CHAPTER XVI.
THE FRAGMENTS OF THE LOST TRAGIC POETS.

Among the losses in Greek literature few are so tantalizing as the almost absolute extinction of the tragic poets who preceded and followed the supreme Athenian triumvirate. It would have been exceedingly interesting to trace the history of the drama from its rude origins up to the point at which the creative genius of Æschylus gave it an inalienable character, and again to note the deviation of the tragic muse from heroic themes to fables of pure fiction under the influence of Agathon. This pleasant task of analytical criticism, concordant with the spirit of our age, which is not satisfied with admiring masterpieces unless it can also understand the law of their growth and mark the several stages in the process of historical development, will fall to the lot of no student now, unless, indeed, Pompeii render up a treasure-house of MSS. as yet undreamed of, and Signor Fiorelli save the priceless leaflets of charred tinder from destruction.

Why is it that out of the seventy plays of Æschylus only seven are extant; of the Sophoclean one hundred and thirteen (allowing seventeen others which bore his name to have been spurious) only seven; while eighteen—or, if we admit the Rhesus, nineteen—are the meagre salvage from the wreck of at least seventy-five dramas by Euripides? Why is it that of their lost tragedies we possess but inconsiderable fragments—just enough to prove that the compilers of commonplace books like Stobæus might, if they had pleased, have gratified our curiosity beyond the dreams of a Renaissance scholar's covetousness? Why, again, is it that of Agathon, whose dramatic romance, the Flower, was thought worthy of citation by Aristotle, whom Aristophanes named as Ἀγάθων ὁ κλεινός, ἀγαθὸς ποιητὴς καὶ ποθεινὸς τοῖς φίλοις,[70] whose thanksgiving banquet supplied a frame for Plato's dialogue on Love, and whose style, if faithfully depicted by the philosopher, was a very "rivulet of olive-oil noiselessly running"—why is it that of this Agathon we know nothing but what may be inferred from the caricature of the Thesmophoriazusæ, the portrait of the Symposium, and a few critical strictures in the Poetics? Why is it that Ion, who enjoyed a great renown (περιβόητος ἐγένετο) and ranked as fifth in the muster-roll of Athenian tragic poets, is now but a mere empty name? To these questions, which might be rhetorically multiplied ad infinitum on a hundred tones of querulous and sad expostulation with the past, there is no satisfactory answer. Not, as Bacon asserted, has time borne down upon his flood the froth and trash of things; far rather may we thank fate that the flotsam and the jetsam that have reached our shore include the best works of antiquity. Yet, notwithstanding this, "the iniquity of oblivion," in the words of Sir Thomas Browne, "blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity."

The students of antiquity attached less value than we do to literature of secondary importance. It was the object of their criticism, especially in the schools of Alexandria, to establish canons of perfection in style. The few great authors who were deemed worthy to rank as standards received unlimited honor, nor was it thought too much by Aristarchus or Aristophanes to devote a lifetime to their service. For inferior poets, whom we should prize as necessary to a full comprehension of the history of art, they felt less respect, not having grasped the notion that æsthetics are a branch of science, that the topmost peaks of Parnassus tower above the plain by gradual ascent from subordinate mountain-ranges, and that those who seek to scale the final altitudes must tread the intermediate heights. They were contented with representative men. Marlowe, according to their laws of taste, would have been obscured by Shakespeare; while the multitude of lesser playwrights, whom we honor as explaining and relieving by their comradeship the grandeur of the dramatist (ὁ τραγῳδοποιὸς they might have styled Shakespeare, as their Pindar was ὁ λυρικός), would have sunk into oblivion, leaving him alone in splendid isolation. Much might be said for this way of dealing with literature. By concentrating attention on undeniable excellence, a taste for the noblest things in art was fostered, while the danger that we run of substituting the historical for the æsthetic method was avoided.[71] In our own century Auguste

Comte has striven to revive the cultus of unique standards and to re-establish the empire of selective canons.

