"understood about as much as the average educated Athenian." In 443 he had been 'Hellênotamias' (Treasurer of the Empire) with no bad results. His fame and popularity must have carried real weight, or he would not have been one of ten Commissioners ('Probouloi') appointed after the defeat of the Sicilian Expedition in 413. And it is significant that, when he was prosecuted along with his colleagues for agreeing to the Oligarchical Constitution of 411, he was acquitted on the naïve defence that he "had really no choice!"
The anecdotes credit him with some family difficulties at the end of his life, apparently owing to his connection with an 'hetaira' named Theôris. His legitimate son Iophon tried to get a warrant for administering the family estate, on the ground of his father's incapacity. Sophocles read to the jury an ode from the Œdipus at Colônus, which he was then writing, and was held to have proved thereby his general sanity! The story smacks of the comic stage; and the references to the poet at the time of his death, especially by Aristophanes in the Frogs, and Phrynichus, son of Eunomides, in the Muses* preclude the likelihood of any serious trouble having occurred shortly before. He died in 406, a few months after his great colleague Euripides, in whose honour he introduced his last chorus in mourning and without the usual garlands.[1] His tomb lay on the road to Dekeleia, and we hear that he was worshipped as a hero under the name of 'Dexiôn' ('Receiver'), on the curious ground that he had in some sense 'received' the god Asclêpius into his house. He was a priest of the Asclepian hero Alcon, and had built a chapel to
- ↑ At the 'pro-agôn' or introductory pageant. At the actual feast such conduct would probably have been 'impiety.'
