gistic form, in so far at least as the continuity of subject was concerned. In obedience to the established custom at the Dionysiac festivals, Sophocles appears generally to have brought forward three tragedies and a satyric drama together; but the subjects of these four plays were entirely distinct, and each was complete in itself.* Among the merely mechanical improvements introduced by Sophocles, the most important is that of scene-painting, the invention of which is ascribed to him. (See AGATHARCHUS.) All these external and formal arrangements had necessarily the most important influence on the whole spirit and character of the tragedies of Sophocles; as, in the works of every-first rate artist, the form is a part of the substance. But it remains to notice the most essential features of the art of the great tragedian, namely, his choice of subjects, and the spirit in which he treated them. who sneer at it as if it ascribed to the great poets of antiquity moral and artistic purposes of which they themselves never dreamt. It is quite true that the earliest and some of the mightiest efforts of genius are to a great extent (though never, we believe, entirely) unconscious; and even such productions are governed by laws, written in the human mind and instinctively followed by the poet, laws which it is the task and glory of aesthetic science to trace out in the works of those writers who followed them unconsciously; but such productions, however magnificent they may be, are never so perfect, in every respect, as the works of the poet who, possessing equal genius, consciously and laboriously works out the great principles of his art. It is in this respect that Sophocles surpasses Aeschylus; his works are perhaps not greater, nay, in native sublimity and spontaneous genius they are perhaps inferior, but they are more perfect; and that for the very reason now stated, and which Sophocles himself explained, when he said, "Aeschylus does what is right, but without knowing it." The faults in Aeschylus, which Sophocles perceived and endeavoured to avoid, are pointed out in a valuable passage preserved by Plutarch (de Prof. Virt. p. 79, b.). The limits of this article will not permit us to enlarge any further on the ethical character of Sophocles, which is discussed and illustrated at great length in some of the works referred to above, and also in chlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Criticism, where the reader will find an elaborate comparison between the three great tragic poets (Lect. 5). We will only add, in conclusion, that if asked for the most perfect illustration of Aristotle's definition of the end of tragedy as δι ̓ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα TV TV TOLOÚTWv nadnμáтwv káðaρow (Poët. 6. $2), we would point to the Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, and we would recommend, as one of the most useful exercises in the study of aesthetic criticism, the comparison of that tragedy with the Eumenides of Aeschylus and the Lear of our own Shakspere. The subjects and style of Aeschylus are essentially heroic; those of Sophocles are human. The former excite terror, pity, and admiration, as we view them at a distance; the latter bring those same feelings home to the heart, with the addition of sympathy and self-application. No individual > human being can imagine himself in the position | of Prometheus, or derive a personal warning from the crimes and fate of Clytemnestra; but every one can, in feeling, share the self-devotion of Antigone in giving up her life at the call of fraternal piety, and the calmness which comes over the spirit of Oedipus when he is reconciled to the gods. In Aeschylus, the sufferers are the victims of an inexorable destiny; but Sophocles brings more prominently into view those faults of their own, which form one element of the ἄτη of which they are the victims, and is more intent upon inculcating, as the lesson taught by their woes, that wise calmness and moderation, in desires and actions, in prosperity and adversity, which the Greek poets and philosophers celebrate under the name of owopoauvn. On the other hand, he never descends to that level to which Euripides brought down the art, the exhibition of human passion and suffering iv. The Works of Sophocles. The number of for the mere purpose of exciting emotion in the plays ascribed to Sophocles was 130, of which, spectators, apart from a moral end. The great dis- however, according to Aristophanes of Byzantium, tinction between the two poets is defined by Aris- seventeen were