[26] The following plays were performed with two actors only: of Æschylus, Supplices, Prometheus, Persæ, Seven against Thebes; of Euripides, Medea, and perhaps Alcestis.
[27] By Plutarch, Life of Cimon, VIII. Haigh (The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 128²) gives good reasons for rejecting the story.
[28] One of these occasions was that on which he presented the Œdipus Tyrannus.
[29] A fragment of Ion’s Ἐπιδημίαι remarks: τὰ μέντοι πολιτικὰ οὔτε σοφὸς οὔτε ῥεκτήριος ἦν, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἄν τις εἷς τῶν χρηστῶν Ἀθηναίων.
[30] Aristophanes, too, in the Frogs (v. 82), bears witness to his charm: ὁ δ’ εὔκολος μὲν ἐνθάδ’, εὔκολος δ’ ἐκεῖ· “Sophocles, on the other hand, is gentle here (i.e. in Hades) as he was in life.”
[31] Œd. Col. 1225-8.
[32] Poetic, 1460b: Σοφοκλῆς ἔφη αὐτὸς μὲν οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν, Εὐριπίδην δὲ οἷοι εἰσίν.
[33] Plutarch, De Profectu in Virtute, 79 B: ὁ Σοφοκλῆς ἔλεγε, τὸν Αἰσχύλου διαπεπαιχὼς ὄγκον, εἶτα τὸ πικρὸν καὶ κατάτεχνον τῆς αὐτοῦ κατασκευῆς, τρίτον ἤδη τὸ τῆς λέξεως μεταβάλλειν εἶδος ὅπερ ἐστὶν ἠθικώτατον καὶ βέλτιστον.
[34] See Haigh, Tragic Drama, p. 162.
[35] Aristotle, Poetic, 1449a.