. A smaller history of Greece, from the earliest times to the Roman conquest. n summoned him before the Phratores, or tribesmen,on the ground that his mind was affected. The old mans onlyreply was— If I am Sophocles I am not beside myself; and if Iam beside myself I am not Sophocles. Then taking up hisCSdipus at Colonus, which he had lately written, but had not yetbrought out, he read from it a beautiful passage, with whichthe judges were so struck that they at once dismissed the case. Hedied shortly afterwards, in 406, in his 90th year. As a poetSophocles is universally allowed to have b
. A smaller history of Greece, from the earliest times to the Roman conquest. n summoned him before the Phratores, or tribesmen,on the ground that his mind was affected. The old mans onlyreply was— If I am Sophocles I am not beside myself; and if Iam beside myself I am not Sophocles. Then taking up hisCSdipus at Colonus, which he had lately written, but had not yetbrought out, he read from it a beautiful passage, with whichthe judges were so struck that they at once dismissed the case. Hedied shortly afterwards, in 406, in his 90th year. As a poetSophocles is universally allowed to have brought the drama to thegreatest perfection of which it is susceptible. His plays stand inthe just medium between the sublime but unregulated flightsof iEschylus, and the too familiar scenes and rhetorical decla-mations of Euripides. His plots are worked up with more skill andcare than the plots of either of his great rivals. Sophocles addedthe last improvement to the form of the drama by the introduction^of a third actor ; a change which greatly enlarged the scope of the. Chap. XXII. SOPHOCLES— EURIPIDES — ARISTOPHANES. 233 action. The improvement was so obvious that it was adopted byiEschylus in his later plays; but the number of three actors seemsto have been seldom or never exceeded. Euripides was born in the island of Salamis, in 480 hisparents having been among those who fled thitherat the time of the invasion of Attica by Xerxes. ^^Plfe^He studied rhetoric under Prodicus, and physics J)fP 7 ij&iunder Anaxagoras, and he also lived on intimateterms with Socrates. In 441 he gained his first W^i&MWprize, and he continued to exhibit plays until ^^M^SS^408, the date of his Orestes. Soon after this he ✓V^^^^re^repaired to the court of Macedonia, at the in vita- \ ^y-m\tion of king Archelaus, where he died two years V £Y?ir,iAiir jptl afterwards at the age of 74 ( 40G). Common ^ : report relates that he was torn to pieces by the Euripides,kings dogs, which, acco
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