spurious. He contended not only totle, in that passage of the Poëtic (6. §§ 12, foll.) with Aeschylus and Euripides, but also Choerilus, which may be called the great text of aesthetic Aristias, Agathon, and other poets, amongst philosophy, and in which, though the names of whom was his own son Iophon; and he carried Sophocles and Euripides are not mentioned, there off the first prize twenty or twenty-four times, can be no doubt that the statement that "the tra- frequently the second, and never the third. (Vit. gedies of most of the more recent poets are unethical" Anon.; Suid. s. v.) It is remarkable, as proving is meant to apply to Euripides, and that the con- his growing activity and success, that, of his trast, which he proceeds to illustrate by a compari-113 dramas, eighty-one were brought out in the son of Polygnotus and Zeuxis in the art of painting, second of the two periods into which his career is is intended to describe the difference between the divided by the exhibition of the Antigone, which two poets, for in another passage of the Poëtic (26. was his thirty-second play (Aristoph. Byz. Argum. $11) he quotes with approbation the saying of ad Antig.); and also that all his extant dramas, Sophocles, that "he himself represented men as which of course in the judgment of the grammarians they ought to be, but Euripides exhibited them as were his best, belong to the latter of these two they are;" a remark, by the bye, which as coming periods. By comparing the number of his plays from the mouth of Sophocles himself, exposes the with the sixty-two years over which his career exabsurdity of those opponents of aesthetic science, tended, and also the number belonging to each of the two periods, Müller obtains the result that he at first brought out a tetralogy every three or four years, but afterwards every two years at least ; and also that in several of the tetralogies the satyric drama must have been lost, or never existed, and that, among those 113 plays there could only have been, at the most, 23 satyric dramas to 90 trage * No blunder can be more gross than to speak of the Oedipus Tyrannus, the Oedipus at Colonus, and the Antigone as a trilogy. They have no drumatic continuity whatever; they were composed at three different and distinct periods, and the last was the first exhibited. | dies (Hist. Lit. pp. 339, 340). The attempt has been made to divide the extant plays and titles of Sophocles into trilogies; but, as might have been expected from what has been said above respecting the nature of his trilogies, it has signally failed. A much more important arrangement has been very elaborately attempted by Welcker(Griech. Tragöd.), namely, the classification of the extant plays and fragments according to the poems of the Epic Cycle on which they were founded. cause of piety towards the gods, brings down μeyaλas Anyás as a retribution. The titles and fragments of the lost plays of Sophocles will be found collected in the chief editions, and in Welcker's Griechischen Tragödien. In addition to his tragedies, Sophocles is said to have written an elegy, paeans, and other poems, and a prose work on the Chorus, in opposition to Thespis and Choerilus. (Suid. s. v.) v. Ancient Commentators on Sophocles. In the Scholia, the commentators are quoted by the general title of oἱ ὑπομνηματισταί, οι οἱ ὑπομνηματισάμενοι. Among those cited by name, or to whom commentaries on Sophocles are ascribed by other authorities, are Aristarchus, Praxiphanes, Didymus, Herodian, Horapollon, Androtion, and Aristophanes of Byzantium. The question of the value of the Scholia is discussed by Wunder, de Schol. in Soph. Auctoritate, Grimae, 1838, 4to., and Wolff, de Sophoclis Scholiorum Laur. Variis Lectionibus, Lips. 1843, 8vo. The following is most probably the chronological order in which the seven extant tragedies of sophocles were brought out: - Antigone, Electra, Trachiniae, Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. It is unnecessary to attempt an analysis of these plays, partly because every scholar has read or will read them for himself, and partly because they are admirably analysed in works so generally read as Müller's History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, and Schlegel's Lectures. Neither will our space permit us to yield to the temptation of entering fully into the much disputed question of the object and meaning of the Antigone; | respecting which the reader may consult the editions of the Antigone by Böckh, Wex, Hermann, and Donaldson; articles by Mr. Dyer, in the Classical