The scholiasts of Alexandria, working in vast libraries which contained the whole treasures of Greek literature, decided that only a few poets were worthy of minute study. The works of these few poets, again, they classified into masterpieces and inferior productions. A further selection sifted those that seemed best suited for the education of youth. Thus it happened that copies were repeated of certain well-established favorites; and so the treasures of dramatic poetry inherited by us represent the taste of scholiasts and teachers rather than the likings of the Attic audience. To judge by references in the plays of Aristophanes, the lost Myrmidones of Æschylus, the lost Andromeda of Euripides, enjoyed more popularity at Athens than even the Agamemnon or the Medea. Alexandrian and Byzantine pedagogues thought otherwise, and posterity was bound to be their pensioner. The difficulty of multiplying codices must be added as a most important cause of literary waste. It is doubtful whether we should now possess more than a few plays of Shakespeare and Jonson out of the whole voluminous Elizabethan literature, but for the accident of printing. When we consider the circumstances under which the Attic dramatists survived, taking into account the famous fraud whereby Ptolemy Euergetes possessed himself of the MS. of Æschylus,[72] and remembering the vicissitudes successively of Alexandria, of Rome, and of Byzantium, perhaps we ought to be surprised that the sum total of our inheritance is so great. What the public voice of the Athenians had approved, the scholiasts of Alexandria winnowed. What the Alexandrians selected found its way to Rome. What the Roman grammarians sanctioned was carried in the dotage of culture to Byzantium. At each transition the peril by land and sea to rare codices, sometimes probably to unique autographs, was incalculable. Then followed the fury of iconoclasts and fanatics, the firebrands of Omar, the remorseless crusade of Churchmen against paganism, and the three great conflagrations of Byzantium. It is humiliating to the nations of Western Europe to compare the wealth of Greek books enjoyed by Photius in the ninth century, even after the second burning, with the meagre fragments which seem to have survived the pillage of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. To this final disaster we ought probably to assign the destruction of the larger portion of Greek literature. In addition to all the ruin wrought by fire and pillage must be reckoned the slow decay of learning during the centuries of intellectual apathy that preceded the fall of the Eastern Empire. What the fire and the Frank had spared was still exposed to the tooth of the worm and to the slow corrosion of dust, damp, and mildew.

When the passion for antiquity was rekindled in the fourteenth century by the Italians, they eagerly demanded from Constantinople the treasures that the capital of Greece contained; nor is there any good reason to suppose that the Turkish troops of Mahomet II., in 1453, destroyed many books that had not previously been transferred in copies to Florence and Venice. During at least a quarter of a century before the downfall of the Byzantine Empire the princes of Italy were eagerly competing with each other for the purchase of Greek manuscripts; and throughout this period it was the immediate interest of the palæologi to lay them under such obligations as might enlist their sympathy and call forth a return of friendly service. For the emperor to have closed the doors of the Byzantine libraries against the agents of the Medici and the Venetian nobles, at the same time that he was sending Manuel Chrysoloras as an ambassador for aid against the Turks to Western Europe, would have been ridiculous. We must also bear in mind how many eager Italian scholars, supported by exhibitions from the lords of Florence, and supplied with almost unlimited credit for the purchase of literary treasures, pursued their studies at Constantinople, and returned, like bees, book-laden with the honey of old learning, home; how many Levant merchants, passing to and fro between Italian and Greek ports, discovered that parchments were a more profitable freight than gems or spices. Taking all this into consideration, and duly weighing Curzon's competent opinion—"so thoroughly were these ancient libraries" (of Athos) "explored in the fifteenth century that no unknown classic author has been discovered, nor has any MS. been found of greater antiquity than some already known in the British Museum and other libraries"—we have the right to infer that what the printing-press of Aldus made imperishable, was all, or nearly all, that the degenerate scholars of the later age of Hellas cared to treasure. The comparative preservation of Neoplatonic philosophy, for example, when contrasted with the loss of dramatic literature may be referred to the theological and mystical interests of Byzantine students. Only one codex of first-rate importance is supposed to have perished in Italy after importation from Byzantium and before the age of printing. That was a MS. of Menander, which Vespasiano, the Florentine bookseller, mentioned among the gems of the library of Urbino.[73] Little, however, was known about the Greek dramatic poets at the time when Vespasiano wrote his Lives, and it is not impossible that what he took for a collection of Menander's plays, was really a commonplace book of such fragments as we still possess. Yet the mere mention of this volume raises curious speculation. We know that when Cesare Borgia possessed himself of Urbino in 1502 he carried off from the ducal palace a booty in jewels, plate, furniture, and books to the value of 150,000 ducats. Some of the MSS. found their way into the Vatican collection; others were restored to Urbino, whence they were again transferred to Rome after the extinction of the ducal family in the seventeenth century. It is conceivable that the Menander, if it existed, may have been lost in the hurry of forced marches and the confusion that involved the Borgia's career. Had it been stolen, the thief could hardly have offered it for sale in its splendid dress of crimson velvet and silver clasps stamped with the arms of Montefeltro. It may even now be lurking somewhere in obscurity—a treasure of more value than the Koh-i-noor.

