Time, then, did not prevent those men from
doing such great things ; and shall we of the present
[p. 87]
day, who live in luxury in states that are free from
tyranny or any war or siege, be such cowards as to
shirk unwarlike contests and rivalries which are for
the most part terminated justly by law and argument
in accordance with justice, confessing that we are
inferior, not only to the generals and public men of
those days, but to the poets, teachers, and actors as
well ? Yes, if Simonides in his old age won prizes
with his choruses, as the inscription in its last lines
declares :
But for his skill with the chorus great glory Simonides
followed,
Octogenarian child sprung from Leoprepes' seed.1
And it is said that Sophocles, when defending himself against the charge of dementia brought by his
sons,
2 read aloud the entrance song of the chorus in
the
Oedipus at Colonus, which begins
3:
Of this region famed for horses
Thou hast, stranger, reached the fairest
Dwellings in the land,
Bright Colonus, where the sweet-voiced
Nightingale most loves to warble
In the verdant groves;
and the song aroused such admiration that he was
escorted from the court as if from the theatre, with
the applause and shouts of those present. And here
is a little epigram of Sophocles, as all agree :
Song for Herodotus Sophocles made when the years of
his age were
Five in addition to fifty.4
[p. 89]
But Philemon
5 the comic dramatist and Alexis
6 were
overtaken by death while they were on the stage
acting and being crowned with garlands. And Polus
the tragic actor, as Eratosthenes and Philochorus tell
us, when he was seventy years old acted in eight
tragedies in four days shortly before his death.
7