Museum, vol. ii. pp. 69, foll., vol. iii. pp. 176, foll.; and articles by G. Wolff, in the Zeitschrift für Alterthumswissenchaft for 1846, reviewing the recent works upon the Antigone. It must suffice here to remark that we believe both the extreme views to be equally remote from the truth; that the play is not intended to support exclusively the rights of law in the person of Creon or those of liberty in the person of Antigone, but to exhibit the claims of both, to show them brought into collision when each is forced beyond the bounds of moderation; or, to speak more properly, the collision is not between law and liberty, but between the two laws of the family and the state, of religious duty and civil obedience. Neither party is entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong. The fault of Creon is in the issuing of a harsh and impious decree, that of Antigone in rashly and obstinately refusing to submit to it; and therefore each falls a victim to a conflict of the two laws for and against which they strive; while both, as well as Haemon, are involved by their individual acts in the more general and antecedent ǎτη which rests upon the royal family of Thebes. At the same time, this does not appear to be all that is contained in the drama. The greater fault is on the side of Creon. Antigone would have been perfectly in the right to disobey his edict, if all means of obtaining its repeal had been exhausted, although even then strict law might perhaps have required her martyrdom as the price of her fraternal piety; and perhaps, on the other hand, the poet meant to teach that there are cases in which law must give way, to avert the fearful consequences arising from its strict enforcement. At all events, it is clear that the sympathy of the poet and of the spectators is with Antigone, though they are constrained to confess that she is not entirely guiltless, nor Creon altogether guilty. But still we think that this sympathy with Antigone is only secondary to the lesson taught by the faults and ruin of both, a lesson which the poet has himself distinctly pointed out in the final words of the chorus,-τὸ φρονεῖν, as opposed to the μεγάλοι λόγοι | of self-will, an indulgence in which, even in the coming. | vi. Editions of the Plays of Sophocles.-The Editio Princeps is that of Aldus, 1502, 8vo., and there were numerous other editions printed in the 16th century, the best of which are those of H. Stephanus, Paris, 1568, 4to., and of G. Canterus Antwerp, 1579, 12mo., both founded on the text of Turnebus. None of the subsequent editions deserve any particular notice, until we come to those of Brunck, in 4 vols. 8vo., Argentor. 1786-1789, and in vols. 4to., Argentor. 1786; both editions containing the Greek text with a Latin version, and the Scholia and Indices. The text of Brunck, which was founded on that of Aldus, has formed the foundation of all the subsequent editions, of which the following are the most important: that of Musgrave, with Scholia, Notes, and Indices, Oxon. 1800, 1801, 2 vols. 8vo., reprinted Oxon. 1809-1810, vols. 8vo.; that of Erfurdt, with Scholia, Notes, and Indices, Lips. 1802-1825, 7 vols. 8vo. ; (the valuable notes of Erfurdt to all the tragedies, except the Oedipus at Colonus, were reprinted in a separate volume, in London, 1824, 8vo.); that of Bothe, who re-edited Brunck's edition, but with many rash changes in the text, Lips, 1806, 2 vols. 8vo., last edition, 1827, 1828; that of Hermann, who completed a new edition, which Erfurdt commenced, but only lived to publish the first two volumes, Lips. 1809-1825, 7 vols. sm. 8vo.; Hermann's entirely new revision of Brunck's edition, with additional Notes, &c., Lips. 1823-1825, 7 vols. 8vo. ; the edition of Schneider, with German Notes and a Lexicon, Weimar, 1823-1830, 10 vols. 8vo. ; the London reprint of Brunck's edition, with the Notes of Burney and Schaefer, 1824, 3 vols. 8vo.; the edition of Elmsley, with the Notes of Brunck and Schaefer, Lexicon Sophocleum, &c. Oxon. 1826, 2 vols. 8vo. ; reprinted, Lips. 1827, 8 vols. 8vo. ; that of the text alone by Dindorf, in the Poetae Scenici Graeci, Lips. 1830, 8vo.