etc., are of white and colored marbles, porphyry, granite, etc., and have capitals of various peculiar forms. The interior of the church is 243 feet in width from N. to S., and 269 in length from E. to W., and its general effect is singularly fine.
SOPHISTS. The Greek word sophistes (from sophos="skilled," "wise") meant originally any one of acknowledged or professed skill; thus, the term was applied to the seven sages (whether philosophers, like Thales, or statesmen, like Solon), to poets, musicians, etc. In the 5th and 4th centuries B. C. it came to be applied specially to those who made a profession of teaching all or any of the higher branches of learning. The great intellectual awakening of Athens after the Persian War, and the growth of democracy in Sicily and elsewhere, as well as at Athens, which gave skill in public speaking a new importance, led to the demand for an education which should go beyond the old training in "gymnastics" and "music" (i. e., reading, writing, singing, and reciting from the poets). To meet this demand there arose a class of professional teachers, wandering scholars, who undertook to provide what we should call "higher education."
SOPHOCLES, a Greek tragic poet; born in the Attic demus or village of Colonus, 495 B. C., 30 years later than
Æschylus. He received a good education, and at an early age gained the prize in music and gymnastics. He was 15 when the battle of Salamis was fought, and for his remarkable beauty and skill in music he was chosen to lead the chorus which sang the paean of victory. His first appearance as a dramatist was in 468, when, under memorable circumstances, he had Æschylus for his rival and won the victory. Of the next 28 years of his life nothing is recorded; but it is known that he made poetry his business, and that he composed a great many plays during that period. Not one of them, however, is now extant. The "Antigone," the earliest of his extant tragedies, was brought out in 440, and won the prize. The number of plays attributed to him without question was 113, of which 81 were probably produced after the "Antigone." Seven only are extant, viz., "Antigone," "Electra," "Trachinian Women," "King Œdipus," "Ajax," "Philoctetes," and "Œdipus at Colonus." These exhibit his art in its maturity, and sustain the verdict of ancient and modern critics that Sophocles carried the Greek drama to its highest perfection. He effected a complete change in the constitution of tragedy as Æschylus left it; loosening the connection between the parts of the trilogy and the satiric drama, and making them not one great poem, but four distinct ones; introducing a third actor; and for subjects selecting, not a series of heroic and mythical actions, but for each play one leading fact of real human interest and lasting significance. Sophocles lived to be nearly 90, and in his latest years most probably wrote the "Œdipus at Colonus," so full of sweetness and tender melancholy, and consoling hopes, which was not presented on the stage till five years after the poet's death, 406 B. C.
SOPWITH, THOMAS OCTAVE MURDOCH, a British aviator. Born 1888; educated at Cottesmore, and the Seafield Engineering College. In 1910 he won the de Forest prize of $20,000 for the longest flight from England in a British machine by a flight from Eastchurch to Beaumont, Belgium, a distance of 176 miles, in a Howard-Wright biplane. In 1912 he established the Sopwith Aviation Co., Ltd., at Kingston-on-Thames, where aeroplanes and seaplanes are designed and built. He assisted in the turning out of many British aeroplanes during the World War.
SORACTE, a celebrated mountain of Italy, 27 miles N. of Rome, now called Monte Sant' Oreste; height, 2,420 feet.
SORBONNE, an establishment founded at Paris in 1253 by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to St. Louis, for certain secular priests, who should devote themselves to the study of and gratuitous instruction
