his tragedies, till 468, when, after
being thirteen times first, he was excelled by another Athenian named
Sophocles, and was so much vexed that he withdrew to the Greek colonies
in Sicily. It is not clear whether he ever came back to Athens for a
time, but he certainly died in Sicily, and in an extraordinary way. He
was asleep on the sea-shore, when an eagle flew above him with a tortoise
in its claws. It is the custom of eagles to break the shells of these
creatures by letting them fall on rocks from a great height. The bird
took AEschylus' bald head for a stone, threw down the tortoise, broke his
skull, and killed him!

Sophocles did not write such grand lines, yearning for the truth, as
AEschylus, but his plays, of Ajax' madness, and especially of Antigone's
self-devotion, were more touching, and full of human feeling; and
Euripides, who was a little younger, wrote plays more like those of later
times, with more of story in them, and more characters, especially of
women. He even wrote one in which he represented Helen as never having
been unfaithful at all; Venus only made up a cloud-image to be run away
with by Paris, and Helen was carried away and hidden in Egypt, where
Menelaus found her, and took her home. The works of these three great
men have always been models. The Greeks knew their plays by heart almost
as perfectly as the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and used to quote lines
wherever they applied.

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CHAP. XIX.--THE AGE OF PERICLES. B.C. 464-429.

Athens and Sparta were now quite the greatest powers in Greece. No other
state had dared to make head against the Persians, and all the lesser
cities, and the isles and colonies, were anxious to obtain the help and
friendship of one or other as their allies. The two states were always
rivals, and never made common cause, except when the Persian enemy was
before them. In the year 464 there was a terrible earthquake in Laconia,
which left only five houses standing in Sparta, and buried great numbers
in the ruins. The youths, who were all together in one building
exercising themselves, were almost all killed by its fall; and the
disaster would have been worse if the king, Archidamas, had not caused
the trumpet to be blown, as if to call the people to arms, just outside
the city. This brought all the men in order together just in time, for
the Helots were rising against them, and, if they had fou