we may call them so, is the varied experience which would result from such employment, the contact with foreign cities, especially in Ionia, and the opportunities for personal observation elsewhere than at Athens which it must have involved. On one of these occasions he is supposed to have made the acquaintance of Herodotus, and an epigram attributed to Sophocles, but of doubtful authenticity, purports to record their intimacy. A contemporary tragic poet, Ion of Chios (the same who spoke of Pericles as dry and surly), made some notes of his fugitive intercourse with Sophocles, of which a few scraps have been preserved. In his public capacity Sophocles did not strike his brother artist as at all remarkable. "He was like any other respectable Athenian." But in society his urbanity, readiness and sprightliness seem to have charmed the facile Ionians with whom he found himself. He made no pretensions to generalship, and repeated with relish what Pericles had said of him, that he succeeded better as a poet than as a commander.[1]
3. These slight and casual impressions are all that remain to us of the person of Sophocles in his prime, unless, indeed, we may trust as authentic the beautiful statue of him now in the Lateran Museum at Rome, in which the first glance may show us only a statesman or general of handsome presence but moderate calibre, "like any other respectable Athenian"; but as we continue gazing on the harmonious figure, a grave and sympathetic humanity is seen to breathe from every line.
4. So much appears certain: that the man whom we know to have fully measured the height and depth of happiness and misery was sensitive to the touch of lighter joys, and counted "nothing human alien to him"; that he lived the life of a well-born Athenian of his time, not shrinking from public services, though not shining in them; and that he was gifted with all
- ↑ In listening to Ion's light gossip it is well to bear in mind Plutarch's caution in repeating his remarks on Pericles: "Life seemed insipid to him without the satyr-element."
