his extant tragedies (33.-Theatre of the Greeks, 3d ed., p. 43, seqq.).-Nature, observes Schlegel, had refused Sophocles only one gift, a voice for song. He could only call forth and guide the harmonious effusions of other voices, and is therefore said to have departed from the established custom that the poet should act a part in his own play; so that once, only, he made his appearance in the character of the blind songster, Thainyris, playing on the lyre.-In so far as he had Eschylus for his predecessor, who had fashioned tragedy from its original rudeness into the dignity of his Cothurnus, Sophocles stands, in respect to the history of his art, in such a relation to that poet, that he could avail himself of the enterprise of that original master; so that Eschylus appears as the projecting predecessor, Sophocles as the finishing successor. That there is more art in the compositions of the latter is evident: the restriction of the chorus in proportion to the dialogue, the finish of the rhythms and of the pure Attic diction, the introduction of more numerous persons, the richer connexion of the fables, the greater multiplicity of incidents, and the complete development, the more quiet sustentation of all momenta of the action, and the more theatrical display of the decisive ones, the more finished rounding off of the whole, even in a mere outward point of view. But there is yet another respect in which he outshines Eschylus, and deserved the favour of Destiny, which allowed him such a predecessor, and to compete with him on the samne subjects: I mean the inward harmony and completeness of his mind, by virtue of which he satisfied, from his own inclination, every requisition of the beautiful; a mind whose free impulse was accompanied by a self-consciousness clear even to transparency. To surpass Eschylus in daring conception might be impossible; but I maintain that it is only on account of his wise moderation that Sophocles seems to be less daring; since everywhere he goes to work with the greatest energy, nay, perhaps with more sustained severity; as a man who is accurately acquainted with his limits insists the more confident.

8vo. The separate editions of the plays are numerous, and some of them valuable.

SOPHONISBA, a daughter of Asdrubal, the Carthaginian, celebrated for her beauty and unfortunate end. (Vid. Masinissa.)

ly on his rights within those limits. As Eschylus | 6. PiλOKTÁTηe, “Philoctetes." It having been dedelights in carrying all his fictions into the disturban- creed by fate that Troy could not be taken without ces of the old world of Titanism, Sophocles, on the the presence of Philoctetes, whom the Greeks had contrary, seems to avail himself of Divine interference abandoned in the island of Lemnos, Ulysses and Pyronly of necessity. He formed human beings, as was rhus are sent to him to induce him to return to the the general agreement of antiquity, better, that is, not Grecian camp. They succeed with great difficulty in more moral and unerring, but more beautiful and noble accomplishing their object. This tragedy, though than they are in reality.-As characteristic of this poet, very simple in its plot, is marked by a constantly inthe ancients have praised that native sweetness and creasing interest, and the characters are well supportgracefulness, on account of which they called him the ed.-7. Oidinovç ¿πì Koλwvý, “Edipus at Colonus." Attic Bee. Whoever has penetrated into the feeling The subject is the death of Edipus, near the temple of of this peculiarity, may flatter himself that the spirit the Eumenides at Colonus. Edipus, blind and drivfor antique art has arisen within him; for modern sen- en from his throne, seeks, under the guidance of his sibility, very far from being able to fall in with that daughter, for a tomb in a foreign land, where the tale judgment, would be more likely to find in the Sopho- of his woes had arrived before him, and causes his inclean tragedy, both in respect of the representation of tended presence to be regarded with dread. There is bodily suffering and in the sentiments and arrange- need of manifest proof of Divine protection to enable ments, much that is insufferably austere.-We will him to find an asylum and tomb in this stranger-land, now proceed to give a brief sketch of the tragedies of and these proofs are vouchsafed him at the closing Sophocles that have come down to us. 1. Alaç pao- scene of his life.-The best editions of Sophocles are, Tiуopópos, "Ajax armed with the lash." The sub- that of Brunck, Argent., 1786, 4to, 2 vols., and 1786ject of this piece is the madness of Ajax, his death, 9, 8vo, 3 vols.; that of Erfurdt, Lips., 1802-1811, 7 and the dispute which arises on the subject of his in-vols. 8vo; and that of Hermann, Lond., 1826, 2 vols. terment. Many critics have regarded the play as defective, because the action does not terminate with the death of the hero; but, after this catastrophe, an incident occurs which forms a second action. To this it has been replied that there is not, in fact, any double action, since the first is not terminated by the death of Ajax, to whom burial is refused: as the deprivation of funeral rites was regarded by the ancients in the light of one of the greatest misfortunes, the spectators could not have gone away satisfied so long as the question of burial remained unsettled in the case of one whose death they had mourned.—2. 'Hλékтpa, “ Electra." The subject of this piece is the vengeance which a son, urged on by an oracle, and in obedience to the decree of Heaven, takes on the murderers of his father, by consigning to death his own mother. The character of Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who here plays the principal part, is admirably delineated, and sustained with exceeding ability throughout the whole play. The recognition between the brother and sister forms one of the most touching scenes in the whole compass of the Grecian drama.-3. OidiTоvs Túpavvos, "King Edipus." It would be difficult to conceive a subject more thoroughly tragical than that which forms the basis of this play. The grand and terrific meaning of the fable, however, as Schlegel has well remarked, is a circumstance which is generally overlooked to that very Edipus, who solved the riddle of human life propounded by the Sphinx, his own life remained an inexplicable riddle, till it was cleared up, all too late, in the most dreadful manner, when all was irrecoverably lost. This is a striking image of the arrogant pretensions of human SORACTE, a mountain of Etruria, a little to the wisdom, which always proceeds upon generalities, southeast of Falerii, now Monte Santo Silvestro, or, without teaching its possessor the right application of as it is by modern corruption sometimes termed, Sanť them to himself. The Edipus Tyrannus is regarded Oreste. On the summit was a temple and grove dednot merely as the chef-d'œuvre of Sophocles, but also, icated to Apollo, to whom an annual sacrifice was ofas regards the choice and disposition of the fable, as fered by a people of the country, distinguished by the the finest tragedy of antiquity. And yet we know name of Hirpii, who were on that account held sathat it failed of obtaining the prize. It has been imi- cred, and exempted from military service and other tated by Seneca, P. Corneille, and Voltaire.-4. 'Av-duties. (Plin., 7, 2) The sacrifice consisted in their Tiyovn, "Antigone." Creon, king of Thebes, had ordered that no one should bestow the rites of burial on Polynices, and his object in so doing was to punish him for having borne arms against his country. Antigone, sister to the young prince, listening to the dictates of affection rather than those of fear, ventures to disregard this mandate, and falls a victim to her pious act.-5. Tpaxivial, "The Trachinian Women," or the death of Hercules. The scene is laid at Trachis, and the chorus is composed of young females of the country. Seneca has imitated this piece in his Hercules Furens, and Rotrou in his Hercule Mourant.