*, reprinted at Oxford, 1832, with the addition of a volume of Notes, 1836, 8vo. ; that of Ahrens, containing the text, after Dindorf, with a revised Latin version, by L. Benloew, the Fragments after Welcker, and new Indices, in Didot's Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum, Paris, 1842-1844, imp. 8vo.; and lastly, by far the * An entirely new edition of this invaluable work has been for some time announced as forth most useful edition for the ordinary student is that by Wunder, in Jacobs and Rost's Bibliotheca Graeca, containing the text, with critical and explanatory notes and introductions, Gothae et Erfurdt, 1831-1846, 2 vols. 8vo. in 7 parts, and with a supplemental part of emendations to the Trachiniae, Grimae, 1841, 8vo. For a list of the editions of separate plays, and of the editions not noticed above, the reader is referred to Hoffmann's Lexicon Bibliographicum Scriptorum Graecorum. Among the numerous translations of Sophocles, very few have been at all successful. There are English versions by Franklin, Lond. 1758; Potter, Lond. 1788; and Dale, 1824. The best German translations are those of Solger, Berlin, 1808, 1824, 2 vols. 8vo., and Fritz, Berlin, 1843, 8vo. Among the translations of separate plays, those of the Antigone, by Böckh and Donaldson, interpaged in their respective editions, deserve notice; Böckh, Berlin, 1843, 8vo.; Donaldson, London, 1848, 8vo. A nearly complete list of the works illustrating Sophocles will be found in Hoffmann's Lexicon. They are far too numerous to be mentioned here; but it would be wrong to pass over the one, which is the most useful of them all for understanding the language of the author, namely Ellendt's Lexicon Sophocleum, Regimont. Pruss. (Königsberg) 1835, 2 vols. 8vo. | dramas were ascribed (Suid. s. v.) The name also occurs on the Orchomenian inscription. 4. An Athenian orator, whose oration for Euctemon is quoted by Aristotle. (Rhet. i. 15.) Ruhnken supposes that it was he, and not the poet, who was one of the Probuli, and that he was the same as the Sophocles who is mentioned by Xenophon (Hellen. ii. 3. § 2) as one of the Thirty Tyrants. (Hist. Crit. Orat. Graec., No. viii.) 5. A grammarian, who wrote commentaries on the works of Apollonius Rhodius. (Schol. ad Aristoph. Nub. 397; Steph. Byz. s. vv. "Abaqvos and KávaσTρov.) 6. The son of Amphicleides, a native of Sunium, was the author of a decree expelling the philosophers from the Attic territory, or, as others say, forbidding any one, on pain of death, to preside over a school of philosophy, without the consent of the senate and people. After a year the decree was revoked, and Sophocles was fined five talents. (Diog. Laërt. v. 38; Pollux, ix. 42; Ath. xiii. p. 610, e. f.; Alexis, ap. Ath. l. c.) From the fragment of the 'ITTEús of Alexis preserved by Athenaeus (l. c.) it is evident that the law was passed at end of Ol. 115 or the beginning of Ol. 116, B. c. 316 (Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. p. 394). [P.S.] SOPHO'NIAS (Zopovías), a Greek monk who wrote commentaries on Aristotle. Fabricius conjectures that he was the same Sophonias to whom one of the epistles of Simon of Constantinople, pro 22), is addressed. If this conjecture be admitted he 2, The son of Ariston and grandson of the elder Sophocles, was also an Athenian tragic poet. The love of his grandfather towards him has been al-bably the same with Simon of Thebes [SIMON, No. ready mentioned; and it cannot be doubted that one chief way in which Sophocles displayed his affection was by endeavouring to train up his grandson as the inheritor of his own skill in the art of tragedy. We have no definite statement of his age, but he was probably under twenty at the time of his grandfather's death, as he did not begin. to exhibit his own dramas till about ten years after that time, namely in B. C. 396. (Diod xiv. 53, where Zopoкλîs ó Zopukλéovs must either be corrected by adding viwvds or vidoûs, or must be understood to mean the grandson, and not the son). He had previously, in B. c. 401, brought out the Oedipus at Colonus (Argum. ad Oed. Col.), and we may safely assume that this was not the only one of his grandfather's dramas which he exhibited. There is much difficulty as to the proper reading of the numbers of plays and victories ascribed to him. According to the different readings, he exhibited 40 or 11 dramas, and gained 12, 11, or 7 prizes. (Suid. s. v.; Diod. l. c.; comp. Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. p. xxxv. e.) All that we know of his tragedies is contained in a passage of Clemens Alexandrinus (Protrept. 30, p. 26, Potter), who refers to statements made in three of them respecting the mere humanity of the Dioscuri. It is, however, a very probable conjecture that, since Aristophanes of Byzantium pronounced 27 of the plays which were extant in his time under the name of the great Sophocles to be spurious, some of these may have been the productions of his grandson. Suidas also ascribes elegies to the younger Sophocles. (Welcker, die Griech. Trag. p. 979; Kayser, Hist. Crit. Trag. Graec. pp. 79-81; Wagner, Poët. Trag. Graec. Frag. in Didot's Bibliotheca, p. 78.) 