still more on occasions when even moral beauty demands pathos. Few of his pieces are without single passages that are charmingly beautiful. Take him altogether, it is by no means my intention to deny that he possesses extraordinary talents; I only maintain that they were not united to a disposition honouring the rigour of moral principles, and the holiness of religious feelings, above every thing else." SECTION III. THE REMAINING GREEK TRAGEDIANS. THE materials for compiling an account of the tragic writers, who were partly contemporary with, and partly subsequent to, the three great masters, are exceedingly meagre. Little more can be done than to furnish a catalogue of names, arranged in chronological order, with such incidental notices of these dramatists and their works as antiquity has left us. * ARISTARCHUS of Tegea, was the contemporary of Sophocles and Euripides. He lived upwards of a hundred years, exhibited seventy tragedies, but was only twice successful. Of all these seventy plays only one line is left us, quoted in Athenæus (xiii. 612). According to Festus, his Achilles was imitated by Ennius, and also by Plautus in his Pœnulus. †ION CHIUS began to exhibit, Olymp. LXXXII1, 2, B. C. 451. The number of his dramas is variously estimated at from twelve to forty. Bentley has collected the names of eleven ‡. The same great critic has also shown that this Ion was a person of birth and fortune, distinct from Ion Ephesius, a mere begging rhapsodist. Besides tragedies, Ion composed dithyrambs, elegies §, &c., and several works in prose. Like Euripides, he was intimate with Socrates |. Ion was so delighted with being decreed victor on one occasion, in the tragic contests at Athens, that he presented each citizen with a vase of Chian pottery ¶. We gather from a *Suidas in V. † Schol. Aristoph. Pax, 835. Suidas in Ion. Epist. ad Mill. Chronic. Johann. Malal. subject. § His Elegies are quoted, Athen. x. p. 436, &c.: his 'Eriduía (a work giving an account of all the visits paid by celebrated men to Chios), ib. iii. p. 93, &c. joke of Aristophanes *, on a word taken from one of his dithyrambs, that Ion died before the exhibition of the Pax, B. C. 419. ACHEUS ERETRIENSIS was born Olymp. LXXiv, B. C. 484 †, the very year Æschylus won his first prize. We find him contending with Sophocles and Euripides, Olymp. LXXXIII, 2, B. C. 447. With such competitors he was not very successful. He gained the dramatic victory only once. Athenæus however accuses Euripides of borrowing from this poet §. Most of the plays ascribed to him by the ancients are suspected by Casaubon to have been satyric ||. EUPHORION was the son of Eschylus T. He conquered four times with posthumous tragedies of his father's composition; and also wrote several dramas himself. One of his victories is commemorated in the argument to the Medea of Euripides; where we are told that Euphorion was first, Sophocles second, and Euripides third with the Medea. Olymp. LXXXVII, 2, 431. ARISTEAS, Son of Pratinas, is mentioned in the Vit. Anonym. of Sophocles as having contended with Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. His chief merit lay in his satyric dramas, in which, according to Pausanias, he and his father were surpassed by Æschylus alone **. THEOGNIS ††, as we learn from a line in the opening of the ++ Dicæopolis describes himself as having lately been anxiously expecting in the theatre a tragedy of Æschylus to commence, when the herald proclaimed, to his Acharnians, was exhibiting at the time in which that comedy was represented, i. e. Olymp. LXXXVIII, 4, B. C. 425. This poet is ridiculed in the same play for the frigidity of his inanimate compositions*. He was still a competitor for the tragic prize at the period in which the Thesmophoriazouse was composed; for in that play