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I did not ruin you willingly. There was no other way. A man must first be a friend to himself, and then friendly to others. I have cast in my lot with the Persians. It was I who wrote that letter which blasted you at Colonus. Very soon there will be a great battle fought in Bœotia. Lycon and I will make it certain that Mardonius conquers. I am to be tyrant of Athens.
But there are many passages besides the famous lines descriptive of the grove at Colonus which betray the personality behind the plays; and, studied more closely, the very detachment of the drama from the dramatist is significant of character.
“Hemlock, coward! Did you not bid Glaucon to take his life that night in Colonus? The death you proffered him in his innocency I proffer you now in your guilt. Drink!” “You have called me friend. You have said you loved me. I dare not die. A little time! Pity! Mercy! What god can I invoke?” “None. Cerberus himself would not hearken to such as you. Drink.” “Pity, by our old-time friendship!”
Pelagos, the untainted sea, was a softer grave than the Barathrum. The memory of the fearful hour at Colonus, the vision of the face of Hermione, of all things else that he would fain forget—all these would pass. For what came after he cared nothing. So for some moments he stood, clinging upon the poop, awaiting the end. But the end came slowly. The Solon was a stoutly timbered ship.
His style resembles the ideas which it clothes: it is bold, sublime, and full of gorgeous imagery, but sometimes borders on the turgid. SOPHOCLES, the younger rival and immediate successor of Aeschylus in the tragic art, was born at Colonus, a village about a mile from Athens, in B.C. 495.
This was the case at Cumæ where Æneas consulted the Sybil, and at Colonus; while at Hierapolis in Phrygia there was a famous "Plutonium," which could only be safely approached by the priests of Cybele. It was situated under a temple of Apollo, a real entrance to Hades; and it is doubtless to this that Cicero refers when he speaks of the deadly "Plutonia" he had seen in Asia.
Far, near,—islands, mountains, and deep were burning with saffron, violet, and rose, as the Sun-God’s car climbed higher above the burning path it marked across the sea. Glaucon saw all in clear relief,—the Acropolis temple where he had prayed, the Pnyx and Areopagus, the green band of the olive groves, even the knoll of Colonus,—where he had left his all. Never had he loved Athens more than now.
Then Atticus describes how he found the same charms of association in the garden which had belonged to his own master, Epicurus; while Quintus Cicero supplies what we should call the classical element by speaking of Sophocles and the grove of Colonus, still musical, it seems, with the same song of the nightingale which had charmed the ear of the poet more than three centuries before.
Other places supposed to be connected with this myth had a similar legend attached to them, as also did all places where Pluto was thought to have carried off Persephone. Thus we hear of entrances to Hades at Eleusis, at Colonus, at Enna in Sicily, and finally at the lovely pool of Cyane, up the Anapus River, near Syracuse, one of the few streams in which the papyrus still flourishes.
She grew comforted, but they had not been together long when they were surprised by the approach of Themistocles and Hermippus. Hermione ran to her father. “Themistocles and I were summoned hither,” explained Hermippus, “by a message from Democrates bidding us come to Colonus at once, on an urgent matter touching the public weal.” “He is not here.
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