3. Suidas also mentions an Athenian tragic and lyric poet of this name, who lived later than the poets of the Tragic Pleiad, and to whom fifteen SOPHONISBA (Σοφόνισσα οι Σοφόνια, see Schweigh. ad Appian. Pun. 27), a daughter of the Carthaginian general, Hasdrubal, the son of Gisco. She had been betrothed by her father, at a very early age, to the Numidian prince Masinissa, but at a subsequent period Hasdrubal being desirous to gain over Syphax, the rival monarch of Numi dia, to the Carthaginian alliance, offered him the hand of his daughter in marriage. The beauty and accomplishments of Sophonisba prevailed over the influence of Scipio: Syphax married her (B. C. 206), and from that time became the zealous supporter and ally of Carthage. Sophonisba, on her part, was assiduous in her endeavours to secure his adherence to the cause of her countrymen, and it was almost entirely through her influence that Syphax was induced, even after the destruction of his camp by Scipio [SYPHAX], to assemble a new army, and to try his fortune once more. But when his final defeat by Masinissa led to the capture of his capital city of Cirta, Sophonisba herself fell into the hands of the conqueror, upon whom, how ever, her beauty exercised so powerful an influence, that he not only promised to spare her from captivity, but, to prevent her falling into the power of the Romans, determined to marry her himself. Their nuptials were accordingly celebrated without delay, but Scipio (who was apprehensive lest she should exercise the same influence over Masinissa which she had previously done over Syphax) refused to ratify this arrangement, and upbraiding Masinissa with his weakness, insisted on the immediate surrender of the princess. Unable to resist this command, the Numidian king spared her the humiliation of captivity, by sending her a bowl of poison, which she drank without hesitation, and thus put an end to her own life. (Liv. xxix. 23, xxx. 3, 7, 12-15; Polyb. xiv. 1,7; Appian. Pun. 10, 27, 28; Diod. xxvii. Exc. Vales. p. 571; Dion Cass. Fr. 61; Zonar. ix. 11, 12, 13.) [E.H.B.] SOPHRON (Zwppwv), of Syracuse, the son of Agathocles and Damnasyllis, was the principal writer, and in one sense the inventor, of that species of composition called the Mime (uîuos), which was one of the numerous varieties of the Dorian Comedy. For this reason he is sometimes called a comic poet, a denomination which has led Suidas (s. v.) and, after him, some modern writers, into the mistake of distinguishing two persons of the name, the one a comic poet, and the other the mimographer. The time at which Sophron fourished is loosely stated by Suidas as “the times of Xerxes and Euripides;" but we have another evidence for his date in the statement that his son Xenarchus lived at the court of Dionysius I., during the Rhegian War (B. C. 399-387; see Clinton, F. H. s. a. 393). All that can be said, therefore, with any certainty, is that Sophron flourished during the middle, and perhaps the latter part of the fifth century B. C., perhaps about B. c. 460-420, rather more than half a century later than Epicharmus. When Sophron is called the inventor of mimes, the meaning is, as in the case of similar statements respecting the other branches of Dorian Comedy, that he reduced to the form of a literary composition a species of amusement which the Greeks of Sicily, who were pre-eminent for broad humour and merriment, had practised from time immemorial at their public festivals, and the nature of which was very similar to the performances of the Spartan Deicelistae. Such mimetic performances prevailed throughout the Dorian states under various names. Thus the denλioтai of Sparta seem to have been represented by the opxnoral of Syracuse; and we meet also with similar exhibitions under the names οι θαύματα, θεάματα, δε (Respecting these various terms, see Grysar, de Comoed. Dor. pp. 59, foll.) The religious festivals with which these | amusements were connected seem to have been, at all events chiefly, those of Dionysus; and hence one species of them was the representation of incidents in the life of that divinity, as in the interesting specimen which Xenophon has preserved of a Déaua, in which the marriage of Dionysus and Ariadne was represented (Conviv. 