One of the greatest of Greek writers was the tragic poet Sophocles. He was born near Athens in the year 495 B. C., and was educated after the manner of the Greek youth of his time. Every advantage was given him for the study of music and poetry, and also for that gymnastic training which, as we have seen, was so important in Greek education.

Sophocles was a handsome youth, and acquitted himself well in the palÆstra. When he was sixteen years of age the great battle of Salamis was fought and won by the Greeks. In the celebration of this victory at Athens, Sophocles led with dance and lyre the chorus of young men who sang the pÆan or hymn of victory. That such an honor should be given him shows how graceful and gifted he must have been.

The beginning of his literary career came when he was in his twenty-fifth year. At that time a solemn festival was held in Athens in memory of the ancient King Theseus, whose bones had been brought thither from the island of Scyros. Now all religious festivals in Greece were celebrated with contests, some athletic, others artistic and literary. On this occasion there was a contest of dramatic poets. Æschylus was at that time the greatest of living tragedians, and as he was among the contestants, it might have been supposed that no other candidate could have succeeded. Sophocles now came forward with his first tragedy, and so remarkable was it found to be that the judges pronounced him victor.

From this time forth Sophocles continually grew in dramatic and literary power. Twenty times he obtained the first prize in other contests, and many times also the second prize. The amount of his work was prodigious. Most of his dramas are lost, but we still have a half dozen or more to show us the noble quality of his work. The finest are perhaps those called Œdipus Tyrannus, Œdipus Coloneus, and Antigone, all dealing with the tragic fate of an ancient royal family.

Athens was justly proud of her great poet and bestowed various honors upon him. He was even made a general, and served in the war against Samos; but nature had made him a poet, and it is as a poet that we must always think of him. Full of years and honors, he died in Athens at the age of ninety. Of him the Greek poet Phrynicus wrote,—

Our portrait shows admirably what manner of man he was, handsome and dignified, in the prime of life.

The scanty folds of his toga reveal the fine lines of his graceful figure. The pose shows the bodily vigor which his early athletic training gave him. He holds his head erect in a manner suggestive of his military life. The face is that of an idealist and a poet, a man who sees splendid visions. Yet it is not altogether dreamy in the ordinary sense; it has the alert, energetic aspect of one who would turn from vision to action. It is not hard to believe the tale of his one hundred and twenty-three dramas: such a man would fill his life with activity. The face has, too, the expression of genial kindliness which made the great poet so beloved of his fellow men. His must have been that calm, equable temperament not easily ruffled, which goes with the self-respecting nature. A receptacle at his side is filled with the scrolls of his tragedies. He stands in the attitude of a poet reciting his lines to an assembled audience.

The statue shows how sane was the Greek ideal of intellectual greatness. In those days genius did not mean eccentricity, but the rule of life was a sound mind in a sound body. It is a mistaken notion of our own times that bodily health must be sacrificed to the training of the brain. It is even supposed by some that oddities of dress and manner are signs of greatness.

The Greeks had no such delusions. Here is Sophocles, the greatest dramatic poet of antiquity, a magnificent specimen of symmetrically developed manhood. He is a man who has made the most of life's opportunities as he understood them. He enjoys perfect bodily vigor; he is as well a man of the world, at ease among men. There is evidently nothing of the recluse in his character. He wears his beard carefully trimmed as one who looks well to his personal appearance. Yet intellectual greatness is stamped on face and bearing: the noble countenance marks him as a poet.

There was a period in Greek history when it was a custom to adorn public buildings with statues of famous men, living or dead. Libraries were appropriately decorated with statues of poets, and we fancy that our statue of Sophocles was made for such a purpose. The original is supposed to have been set up by a certain Athenian statesman named Lycurgus in the fourth century B. C.