INTRODUCTION
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