Putting aside the fragments of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, it may be broadly stated that what survives of the other tragic poets of the Attic stage, and what we know about their lives, have been derived in the main from four sources. The plays of Aristophanes and the fragments of the later comic poets, who were the merciless critics of contemporary tragedians, have, in the first place, supplied us with some meagre quotations and with numerous insignificant caricatures. From these questionable authorities we learn, for instance, that Agathon was a man of effeminate manners, that Philocles was horribly ugly, that Morsimus was an indifferent eye-doctor as well as a writer of tame tragedies, that Meletus had no inspiration, that the whole family of Carkinus were barbarians, that Pythangelus and Akestor were no better than slaves, that Gnesippus mismanaged his Choruses, that Hieronymus delighted in horrors, that Nothippus and Morychus were gluttons, that Moschion was a parasite, and so forth. To attach very much weight to comic squibs which dwell exclusively upon personal defects and foibles, and repeat ad nauseam the stock Athenian calumnies of drunkenness and debauchery, would be uncritical; though it must be borne in mind that satire in a Greek city, where all the eminent burghers were well known to the play-goers, was pointless unless it contained a grain of truth. Our second great authority is Athenæus, a man of wide reading and extensive curiosity, whose heart unhappily was set on trifles. Sauces, unguents, wreaths, the various ways of dressing fish, the changes of fashion in wine-drinking, formed the subjects of his profoundest investigations. Therefore the grave and heightened tragedies of our unfortunate poets were ransacked by him for rare citations, capable of throwing light upon a flower, a dish, or a wine-cup. These matters were undoubtedly the veriest parerga to poets bent on moving the passions of terror and pity; nor can we imagine a more distressing torment for their souls in Hades than to know that what remains of a much-pondered and beloved Thyestes is a couple of lines about a carving-knife or meat-dish. To be known to posterity through a calumny of Aristophanes and a citation in the Deipnosophistæ, after having passed a long life in composing tragedies, teaching choruses, and inventing chants, is a caricature of immortality which might well deter a man of common-sense from literature, and induce the vainest to go down speechless to the grave in peace. Those poets who fell under the hands of Stobæus, our third chief source of information, have fared better. It is more consistent with the aims and wishes of a tragic artist to survive, however mangled, in the commonplace book of a moralist, than in the miscellanies of a literary bon vivant. The authors, therefore, of the Euripidean school,

may be said to have fared better than their predecessors, whose style rendered them less conveniently subject to the eclectic process of the Macedonian collector. Much of the difficulty, however, which obscures the text of these sententious fragments arises from their collector having in all probability quoted from memory, so that bad grammar, trivial terminations to otherwise well-worded lines, and passages ruthlessly compressed by omissions are frequent. In the fourth place we have to thank Aristotle for a few most precious, though, alas, laconic, criticisms pronounced in the Rhetoric and the Poetics upon his contemporaries, and for occasional quotations in the Ethics to Nicomachus and Eudemus. These criticisms help us to understand the history of the Greek drama by throwing a dim light upon the serious art of many defunct poets, who in their day shook the Attic scene. To Plutarch, to Pausanias, and to the scholiasts we owe similar obligations, though the value of their critical remarks is slight compared with that of every word which fell from Aristotle's pen.

