and decorations, as well as to pay the actors. The Greek would have regarded with the same disfavour the tragedian who made a profit on his plays, as the Sophist who might (as many of them in fact did) take money for his lectures, or the statesman who should accept salary or pension for what should have been a labour of love.[1] All such sordid gains, they held, should be left to the base-born mechanic; no gentleman should degrade his profession to the level of a trade. In the case of the poet, who was supposed to receive his inspiration direct from heaven, it would have been simple profanation to sell, as it were, the very bread of life. It was sufficient glory and recompense for him if the State—or some rich citizen representing the State—should defray the expenses of a Chorus, that he might "see his poetry put into action—assisted with all the pomp of spectacle and music, hallowed by the solemnity of a religious festival, and breathed, by artists elaborately trained to heighten the eloquence of words, into the ear of assembled Greece."[2]
Like every other Athenian, Sophocles was a politician, and he took his part in the stirring scenes of
- ↑ We may judge how mercenary, in a Greek point of view, would have seemed such an exhibition as that of the Royal Academy, from the analogous case of Zeuxis, the Millais of his day, who exhibited his picture of Helen, and took money at the doors. Crowds flocked to see the painting, and the painter cleared a large sum—but the name of 'Helen' was changed by a satirical public to 'The Courtesan.' (See St John, Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece, i. 303.)
- ↑ Lord Lytton's Athens, ii. 516.