SOPHRON, a native of Syracuse, born about 420 B.C., and celebrated as a writer of mimes. His pieces, composed in the Doric dialect, and not in verse properly so called, but in a species of cadenced prose (xaraλoyúðŋv. — Athen., ed. Schweigh., vol. 11, p. 315), were great favourites with Plato, who became acquainted with them through Dion of Syracuse, and spread the taste for this species of composition at Athens. We have only a few titles and fragments remaining of the mimes of Sophron, which are altogether insufficient to enable us to form any very definite opinion of the character of these compositions : although we know that the fifteenth Idyl of Theocr tus is an imitation of one of Sophron's mimes. Barthelemy thinks that these productions were in the style of the Fables of La Fontaine. Athenæus cites two kinds of mimes: one called Míμoɩ ávôpɛioi (Male mimes); the other Miuot yovaikɛtoi (Female mimes). Apollodorus of Athens wrote a commentary on the mimes of Sophron.-The fragments of Sophron are given in the Classical Journal, vol. 4, p. 380, and with additions and corrections in the Museum Criti cum, vol. 2, p. 340-358, 559-560. Both these collections are by Blomfield. (Schöll, Hist. Lit. Gr., vol. 2, p. 117.-Consult Müller, Die Dorier, vol. 2, p. 360, seqq.)

SOPHRONISCUS, the father of Socrates.

passing over heaps of red-hot embers without being injured by the fire. (En., 11, 785. — Sil. Ital., 5, 175.) A remarkable fountain, the exhalations of which were fatal to birds, is mentioned as existing in the vicinity of this mountain by Pliny (31, 2) and Vitruvius (8, 3.—Cramer's Anc. Italy, vol. 1, p. 230).

SOSIGENES, an Egyptian mathematician, who as sisted Julius Cæsar in regulating the Roman calendar. The philosopher, by tolerably accurate observations, discovered that the year was 365 days and 6 hours; and, to make allowance for the odd hours, he invented the intercalation of one day in four years. The

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