Salamis, one of the decisive battles of the world, which saved not only Greece but western civilization, is a connecting link between the three great Attic tragedians. Aeschylus, then in his prime, fought himself and celebrated the victory in his Persae; Sophocles, a boy of fifteen, was chosen for his beauty and musical skill as leader of the youthful choir who danced and sang a paean round the trophy; and Euripides, according to tradition, was born on the very day of the battle.

In his art, no less than in his age, Sophocles stands half way between the primitive faith and large utterance of Aeschylus, the "superman," and the lyric pathos, "the touch of all things human," of Euripides the Rationalist.

Of his private life, if we neglect later myth and gossip, there is little to tell. As Phrynicus wrote shortly after his death, "Thus happily ended a life without one mishap." He was born at Colonus (495 B.C.), that deme of Athens which he afterwards immortalized in what Cicero pronounced the sweetest ​of all lyricS, and his father Sophilus, a well-to-do Athenian (probably a master-cutler) gave him the best education of the day in music, dancing, and gymnastics. Endowed with every gift of nature, both physical and mental, from the very first, he carried all before him. When he began to dramatize we know not, but in 468 he won the first prize, probably with the Triptolemus, a lost play, and there is no reason to doubt the story that it was awarded to him by Cimon, the successful general to whom the Archon Eponymus of the year deferred the decision.

The year 440 B.C. was to Sophocles what 1850 A.D. was to Tennyson, the grand climacteric of his life. After, and partly at least in consequence of his Antigone, which took the town by storm, he was appointed one of the ten strategi sent with Pericles to reduce the aristocratic revolt in Samos. If the poet won no fresh laurels in the field he did not forfeit the esteem and admiration of his countrymen, who conferred on him various posts of distinction, just as the age of Queen Anne rewarded Addison and Prior with secretaryships, or as the United States sent us Lowell as ambassador. He was President of the Ἑλληνοταμίαι or Imperial Treasurers of the tribute. After the Sicilian disaster in 413 he was ​Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/15 ​Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/16 ​Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/17 ​Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/18 ​Page:Sophocles (Storr 1912) v1.djvu/19 ​consciously borrowed from his rendering, but there is hardly a line in which I am not indebted to him for a fuller appreciation of the meaning and significance.

To three other life-long friends, all three rival translators of Sophocles in whole or in part, I am indebted for generous help and counsel. Sir George Young, Mr. E. D. A. Morshead, and Professor Gilbert Murray read and freely criticized my first essay which has been kept for more than the statutory nine years oi Horace, and it was their encouragement that made me persevere in what has proved the pleasantest of all holiday tasks.