eo? 



SOPHOCLES. 



SORANUS. 



113 genuine dramas, which number includes his satiric dramas. At 

 the ago of forty-five he had written 32 dramas, BO that more than two- 

 thirds of his works were composed during the latter half of his life. 

 The ' (Edipus in Colonus,' his last production, was written a short time 

 before his death, but was not brought out till the year B.C. 401. With 

 these plays he disputed tbe prize with the greatest dramatists of the 

 day vEschylus, Euripides, Chcerilus, Aristias, lophon, and others; 

 and gained twenty times the first prize, several times the second, but 

 never the third. Of all his plays there only remain seven ; of others 

 we only possess some fragments, and sometimes no more than the 

 titles. The earliest of the extant pieces is the ' Antigone,' and the 

 probable chronological order in which the others followed is this : 

 'Electra,' ' Trachinise,' 'King (Edipus,' 'Ajax,' ' Philoctetes ' (first 

 acted in B.C. 409), and the ' CEdipus in Colonus,' which was first acted 

 in B.C. 401. 



The ancients themselves regarded Sophocles as the most perfect of 

 all dramatic poets ; they called him the tragic Homer, and the Attic 

 bee, to express the unrivalled beauty and sweetness of his productions. 

 Their admiration was well founded, for the tragedies of Sophocles, as 

 far as we can judge, excel everything of the kind that appeared in 

 Greece either before or after him. Sophocles abandoned the pomp, 

 grandiloquence, and harshness of ^Eschylus, for which he substituted 

 the noble simplicity and tenderness which the ancients admired : his 

 heroes are not beings of a superior nature ; his men are not the sport 

 of an inscrutable destiny : the world which he represents is peopled 

 by men, agitated indeed by sufferings and passions, but the good and 

 the beautiful do not appear under the iron rule of destiny ; all his 

 characters are men in the truest sense of the word, beings with whom 

 we can sympathise. Hence his dramas are of an ethical and practical 

 character, while those of ^Eschylus are more calculated to inspire 

 religious awe. Sophocles knew the laws of his art and what it 

 required, as appears from an expression ascribed to him by Plutarch. 

 (' De Prof. Virt., Sent.,' 7.) During his whole career he appears to 

 have been striving to realise the idea which he had formed of tragedy. 

 In the three earliest of the extant plays there appear occasionally 

 traces of an artificial style and studied obscurity, but the remaining 

 four are entirely free of this fault. But even the ' Antigone ' is so 

 different from any play of -<Eschylus in design and execution, that he 

 must have long before been aware of the necessity of the changes 

 which he introduced. The more particular changes to which we here 

 allude are as follows : Each drama of Sophocles turns upon one great 

 action, the ' Antigone ' perhaps excepted ; and one idea, which is the 

 leading idea of the drama, is perfectly developed in one play ; while 

 with ^Eschylus the three plays of a trilogy are like so many acts of 

 one drama. Although therefore Sophocles may usually have brought 

 out three tragedies at once, each of them was complete in itself. The 

 lyric part, or the chorus, in Sophocles has no longer that prominent 

 place which it has in ^Eschylus, nor does it take part in the action in 

 the same degree ; it no longer expresses the feelings supposed to be 

 called forth in the audience ; but the tragic development of the 

 characters of the drama, or, in other words, the action, is the most 

 prominent part of the drama. The chorus is subordinate, and it 

 would seem that Sophocles used it as a means to let the spectator see 

 what was going on in the minds of the actors rather than in that of 

 the spectators. As the action was thus extended, Sophocles also 

 introduced a third actor, or the triagonistes, so that now three actors 

 might appear upon the stage at once, whereas before his time there 

 had not been more than two at a time, which rendered the action, as 

 well as the dialogue, monotonous. Lastly, Sophocles introduced 

 several improvements in scene-painting and in other mechanical parts 

 of stage performance. At first he is said, like ^Eschylus, to have 

 acted in his own dramas, but as his voice was too weak he gave it up. 



Besides his dramas, Sophocles also wrote an elegy, several paeans, 

 and other minor poem?, and also a prose work on the chorus, which 

 was directed against Thespis and Chcerilus. Several ancient gram- 

 marians, such as Didymus, Horapollon, Aristophanes of Byzantium, 

 Androtion, Praxiphanes, and others, wrote commentaries upon the 

 dramas of Sophocles. 



