sociates may have reasoned of him as Metellus Cimber does of Cicero in Julius Cæsar:—
"O, let us have him, for his silver hairs
Will purchase us a good opinion
And buy men's voices to commend our deeds."
or as Casca says of Brutus:—
"Oh, he sits high in all the people's hearts,
And that which would appear offence in us,
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness."
7. Whether this were so or not, it is manifest that he had no lasting quarrel with the majority of his countrymen, who continued to honour him while they delighted in Euripides; and we have the witness of Aristophanes to the impression which the serenity of his last years had made upon them: as of one not striving for mastery, but sure to live peaceably "wheresome'er he is,"[1] in the other world as in this. He had a son, Iophon, and a grandson, Sophocles. Iophon was a tragic poet in his father's lifetime, and Sophocles is said to have edited the Œdipus Coloneus after the author's death. It is hardly worth while to allude to stories of still more questionable authenticity, such as the conflicting legends about the death of Sophocles, who seems to have attained the age of ninety, or the honours paid by Lysander to his tomb; but a saying attributed to him by Aristotle is worth repeating, as at least well invented if not authentic:—"I make men as they ought to be, Euripides men as they are," a compliment which the realism of the later poet was hardly substantial enough to deserve.
These scanty vestiges of biography are such as a sober criticism will for the most part neither wholly accept nor wholly deny. But were they altogether to vanish into air, the central fact which is of chief significance would remain—that Sophocles was an Athenian of the age of Pericles, and a tragic poet—the author, amongst other works, of the Antigone.
- ↑ Shak. Hen. V. ii. 3.
