miserably, with, the flower of his army, after the fatal night-march from Syracuse.
Many improvements are said to have been introduced by Sophocles on the Athenian stage. We are told that he raised the number of actors present at once upon the scene from two to three; that he attired them in splendid dresses—robes of saffron and purple, falling in long and graceful folds,—jewelled chaplets, and broad embroidered girdles. But above all, he increased the number of the Chorus, and gave a new form and spirit to the music which accompanied their odes. We, in our cold climate, can hardly appreciate the effect which music produced on the enthusiastic Greek temperament. The French are more susceptible to such influence; and few who have ever heard it can forget the sublime effect of the Marseillaise thundered out by a vast revolutionary throng. To the Greek, music was a passion and a necessity. Even now, a modern traveller compares their life to an opera, where men sing from birth to death; and perhaps the case was even stronger in the days of Sophocles, when "song rose from an Hellenic village as naturally as from a brake in spring." Whether the peasant might be watching by the cradle, working in the vineyard, or toiling at the oar, the labour was in each case lightened by some appropriate song. Their bards told how Arion charmed the dolphin, how the walls of Troy rose to the sound of Apollo's flute, as those of Jericho fell before the trumpets of the priests, and