Respecting the life and works of Sophocles, see the Life, by an 

 anonymous Greek writer, which is prefixed to several editions of his 

 works ; Suidas, s. v. 'SotpoKKrjs ; the masterly treatise of Lessing, 

 ' Leben des Sophocles,' which has unfortunately been left a fragment 

 by the author; Ferd. Schultz, 'De Vita Sophoclis Poetse,' 8vo, Bonn, 

 1836; Adolph. Scholl, 'Sophocles, sein Wirken und Leben,' 8vo, 

 Frankfurt ; Miiller, ' Hist, of the Lit. of Ancient Greece," L pp. 

 337-356; A. W. v. Schlegel, 'Lectures on Dramatic Literature,' vol. i., 

 lect. 4. 



The works of Sophocles were first printed by Aldus, 8vo, Venice, 

 1502. The best of tbe subsequent editions are those of H. Stephens, 

 4to, Paris, 1568, with valuable notes; and that of Brunck, 2 vols. 8vo, 

 Strasbourg, 1786, with a Latin translation and notes. In the same 

 year Brunck published his great edition, in 2 vols. 4to or 4 vols. 8vo. 

 It was reprinted in London, in 3 vols. 8vo, 1823, with some additions 

 by Burney. The text of Brunck has served as the basis for all subse- 

 quent editions. The best among them are that of Musgrave, 2 vols. 

 8vo, Oxford, 1800, &c. ; of F. H. Bothe, 2 vols. 8vo, Leipzig, 1806, 

 the last edition of which appeared in 1827 and 1828; of Erfurt, 

 7 vola. 8vo, Leipzig, 1802, &c. ; of Elmsley, 1826, reprinted at Leipzig 



in 8 vols. 8vo; of Erfurt and G. Hermann, 7 vols. 12mo, Leipzig, 

 1823-25. An edition by G. Hermann, in 7 vols. 12mo, appeared at 

 Leipzig in 1850-51. The most useful edition of Sophocles for students 

 is that of E. Wunder, Gotha and Erfurt, 1831-41. An edition with 

 a translation of W under' s introductions and notes, and a collation of 

 Dindorf's text, was published in London in 2 vole. 8vo, 1854. The 

 editions of single plays and dissertations upon them are alrnott innu- 

 merable. The titles and remains of the lost pieces of Sophocles have 

 been collected by Welcker, in his ' Die Griechischen Tragodien," p. 59, 

 &c. He has classed them according to the legendary cycles to which 

 they belong, and also given the probable contents or the leading idea 

 of each play, as far as this can be made out from the fragments. 



The translations of Sophocles are very numerous. The best German 

 ia that by Solger, the last edition of which appeared at Berlin, 2 vols. 

 8vo, 1824. There are numerous English translations : in prose, by 

 George Adams, 2 vols., London, 1729, and others subsequently ; in 

 verse, by Franklin, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1758-59 ; by Robert Potter, 

 London, 1788; and by Thomas Dale, 1824. 



SO'PHRON, son of Agathocles, a native of Syracuse, was born 

 about the year B.C. 420. He is believed to have been the inventor of 

 a peculiar kind of poetry called ' mimes,' which were dramatic per- 

 formances of irregular form, in which occurrences of real life were 

 clothed in a poetical dress ; and which usually consisted of a single 

 scene, mostly comic, sometimes with such dialogue added as the 

 excitement of the moment prompted. Sophron wrote his works in 

 the vulgar dialect of the Doric Greek as spoken in Sicily, and in a kind 

 of rhythmical prose. Plato, who had become acquainted with the pro- 

 ductions of Sophron through Dion of Syracuse, valued them very 

 highly, and is said to have made the Athenians acquainted with this 

 species of poetry. (Quinctil., i. 10, 17.) Besides the few fragments 

 of the mimes of Sophron which yet remain, we only know the titles 

 of some others of his poems, so that we are scarcely able to form an 

 exact idea of this species of poetry. The circumstance that Sophron 

 wrote in a popular dialect full of peculiarities and solecisms, was 

 probably the reason why his works were studied by the grammarians. 

