ies, at least, to the last.--See
Athenaeus, lib. 13, p. 523.

[339] He does indeed charge Sophocles with avarice, but he atones for
it very handsomely in the "Frogs."

[340] M. Schlegel is pleased to indulge in one of his most
declamatory rhapsodies upon the life, "so dear to the gods," of this
"pious and holy poet." But Sophocles, in private life, was a
profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not
absolutely a renegade. It was, perhaps, the very laxity of his
principles which made him thought so agreeable a fellow. At least,
such is no uncommon cause of personal popularity nowadays. People
lose much of their anger and envy of genius when it throws them down a
bundle or two of human foibles by which they can climb up to its
level.

[341] It is said, indeed, that the appointment was the reward of a
successful tragedy; it was more likely due to his birth, fortune, and
personal popularity.

[342] It seems, however, that Pericles thought very meanly of his
warlike capacities.--See Athenaeus, lib. 13, p. 604.

[343] Oedip. Tyr., 1429, etc.

[344] When Sophocles (Athenaeus, i., p. 22) said that Aeschylus
composed befittingly, but without knowing it, his saying evinced the
study his compositions had cost himself.

[345] "The chorus should be considered as one of the persons in the
drama, should be a part of the whole, and a sharer in the action, not
as in Euripides, but as in Sophocles."--Aristot. de Poet., Twining's
translation. But even in Sophocles, at least in such of his plays as
are left to us, the chorus rarely, if ever, is a sharer in the outward
and positive action of the piece; it rather carries on and expresses
the progress of the emotions that spring out of the action.

[346] --akno toi pros s' aposkopois' anax.--Oedip. Tyr., 711.

This line shows how much of emotion the actor could express in spite
of the mask.

[347] "Of all discoveries, the best is that which arises from the
action itself, and in which a striking effect is produced by probable
incidents. Such is that in the Oedipus of Sophocles."--Aristot. de
Poet., Twining's translation.

[348] But the spot consecrated to those deities which men "tremble to
name," presents all the features of outward loveliness that contrast
and refine, as it were, the metaphysical terror of the associations.
And the beautiful description of Coloneus itself, which is the passage
that Sophocles is said to have read to his judges,