M Y C E N M. 497 
glimmering light among the Ruins of Mycen&, CHAP. 
but every ray of it is precious. It was here ' 
that SOPHOCLES laid the scene of his Electra; 
and evidence is afforded, in the present ap- 
pearance of the place, to prove that his allusions 
to the city were founded upon an actual view of 
its antiquities. When it is recollected that these 
allusions were made nearly six centuries before 
the time of Pausanias, every inference fairly 
deducible from them is entitled to consideration. 
It is worthy of remark, that Sophocles was thirty- 
one years of age when Mycen& was laid waste 
by the Ar gives* ; consequently he had ample 
opportunity of visiting the city prior to that 
event, and of gathering from its inhabitants the 
circumstances of its antient history ; but Pau- 
sanias writing so long afterwards, although upon 
the spot, could only collect from oral testimony, 
and tradition, his account of the antiquities : 
indeed it has been already shewn, that, when 
speaking of Mycence, he says the inhabitants of 
remembered nothing more antient than 
the circumstances attending its downfall 3 . 
(2) According to the Arundel Marbles, Sophocles died B.C.406, at 
the age of ninety-one, sixty years after the capture and destruction of 
My cents by the Ar gives. 
(3) Vid. Pausan. Corinth, c. 15. p. 144. 
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