a foil to set off the
lustre of his great successor Sophocles, who, while yet his scholar,
aspired to be his competitor, and gained the preeminence at the age of
twenty-five.

SOPHOCLES was born four hundred and ninety-seven years before the
birth of Christ, and at an early age rendered himself, like his master
Aeschylus, conspicuous by his superior talents in war and in poetry. It
happened, when Sophocles was not yet five and twenty, that the remains
of Theseus were brought from Scyros to Athens, where festivals and games
were made in honour of that heroic monarch, as well as to commemorate
the taking of that island: among those a yearly contest was instituted
for the palm in tragedy. Sophocles became a candidate, and though there
were many competitors, and among them Aeschylus himself, he bore away the
prize. The fondness of the Greeks for the theatre was so passionately
strong, that in order to excite emulation among the poets, they gave
rewards to those, who among the competitors, were judged to have the
preference; and they entrusted the management of their theatres to none
but persons of the most considerable rank and character. Hitherto the
prize was disputed by four dramatic pieces only, three of which were
tragedies--while the fourth was a comedy; but Sophocles brought about a
new arrangement, and by opposing, in all cases, tragedy to tragedy,
completely excluded comedy from its pretensions.

Another and an excellent revolution in the drama was brought about by
this great man. He added one actor more to the dramatis personae, and
raised the chorus to fifteen persons, introducing them into the main
action, and giving to all of them such parts to perform as tended to
the carrying on of one uniform, regular plot. Encouraged by the great
success of his pieces, the honours conferred upon him, and the deference
paid to his opinions, he continued to write with unabated enthusiasm for
the stage, and obtained the public prize no less than twenty different
times. The admiration and wonder with which his genius was spoken of
through all Greece, induced a general opinion that he was specially
favoured by heaven, and that he held an intimate communication with the
gods. Cicero himself has gone so far as to assert that Hercules had a
prodigious esteem for him; and Apollonius[1] of Thyana, a Pythagorean
philosopher, said in an oration he delivered before the tyrant Domitian,
that "Sophocles, the Athenian, could tie up the wi