9). But they also embraced the actions and incidents of every day life; thus the common performance of the Deicelistae was the imitation of a foreign physician, or other person, stealing fruit and the remains of meals, and being caught in the act. Whether the term uos originally included any kind of imitation without words, or whether it was, like those just spoken of, a distinct species of that general kind of exhibition, we are not sufficiently informed; but it is clear that the Mimes of Sophron were ethical, that is, they exhibited not only incident, but characters. Moreover, as is implied in the very fact of their being a literary composition, words were put into the mouths of the actors, though still quite in subordination to their gestures; and, in proportion as the spoken part of the performance was increased, the mime would approach nearer and nearer to a comedy. Of all such representations instrumental music appears to have formed an essential part. (See Xenoph. l. c.) One feature of the Mimes of Sophron, which formed a marked distinction between them and comic poetry, was the nature of their rhythm. There is, however, some difficulty in determining whether they were in mere prose, or in mingled poetry and prose, or in prose with a peculiar rhythmical movement but no metrical arrangement. Suidas (s. v.) expressly states that they were in prose (xaтAλOyάðŋv); and the existing fragments confirm the general truth of this assertion, for they defy all attempt at scansion. Nevertheless, they frequently fall into a sort of rhythmical cadence, or swing, which is different from the rhythm of ordinary prose, and answers to the description of an ancient scholiast on Gregory Nazianzen, who says of Sophron, οὗτος γὰρ μόνος ποιητῶν ῥυθμοῖς τισι καὶ κώλοις ἐχρήσατο, ποιητικῆς ἀναλογίας καταφρονήσας (Bill. Coislin. p. 120; Hermann, ad Aristot. Poet. i. 8). The short, broken, unconnected sentences, of which the extant passages of Sophron generally consist, containing a large number of short syllables, and mostly ending in trochees like the choliambic verses, produce the effect, described by the scholiast, of a sort of irregular halting rhythm (¿veμòs κŵλos). The following is a fair specimen (Fr. 52):-*Ide καλᾶν κουρίδων· ἴδε καμμάρων· ἴδε φίλα ὡς ἐρυ θραί τ ̓ ἐντὶ καὶ λείοστρακιῶσαι. This prosaic structure of the mimes of Sophron has given rise to a doubt whether they were ever intended for public exhibition; a doubt which appears to us very unreasonable. Not to insist on the fact that Sophron lived at a period when no works, except of history and philosophy, were composed for private reading, we have before us the certainty that the Mime was, in its very nature, a public exhibition, and, in accordance with the analogy of all similar improvements at that period, we must infer that all the efforts of Sophron were directed, not to withdraw it from its appropriate sphere, but to adapt it to the growing requirements of a more refined age, and to make it acceptable to spectators less easily satisfied than those who had welcomed its ruder forms. Moreover, to suppose that these mimes were not acted, is to divest them of their essential feature, the exhibition by mimetic gestures, to which the words were entirely subordinate; and it is hardly credible that the Greeks of that age, who lived in public, and who could witness the masterpieces of the old Doric and the new Attic drama in their theatres, would be content to sit down and pore over so dull a jest book as the mimes of Sophron must have been when the action was left out. To these arguments from the nature of the case may be added the express statement of Solinus (Polyhist. 5), that in Sicily "cavillatio mimica in scena stetit." The dialect of Sophron is the old Doric, interspersed with Sicilian peculiarities; and it appears to have been chiefly as a specimen of the Doric dialect that the ancient grammarians made his works a particular object of study. Apollodorus, for example, wrote commentaries on Sophron, consisting of at least four books, the fragments of which are preserved in Heyne's edition. The fragments of Sophron frequently exhibit anomalous forms, which are evidently imitations of vulgar provincialisms or personal peculiarities of speech (see an example in the Etym. Mag. s. v. vyis). There are also many words coined in jest, such as oiòs olóτEρov (Fr. 96). Further information on the dialect of Sophron will be found in the work of Ahrens, who has collected the Fragments. (Ahrens, de Graecae Linguae Dialectis, lib. ii., de Dialecto Dorica, vol. ii. pp. 464, &c.) guishes the mimes which existed in his time into two classes, in a manner which throws an important light both on the character and