This rapid enumeration of the resources at our command will prepare any one familiar with such matters for spare and disappointing entertainment. The chief interest of such a survey as that which I propose to make consists in the variety and extent of the lost dramatic literature that it reveals. Nothing but a detailed examination of existing fragments suffices to impress the mind with the quantity of plays from which malignant fortune has preserved samples, fantastically inadequate, and, in many cases, tantalizingly uncharacteristic. The quotations from Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, meanwhile, have already supplied matter of more sterling and intrinsic value.

When we take up the collection of Perditorum Tragicorum Omnium Fragmenta, published at Paris by the care of M. Ambroise Firmin Didot, our first sensation, on seeking what may possibly be left of poets before Æschylus, is one of liveliest disappointment. Thespis, to begin with, is a name: we know that he made tragedy dramatic instead of dithyrambic, by introducing monologue in order to support and rest the Chorus; but that is all. Chœrilus is a name: we know that he exhibited above fifty plays, that he was reckoned worthy by the comic poet Alexis to be cited together with Hesiod, Homer, and Epicharmus, and that Aristotle devoted three lost books of critical discussions to the elucidation of difficult passages in his poems as well as in those of Archilochus and Euripides. All the rest is obscure, except that we have reason to believe that Chœrilus excelled in the satyric drama. Pratinas, again, is a name. Dim tradition reports that he invented the satyric drama; and it has thence been inferred with probability that the 150 plays ascribed to him were chiefly composed in tetralogies of one comic and three serious pieces. He was also celebrated for the excellence of his lyrics; while a story, preserved by Suidas, relates how an accident that happened to the wooden stage at Athens during the exhibition of one of his tragedies led to the building of the recently discovered theatre of Dionysus. A few unimportant fragments have survived, in two of which Pratinas avows his preference for the Æolian mood in music. Phrynichus, though his poems have fared no better than those of his contemporaries, stands before us with a more distinguished personality. Herodotus tells the famous tale of his tragedy upon the Taking of Miletus, which moved the Athenian audience to tears, and so angered them by the vivid presentation of a recent disaster that they fined the author in a sum of 1000 drachmas, and forbade the acting of his drama. The sweetness of the songs of Phrynichus has reached us like the echo of a bird's voice in a traveller's narrative. Aristophanes, who loved the good old music of his youth, delighted in it, and invented one of his rare verbal conglomerates to express its quality: καὶ μινυρίζοντες μέλη ἀρχαιομελησιδωνοφρυνιχήρατα is a phrase he puts into the mouth of Bdelycleon in the Wasps, while in the Frogs he describes Phrynichus as making harvest in the meadows of the Muses. Agathon, again, in the Thesmophoriazusæ is represented saying:

From the passage just referred to in the Frogs (1298-1307) it is clear that much of a tragic poet's reputation for originality at Athens depended upon the invention of melodies; and that the merit of Phrynichus consisted to some extent in the excellence and sweetness of his tunes. No real light can now be thrown upon the dark subject of Greek music in general, and of its relation to lyrical and tragic poetry in particular. All we know serves to excite our inquisitiveness without satisfying it. Thus Plutarch informs us that Phrynichus and Æschylus preferred the harp (κίθαρα) and adhered to the enharmonic scale (ἁρμονία) instead of employing chromatic modulations (χρῶμα). The general drift of this remark is that the early tragic poets maintained a simple and severe style of music, and avoided the allurements of what Aristotle termed the most artificial of the Greek scales. Collateral value is given to Plutarch's observation by the Aristophanic criticism of the melodies in Agathon and Euripides. For speculations on its deeper significance, it is impossible to do more than refer the curious to Professor Donkin, General Perronet Thompson, and Mr. Chappell, with the reiterated warning that the obscurity of the subject is impenetrable. Phrynichus, in conclusion, was celebrated as a ballet-master for his Pyrrhic dances, and, as a practical dramatist, for the introduction of female characters. One line, among the few ascribed to him, calls for quotation by reason of its beauty:

Aristias, the next in order of these lost poets, was a son of Pratinas, who lived long enough to compete with Sophocles. The names of his plays, Antæus, Atalanta, Cyclops, Orpheus, and The Fates, show, like similar lists which might be quoted from the meagre notices of his predecessors, that the whole material of Greek mythology was handled and rehandled by the Attic playwrights.