 Apollodorus of Athens wrote a commentary upon them. 



The fragments are collected by C. J. Blomfield, in the ' Classical 

 Journal," vol. iv., p. 380, &c., to which a supplement and some cor- 

 rections were added by the same scholar in the ' Museum Ctiticum,' 

 No. vii., p. 640, &c. Compare Grysar, 'De Sophrone Mimographo,' 

 Colonise, 1838. 



SORANUS, an eminent ancient physician, the son of Menander, was 

 born at Ephesus, probably about the end of the 1st century after 

 Christ, and raised the sect of the Methodici to its highest degree of 

 reputation. He had been brought up at Alexandria, but under the 

 reign of Trajan and Hadrian he came to Rome, where he taught and 

 practised medicine with great success. (Pseudo-Gal., ' Introduct.,' 

 cap. 4, p. 184, torn, xiv., ed. Kiihn; Suidas.) He passed some time 

 also in Aquitania, and very successfully treated the leprous diseases 

 which prevailed there. (MarcelL Emp., 'De Medicam.,' cap. 19, p. 

 321, ed. H. Steph.) In his time the leprosy, which had been brought 

 from the East into Italy and Gaul, was making there the greatest 

 ravages ; and the physicians, who were not yet well acquainted with 

 this disease, were anxious to recommend certain preparations against 

 each of its particular symptoms. Some of those employed by Soranua 

 have been preserved to us by Galen. (Gal., ' De Compos. Medicam., 

 sec. Loca,' lib. i., cap. 2, 8, p. 414 et sq., 493 et sq., torn. xiL) Their 

 object was in a great measure to effect a metasyncrisis, or the re-estab- 

 lishment of the pores in their natural state. To him we are indebted 

 for the first observations (Paul .^Egin., ' De Re Med.,' lib. iv., cap. 59, 

 p. 73, ed. Aid.) upon the species of worm called by the Greeks 

 SpcwceWioi/, by the Latins Gordius, Filaria, or Vena Medinensis ; for 

 an account of which see a dissertation by Justus Welhe, entitled ' De 

 Filaria Medinensi Gmel. Commentariolum,' 8vo, Berol., 1832, and 

 especially the very learned work by Georg. Hieron. Velschius, entitled 

 ' Exercitatio de Vena Medinensi, ad Mentem Ebnsinse (i.e. Avicennse), 

 sive De Dracunculis Veterum,' 4to, August-Vindel, 1674. He made 

 the interesting remark, that children while at the breast are some- 

 times attacked with hydrophobia. (Ccel. Aurel., 'De Morb. Acut.,' 

 lib. iii., c. 11, p. 221, ed. Amman.) His theory on the Nightmare (Id., 

 ' De Morb. Chron.,' lib. i., c. 3, p. 289), and his opinion on the use of 

 magical songs and incantations in the treatment of diseases, prove how 

 little he was imbued with the prejudices of his age. He seems to 

 have been the first to reduce the opinions of his predecessors to certain 

 principles (Id., 'De Morb. Acut.,' lib. ii., cap. 9, p. 91), and therefore 

 did not, like them, show contempt for the ancients, but tried to refute 

 them by the arguments of the Methodici. (Id., ibid., cap. 19, p. 127; 

 cap. 29, p. 142.) Indeed he was the first who gave a plausible reason 

 for the necessity of rejecting purgatives, in saying that they evacuated 

 indiscriminately the healthy humours as well as the bad ones. (Id., 

 ibid., cap. 9, p. 91.) He always employed venesection in pleurisy, 

 because it proceeds evidently from the strictum, and had no regard to 

 the difference of climate. (Id., ibid., cap. 22, p. 132.) In pneumonia 

 he considered that the whole body suffered, but that the lungs are 

 particularly affected ; for Soranus did not admit a single local disease, 

 in the strict acceptation of the term. (Id., ibid., cap. 28, p. 139.) 

 The cholera morbus, said he, is a relaxation of the stomach and intes- 

 tines, accompanied with imminent danger. (Id., ibid., lib. iii., cap. 