the form of these compositions. (Quaest. Conviv. vii. 8. § 4.) He calls the two classes of mimes moléσeis and Taíyvia, and considers neither species suitable for performance at a banquet; the former on account of their length and the difficulty of commanding the proper scenic apparatus (rò duo xopnyńTov, another proof, by the way, that they were intended for public performance, and not for private reading), the latter on account of their scurrility and obscenity. Although neither here, nor in the description given by Xenophon of a very licentious mime (l. c.), is the name of Sophron mentioned, yet it would be too much to assume that his compositions were all of the better kind. Lastly, Aristotle ranks Sophron as among those who are to be considered poets, on account of their subject and style, in spite of the absence of metre. (Poët. i. 8, and more fully in his weρl #ointŵv, ap. Ath. xi. p. 505, c.) It has been asserted that Sophron was an imitator of Epicharmus; but there is no proof of the fact, although it can hardly be doubted that the elder poet had some considerable influence on his later fellow-countryman. It is, however, certain that Sophron was closely imitated by Theocritus, and that the Idyls of the latter were, in many respects, developments of the mimes of the former. (Argum. ad Theocr. Id. ii. xv.) The admiration of Plato for Sophron has been already referred to. The philosopher is said to have been the first who made the mimes known at Athens, to have been largely indebted to them in his delineations of character, and to have had them so constantly at hand, that he slept with them under his pillow, and actually had his head resting upon them at the moment of his death (Suid. s. v.; Diog. iii. 8; Quintil. i. 10. 17.) With regard to the substance of these compositions, their character, so far as it can be ascertained, appears, as we have said above, to have been ethical; that is, the scenes represented were those of ordinary life, and the language employed was intended to bring out more clearly the characters of the persons exhibited in those scenes, not only for the amusement, but also for the instruction of the spectators. There must have been something of sound philosophy in his works to have inspired Plato with that profound admiration for their author which will presently be mentioned something, probably, of that same sound practical wisdom which, in Aristophanes, produced the same effect on Plato's mind. Unfortunately, however, we know nothing of the philosophical complexion of Sophron's mimes, except that they abounded in the most pithy proverbs, thrown together often two or three at a time, and worked into the composition with an exuberance of fancy and wit which the ancients compared with the spirit of the Attic SOPHRONISCUS (Zwopovíσños), of Athens, Comedy. (Demetr. de Eloc. 156, 127, 128.) In the father of the celebrated Socrates, is described fact, we think it would not be far wrong to speak by the ancient Greek writers as Aloupyós, Aidoof the mimes of Sophron as being, among the §óos, Aiboyλúpos, épμoyλúpos, terms which unDorians, a closely kindred fruit of the same in-doubtedly signify a sculptor in marble, and not, as tellectual impulse which, among the Athenians, produced the Old Comedy; although we do not mean to place the two on any thing like the same footing as to their degrees of excellence. The serious purpose which was aimed at in the works of Sophron was always, as in the Attic Comedy, clothed under a sportive form; and it can easily be imagined that sometimes the latter element prevailed, even to the extent of obscenity, as the extant fragments and the parallel of the Attic Comedy combine to prove. Hence the division, which the ancients made of these compositions, into μίμοι σπουδαῖοι and γελοῖοι, though most of Sophron's works were of the former character (Ulpian. ad Demosth. Ol. p. 30) Plutarch distin The fragments of Sophron have been collected by Blomfield, in the Classical Journal for 1811, No. 8, pp. 380-390, and more fully in the Museum Criticum, vol. ii. pp. 340—558, 559, 560, Camb. 1826; and by Ahrens, as above quoted. The titles will also be found in Fabricius. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. pp. 493-495; Müller, Dorier, bk. iv. c. 7. § 5; Hermann and Ritter, ad Aristot. Poet. i. 8; Grysar, de Sophrone Mimographo, Colon. 1838; Bernhardy, Grundriss d. Griech. Lit. vol. ii. pp. 908–911.) [P. S.] Hemsterhusius and others have supposed, merely a SOPHRO'NIUS (Zwopóvios). Among the numerous ecclesiastical writers of this name, treated |