The tragedians who follow can certainly not be considered older than Æschylus, and are, all of them, most probably his juniors. Aristarchus, a native of Tegea, calls for notice because he is reported by Suidas to have determined the length of tragedies, whatever that may mean. Ennius translated his drama of Achilles into Latin, which proves that he retained the fame of a first-rate poet till the beginning of the Græco-Roman period. His fragments recall the Euripidean style; and the two best of them have been preserved by Stobæus, the notorious admirer of Euripides. To omit these, in the dearth of similar heirlooms from antiquity, would be wasteful, especially as they serve to determine the date at which he wrote, and to confirm the report of Suidas that he was a contemporary of Euripides. Here is one that savors strongly of agnosticism:

The second treats of love:

Next to Aristarchus of Tegea we find Neophron of Sikyon, who claims particular attention as the author of a tragedy acknowledged by antiquity to have been the original of the Medea of Euripides. There are few students of literature who do not recognize in the Medea the masterpiece of that poet, and who have not wondered why it only won the third prize at Athens, in the year 431 B.C. Is it possible that because Euripides borrowed his play from Neophron—τὸ δρᾶμα δοκεῖ ὑποβαλέσθαι παρὰ Νεόφρονος διασκευάσας are the words of the Greek argument to Medea, while Suidas says of Neophron οὗ φάσιν εἶναι τὴν τοῦ Εὐριπίδου Μήδειαν—therefore the public and the judges thought some deduction should be made from the merit of the drama?

Stobæus has handed down a long and precious fragment from the speech in which Neophron's Medea decides to kill her children. A comparison of this fragment with the splendid rhesis composed for Medea by Euripides proves the obligation owed by the younger poet to the elder, both in style and matter.

Here, then, is the monologue of Neophron's Medea:

It is hardly possible not to recognize in these lines the first sketch of the picture afterwards worked out so elaborately in detail by Euripides.

Ion was a native of Chios, who came while still a boy (παντάπασι μειράκιον) to Athens, and enjoyed the honor of supping with Cimon in the house of a certain Laomedon. Of his life and work very little is known, although his reputation among the ancients was so great that the Alexandrians placed him among the first five tragic poets. The titles of eleven of his plays have been preserved; but these were only a few out of many that he wrote. He was, besides, a voluminous prose-author, and practised every kind of lyrical poetry. From the criticism of Longinus we gather that his dramas were distinguished for fluency and finish rather than for boldness of conception or sublimity of style. After praising their regularity, Longinus adds that he would not exchange the Œdipus of Sophocles for all the tragedies of Ion put together. Personally, Ion had the reputation of a voluptuary: φιλοπότην καὶ ἐρωτικώτατον are the words of Athenæus which describe him. There is also a story that he passed some portion of his life at Corinth in love-bondage to the beautiful Chrysilla. In short, both as a man and an artist, Ion was true to his name and race. It is unfortunate that the few fragments we possess of Ion's tragedies have been transmitted for the most part by Hesychius and Athenæus in illustration of grammatical usages and convivial customs. The following gnomic couplet, preserved by Plutarch, is both interesting in itself and characteristic of the poet's style:

Another passage, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, contains an elegant description of the power of Sparta:

Almost less can be said about Achæus of Eretria, the fifth, with Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Ion, in the Alexandrian πρώτη τάξις, or first class of tragic worthies. Diogenes Laertius records his skill in the satyric drama; Athenæus remarks that his style was obscure, and that he filled his plays with riddles. The names of some of his dramas—Linus, The Fates, Philoctetes at Troy, Omphale, Peirithous—excite our curiosity; but the fragments are, as usual, cited for some merely frivolous or pedantic purpose.

The following corrupt passage from a play called Ἆθλοι or Ἆθλα, The Games—the loss of which is greatly to be regretted, since it might have thrown a new light upon the feeling of the Greeks for their public contests—presents a lively picture of the physical splendor of trained athletes:

Another glimpse of athletes may be got from three lines torn out of the same play:

In this portrait we recognize the young men satirically described by Euripides in a fragment, translated above, of the lost Autolycus, as roaming about the city in the radiant insolence of youth, like animated statues.

