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Sophocles had educated his son Iophon to the tragic art, and might therefore easily receive assistance from him in the actual labour of composition, especially as it was necessary that the tragedies that were to compete for the prize should be ready and got by heart by a certain day.
The Trachiniae appears to me so very inferior to the other pieces of Sophocles which have reached us, that I could wish there were some warrant for supposing that this tragedy was composed in the age, indeed, and in the school of Sophocles, perhaps by his son Iophon, and that it was by mistake attributed to the father.
Fearing lest his father should bestow a great part of his property upon his favourite, Iophon summoned him before the Phratores, or tribesmen, on the ground that his mind was affected. The old man's only reply was "If I am Sophocles I am not beside myself; and if I am beside myself I am not Sophocles."
Pisistratus, the tyrant of Athens, made, they say, this answer to his sons, when they were grown men, when he married his second wife, Timonassa of Argos, by whom he had, it is said, Iophon and Thessalus. Cato had a son by this second wife, to whom from his mother, he gave the surname of Salonius.
After the death of Pisistratus his sons took up the government, and conducted it on the same system. He had two sons by his first and legitimate wife, Hippias and Hipparchus, and two by his Argive consort, Iophon and Hegesistratus, who was surnamed Thessalus.
Iophon, his son by an Athenian wife, and therefore his legitimate heir, was jealous of the affection manifested by his father for his grandson Sophocles, the offspring of another son, Ariston, whom he had had by a Sicyonian woman.
SUMMAM SENECTUTEM: Sophocles died at the age of 90 in 405 B.C. QUOD PROPTER STUDIUM: 'from his devotion to this occupation'. FILIIS: except Plutarch, who probably follows Cicero's words, all the authorities tell the story of the poet's eldest son Iophon only. The tale is full of improbabilities. REM: = rem familiarem as in 1. Cf. Xenophon, Mem. 1, 2, 49.
It is said that this remark was first made by Peisistratus, the despot of Athens, when, although he had sons grown up, he married Timonassa of Argos, by whom we are told that he had two sons, Iophon and Thessalus. Cato also had a son by his second marriage, whom he named Salonius after his mother. His eldest son died during his prætorship.
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