the comedian again attacks him †. The Scholiast on the Acharnians, v. 11, says that this Theognis was one of the Thirty Tyrants. The name Theognis certainly does occur in the catalogue of that body given by Xenophon ‡. PHILOCLES § is said by Suidas to have been the nephew of Æschylus, and the father of Morsimus and Melanthius. A trilogy of his, intitled the Pandionid, was recorded by Aristotle in the Didascaliæ. The Tereus, one of the plays in this trilogy, written in imitation of the Tereus of Sophocles, || is wittily ridiculed by Aristophanes in the Aves. This tragedian was termed Xox or Bile, from his harsh and bitter language ¶. In figure he was deformed: hence Aristophanes takes occasion to cut sundry jokes upon him. In the Thesmophoriazousa, Mnesilochus, following up the principle laid down by Agathon, that as the man is so is the poetry, begins, Ταῦτ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ὁ Φιλοκλῆς αἰσχρὸς ὢν αἰσχρῶς ποιει.—168. Θεωρος. Χρόνον μὲν οὐκ εἴν ἦμεν ἐν Θρᾴκῃ πολὺν Εἰ μὴ κατένιψε χιόνι τὴν Θρᾴκην ὅλην, Καὶ τοὺς ποταμοὺς ἔπηξ ̓ ὑπ' αὐτὸν τὸν χρόνον, Acharn. 136, &c. † Ο δ ̓ ὧν Θέογνις ψυχρὸς ὤν ψυχρῶς ποιει.-Thesmoph. 170. Hellen. iii. 2. § Suidas inox.-Suidas mentions two persons of this name, the one a tragic, the other a comic poet. Kuster contends that the Lexicographer is mistaken, and that his two accounts refer to one and the same individual-the tragedian. ။ Πει. Τὶ τὸ τέρας τουτί ποτ' ἐστὶν ; οὐ σὺ μόνος αρ ̓ ἦσθ ̓ ἔποψ; ̓Αλλὰ χ ̓ οὗτος ἕτερος ; Ex. ̓Αλλ' ἔστιν μέν οὗτος Φιλοκλέους Aves, 280. ¶In allusion to this characteristic, Bdelycleon, speaking of the chorus of waspish old dicasts, says, ̓Αλλὰ μὰ Δι ̓ οὐ ῥᾳδίως οὕτως ἂν αὐτους διέφυγες, In the Aves he finds in his shape a similarity to the lark, * κορυδός Φιλοκλέει. ν. 1295. AGATHON was the contemporary and friend of Euripides. At his house Plato lays the scene of his Symposium, given in honour of a tragic victory won by the poet. In this piece Socrates proves that a good tragic writer is equally capable of composing an excellent comedy. Agathon was no mean dramatist f. Plato represents him as abounding in the most exquisite ornaments and the most dazzling antitheses. Aristophanes pays a handsome tribute to his memory as a poet and a man, in the Rana (v. 84.), where Bacchus calls him ἀγαθὸς ποιητὴς καὶ ποθεινὸς τοῖς φίλοις. In the Thesmophoriazousa, which was exhibited six years before the Rana, Agathon, then alive, is introduced as the friend of Euripides, and ridiculed for his effeminacy. He is there brought on the stage in female attire, and described as Εὐπρόσωπος, λευκὸς, ἐξυρημένος, Γυναικόφωνος, ἀπαλὸς, εὐπρεπῆς ἰδεῖν. 191. § His poetry seems to have corresponded with his personal appearance: profuse in trope, inflexion, and metaphor; glittering with sparkling ideas, and flowing softly on with harmonious words and nice construction, but deficient in manly thought and vigour. Agathon may, in some degree, be charged with having begun the decline of true Tragedy. It was he who first commenced the practice of inserting choruses betwixt the acts of the drama ||, which had no reference whatever to the circumstances of the * The Scholiast supposes Philocles to have been ὀξυκέφαλος ἐν τῷ ἄνω καὶ ὀρνιθώδης τὴν κεφαλήν. + He is called 'Αγάθων ὁ κλεινὸς by Aristophanes, Thesmoph. 29. See also Athen. V. 187, and Ælian V. H. xvi. 13. § His servant is thus made to characterize it: Μέλλει γὰρ ὁ καλλιεπής ̓Αγαθών Δρυόχες τιθέναι, δράματος ἀρχάς· Thesmoph. 49. Philostratus calls him an imitator in verse of Gorgias's prose: ̓Αγαθὼν ὁ τῆς τραγῳδίας ποιητὴς, ὃν ἡ κωμωδία σοφόν τε καὶ καλλιεπῆ οἶδε, πολλαχε τῶν ἰαμβείων γοργιάζει De Soph. 1. [ Τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς τὰ ἀδόμενα οὐ μᾶλλον του μύθου, ἤ ἄλλης τραγῳδίας ἐστί· δι' ὅ ἐμβό |