Mourn as we may the loss of Ion and Achæus, our grief for that of Agathon must needs be greater. Though he was not placed in the first class by the Alexandrian critics, it is clear from the notices of Plato, Aristophanes, and Aristotle that he enjoyed the widest popularity at Athens, and was, besides, a poet of marked originality. Personally, he was amiable, delicate, pleasure-loving, and extremely beautiful. He is always called—even by Plutarch and Athenæus—Ἀγάθων ὁ καλός, Agathon the beautiful; while the passionate friendship with which he had inspired Pausanias is celebrated by Plato in Protagoras, by Xenophon in the Symposium. Later authors, like Maximus Tyrius, gave him the title of ἁβρότατος, while Lucian compared him to Cinyras or Sardanapalus. Apparently he was rich enough to indulge the most luxurious tastes. One of the best comic scenes in the Thesmophoriazusæ is that in which Aristophanes described Agathon surrounded by all the appliances of a voluptuary, while engaged in the composition of an effeminate play. Euripides, entering this study of a Sybarite, implores him to put on female attire, using these arguments:

In poetry Agathon adopted innovations consistent with his own voluptuous temperament. His style was distinguished by melodious sweetness and rhetorical refinements; in particular, we are told that he affected the flowery tropes and the antitheses of Gorgias. Sophistry was fashionable in his youth, and Aristophanes recognized in Agathon the true companion of Euripides. Leaving the severer music of the elder tragedians, he invented chromatic melodies, which seem to have tickled the sensuality of his Athenian audience.[82]

We are therefore justified in regarding Agathon as the creator of a new tragic style combining the verbal elegances and ethical niceties of the sophists with artistic charms of a luxurious kind. Aristotle observes that he separated the Chorus from the action of the drama to such an extent that his lyrics became mere musical interludes ἐμβόλιμα, equally adapted to any tragic fable.[83] He also remarks that Agathon composed plays upon romantic subjects, inventing the story for himself, instead of adhering to the old usage of rehandling mythological material.[84] The title of one of these dramatic romances, The Flower, has been preserved; but unhappily we are told nothing about its subject, and have no extracts to judge from. That the form of tragedy suffered other changes at the hands of Agathon may be inferred from another passage in the Poetics, where Aristotle censures him for having included a whole epic, The Taking of Troy, in one play.[85] This play, it may be said in passing, was hissed off the stage. The popularity of Agathon may be gathered from the fact that the first tetralogy he exhibited was crowned in 416 B.C. Plato has chosen the supper-party which he gave in celebration of this victory for the scene of the Symposium; and it is there that we must learn to know this brilliant man of letters and of fashion in the wittiest period of Attic social life. It is not a little curious that the most interesting fragments of Agathon are embedded in the Ethics and the Rhetoric of Aristotle, who must have made attentive study of his works. While discussing the subject of free-will, the sage of Stageira quotes this couplet:

Again, on the topic of art and chance, he cites:

Speaking in the Eudemian Ethics about the true and spurious kinds of courage, he adds:

Another quotation, for the sake of both the poet and the philosopher, may be adduced from the Rhetoric:

One of the peculiarities to be noticed in the practice of the poetic art among the Greeks was the formation of schools by families of artists, in whom talent continued to be hereditary for several generations. We observe this among the lyrists; but the tragedians offer even more remarkable instances, proving how thoroughly the most complicated of all the arts, the tragic drama—including, as it did, the teaching of music and of dancing to Choruses, the arrangement of stage effects, and the training of actors—was followed as a profession at Athens. That Phrynichus founded a school of playwrights distinguished for their musical rather than their dramatic ability appears from the nineteenth section of the Problemata of Aristotle; but we do not know whether the οἱ περὶ Φρύνιχον there mentioned belonged to the poet's family. It is possible, on the other hand, to draw the pedigree of Æschylus, in which every name will represent a tragic poet. Here it is:

