it. The Athenians, after their manner, recognised him, as raised above the level of common men, by a yearly sacrifice in his honour. Tradition told how Dionysos had twice appeared in the visions of the night to Lysander,[1] and bidden the foreigner and the invader to allow the burial of the poet's body in the grave of his fathers, on the way to Dekeleia.[2] Epitaphs by contemporary poets expressed their reverence and admiration.[3] Of these, some are simply interesting as showing this feeling, and so helping us also to a right estimate of his character. Over his tomb, it was said, was sculptured the form of a Siren, and on it was an inscription, ascribed to his son Iophon.[4]
"Beneath this tomb reposeth Sophocles,
In tragic art with highest glory crowned,
In outward form of all most venerable."
- ↑ Vit. Anon. and Pliny, Hist. Nat., vii. 30. Pausanias, (Att., i. 21,) more cautiously speaks only of "the Lacedæmonian general." Agis, and not Lysander, was at that time attacking Attica.
- ↑ The reverence of a later age took a stranger form. Apollonios of Tyana, in his Apologia to the Emperor Domitian, speaks of Sophocles as having had power, by his charms and prayers, to appease storms and tempests, (Philostr., Vit. Apoll., viii., c. 7.) The same writer mentions hymns to Asclepios, written by him, as still in use at Athens in his time, and as being like in character to those of Indian sages, (Ibid., iii. 5.) Here, again, there is a point of contact with what has been just mentioned.
- ↑ So the Vit. Anon. reports that he was so genial and benignant that all men loved him, and that he was the head of a special Society (θίασος) of those who were devoted to the Muses. The epithet, "sweet poet," which his countrymen gave him, referred as much to character as to writings.
- ↑ Vit. Anon. The design was connected with one form of the Lysander legend. The Spartan general was said to have been told to pay funeral honours to the Siren just dead, (Pausanias, l. c.)
