of the victory. He had been trained in the school of Lamprus, the famous musician of Athens. This is all that is told us of his education in the narrower sense. It includes more than may appear at first sight; for music was the chief means of culture for Greek youth, and led to an intimate knowledge of the earlier poetry.
But his real education, and the chief interest of his life always, must have centred in the drama. At what precise moment he was initiated amongst the company of Dionysiac votaries (the dramatic guild, or θίασος), we can never know, but long before he had himself produced a tragedy we must imagine him as fired by the genius of Æschylus, and drinking in the harmonies of Phrynichus, as well as of Simonides and "Homer." And the crisis of his existence which has most interest for us, is his triumph over Æschylus, in B.C. 468, the twenty-seventh year of his age, by the award of Cimon and the other generals, to whom the judges delegated their powers, at the Lenæan (or Spring Dionysiac) festival. The dramatic training, of which this was the culminating point, was in the highest sense of a practical kind. His voice is said to have disqualified him from acting, except in silent parts; but there is little doubt that he exercised the closest supervision over the performances of his own plays, and that, like Æschylus, like Shakespeare, like Molière, he was personally conversant with the details of dramatic representation.
2. He was a native of the suburban district of Colonus, and his father is said to have been in a good position, and to have made money by superintending the manufacture of cutlery. The former statement at least is confirmed by the appointments which Sophocles held in public life, apparently without having earned them by special qualifications.
Middle life.—We are told that he was sent on various embassies, and it is affirmed by constant tradition that he held command with Pericles in the war with Samos, B.C. 441 or 440, being then fifty-five years old. The chief interest of both of these facts, if