The οἱ περὶ Αἴσχυλον, therefore, of whom the scholiasts often speak, numbered, together with Æschylus himself, eight dramatists. Their common characteristic consisted in the adherence to the Æschylean style, in the presentation of tetralogies, and in the privilege successively enjoyed by them of bringing out old plays of Æschylus in competition with the works of younger poets. The dramas of Æschylus were in fact "a property" to his descendants. The Athenians had publicly decreed that they might be from year to year produced upon the scene, and Euphorion, his son, spent his time in preparing them for exhibition. In this way he gained four prizes, taking the first crown upon the notable occasion, in 431 B.C., when Sophocles was second, and Euripides, with the Medea, third. It appears that, as time went on, the original compositions of Æschylus suffered mutilations and alterations at the hands of his posterity, who pretended to improve them—after the manner of Davenant, presumably—and adapt them to the modern taste. At last Lycurgus, about 340 B.C., decreed that after accurate copies had been taken of the authorized text and deposited in the public archives, the clerk of the city should collate them with the acted plays, and see that no deviations from the original became established. We gather from the comic poets that the family of Æschylus also produced their own tragedies, none of which, however, appear to have been very excellent. Philocles the elder was laughed at by Aristophanes partly because he was an ugly, snub-nosed, little man, with a head like a hoopoe; partly because he introduced a comic incident into his tragedy of Pandionis by exhibiting Tereus dressed out with the feathers of a bird. The scholiasts to Aristophanes, in like manner, inform us that Morsimus owed a certain celebrity to his ugliness, to the tameness of his tragic style, and to his want of skill as a professional oculist. Astydamas the elder achieved the same sad sort of immortality through the accident of having received the honor of a public statue before Æschylus. It is lost labor trying to form a clear conception of poets who are only known to us in anecdotes like these.

Frederick Wagner, the collector of the tragic fragments, reckons Meletus, the accuser of Socrates, and Plato, the divine philosopher, among the school of Æschylus, because it appears that both of them composed tetralogies. From a passage in the scholiast to Aristophanes (Frogs, 1302) it may be inferred that Meletus the tragedian and Meletus the informer were one and the same person: κωμῳδεῖται δὲ καὶ ὡς ψυχρὸς ἐν τῇ ποιήσει καὶ ὡς πονηρὸς τὸν τρόπον—"he is satirized both for want of genius as a poet and also for the badness of his moral character." This sentence constitutes his title to fame. He is known to have composed a series of plays with the title Œdipodeia, the plot, as sketched by Hyginus,[90] offering some notable divergences from the Sophoclean treatment of the tale of Thebes. Plato may be numbered among the tragedians on the strength of an anecdote in Ælian,[91] according to which he had composed a tetralogy, and had already distributed the parts to the actors, when he determined to abandon poetry and gave his verses to the flames.

The school of Sophocles includes two sons of the poet, Iophon and Ariston, and his grandson Sophocles. In fact, it combines the actors in that family drama played out before the jury of the tribe, when the singer of Colonus silenced his accuser by the recitation of the Chorus from his second Œdipus. Iophon exhibited tragedies with distinguished success during the life of Sophocles, and even entered into competition with his father. After the old man's death he produced the posthumous works that formed his heirloom, completing such as were unfinished or executing those of which the plan was sketched in outline. He is said to have exhibited fifty plays, and that he was no mean poet appears from the following passage of the Frogs:

The drift of these lines would be obscure without some explanation to readers who have not studied Aristophanes. All the good tragic poets are dead, and Dionysus is journeying to Hades to fetch one back again to rule the Attic stage. Herakles falls into conversation with him on the subject, and reminds him that Iophon is living. The doubt expressed by Dionysus seems to refer to a suspicion prevalent at Athens that Sophocles helped his son in the composition of his plays. Meanwhile, the qualified praise awarded him by Dionysus implies considerable admiration on the part of so severe a castigator of the tragic dramatists as Aristophanes. Only four and a half lines, and these by no means noticeable, remain of Iophon. His half-brother Ariston has fared better, since we possess a long and curious dialogue upon Providence, quoted by Theophilus of Antioch from an unknown play of his. This fragment supports the Christian belief that, though the careless seem to prosper, while the virtuous get no benefit from their asceticism, justice will eventually be dealt with even hand to all: