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In proof of the first assertion it will be enough to mention such names as those of Solon, Themistokles, Perikles, and Demosthenes; Isokrates and Lysias; Aristophanes and Menander; Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides; Pheidias and Praxiteles; Sokrates and Plato; Thukydides and Xenophon: remembering that these men, distinguished for such different kinds of achievement, but like each other in consummateness of culture, were all produced within one town in the course of three centuries.
Unfortunately in the next year his family moved to Leipzig, where his zeal was checked by the pedantry of schoolmasters, and his studies soon began to take another direction, but throughout his life he remained ardently in sympathy with Hellenic culture. His remarks on the Oedipus tragedies of Sophokles are well worthy the attention of those who value the poetry above the letter of a work.
We must not believe Sophokles, when he says that virtue is feeble and dies out in men: "Why, not the very mind that's born with man, When he's unfortunate, remains the same."
"They stay not, as befits a maid, at home, But with young men in shameless dresses roam." For in truth the sides of the maiden's tunic were not fastened together at the skirt, and so flew open and exposed the thigh as they walked, which is most clearly alluded to in the lines of Sophokles "She that wanders nigh, With scanty skirt that shows the thigh, A Spartan maiden fair and free, Hermione."
Being without books when in the interior of Asia, he ordered Harpalus to send him some. Harpalus sent him the histories of Philistus, several plays of Euripides, Sophokles, and Æschylus, and the dithyrambic hymns of Telestus and Philoxenus.
The power of this effect can be easily imagined. This work is marked, to an unusual extent, with a sensuousness of color. The year eighteen hundred eighty-one saw the first production of what is generally considered Paine's most important composition, and by some called the best work by an American, his setting of the choruses of the "Oedipus Tyrannos" of Sophokles.
There is also a legend that Pan loved Pindar and his verses; and for the Muse's sake, Hesiod and Archilochus were honoured after their deaths; while Sophokles during his life is said, by a legend which remains current at the present day, to have become the friend of Aesculapius, and on his death to have had the rites of burial supplied by the care of another god.
As he did not altogether care to entrust his education to the teachers whom he had obtained, but thought that it would be too difficult a task for them, since Alexander required, as Sophokles says of a ship: "Stout ropes to check him, and stout oars to guide." he sent for Aristotle, the most renowned philosopher of the age, to be his son's tutor, and paid him a handsome reward for doing so.
Who can forget his fine contrast of the howling Philoktetes in Sophokles with the gently sighing Laokoon, both in mortal agony, but the latter unable to express his pain because, being in marble, he dared not distort his countenance? To speak literally of "beautiful music" would be a contradiction in terms.
The excitement of the contest was much increased by the high position of the judges. The prize was adjudged to Sophokles, and it is said that Æschylus was so grieved and enraged at his failure that he shortly afterwards left Athens and retired to Sicily, where he died, and was buried near the city of Gela.
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