"gentle and calm in death, as he had been gentle and calm in life."[1]
Forty years after his death, Lycurgos, then finance minister at Athens, carried a proposal for placing bronze statues of the three great dramatists in the theatre, and having complete transcripts of their writings made and kept among the archives of the town.[2] This, and a painting in the Stoa Pœkilé, representing him as playing on the lyre in his own drama of Thamyris, kept the features of the great poet before the eyes of his countrymen.
VII. Moral Character.
Was there on a character so stately and noble the stain of a sensuality such as lower natures have imputed to it? So it has been said, both by earlier and later biographers,[3] and traditional sayings from the poet's own lips have been quoted in support of the statement.
Unpleasing as is the task of examining evidence in such cases, it is yet due to the memory of a great man
- ↑ Aristoph., Frogs., 82.
- ↑ Pseudo-Plutarch, Moral., p. 841, f.
- ↑ I regret to find Sir E. Bulwer Lytton and Mr Blayds, the recent editor of Sophocles, (Preface, p. viii.,) hastily adopting these disparaging slanders. Schöll (Sophokles, pp. 365–369) utterly rejects them. So also does Bode, (Gesch. der Hellen. Dichtkunst., iii., p. 366.) Far more true is Dronke's estimate of his character, as "presenting the image of a pure, deep soul, animated by a devout faith, and an unshaken confidence in God," (Die religiosen und sittlichen Vorstellungen des Æschylos und Sophocles, p. 62.)
