Geschichte der Kunst, part ii. p. 328. “He produced the Antigone, his first tragedy, in the third year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad.” The time is tolerably exact, but it is quite a mistake to suppose that this first tragedy was the Antigone. Neither is it so called by Samuel Petit, whom Winkelmann quotes in a note. He expressly puts the Antigone in the third year of the eighty-fourth Olympiad. The following year, Sophocles went with Pericles to Samos, and the year of this expedition can be determined with exactness. In my life of Sophocles, I show, from a comparison with a passage of the elder Pliny, that the first tragedy of this author was probably Triptolemus. (Lib. xviii. sect. 12.) Pliny is speaking of the various excellence of the fruits of different countries, and concludes thus: “Hæ fuere sententiæ, Alexandro magno regnante, cum clarissima fuit Græcia, atque in toto terrarum orbe potentissima; ita tamen ut ante mortem ejus annis fere CXLV. Sophocles poeta in fabula Triptolemo frumentum Italicum ante cuncta laudaverit, ad verbum translata sententia: Et fortunatam Italiam frumento canere candido.” He is here not necessarily speaking of the first tragedy of Sophocles, to be sure. But the date of that, fixed by Plutarch, the scholiast, and the Arundelian marbles, as the seventy-seventh Olympiad, corresponds so exactly with the date assigned by Pliny to the Triptolemus, that we can hardly help regarding that as the first of Sophocles’ tragedies. The calculation is easily made. Alexander died in the hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. One hundred and forty-five years cover thirty-six Olympiads and one year, which subtracted from the total, gives seventy-seven. The Triptolemus of Sophocles appeared in the seventy-seventh Olympiad; the last year of this same Olympiad is the date of his first tragedy: we may naturally conclude, therefore, that these tragedies are one. I show at the same time that Petit might have spared himself the writing of the whole half of the chapter in his “Miscellanea” which Winkelmann quotes (xviii. lib. iii.). In the passage of Pliny, which he thinks to amend, it is quite unnecessary to change the name of the Archon Aphepsion into Demotion, or ἀνεψιός. He need only have looked from the third to the fourth year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad to find that the Archon of that year was called Aphepsion by the ancient authors quite as often as Phædon, if not oftener. He is called Phædon by Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, and the anonymous author of the table of the Olympiads; while the Arundelian marbles, Apollodorus, and, quoting him, Diogenes Laertius, call him Aphepsion. Plutarch calls him by both names; Phædon in the life of Theseus and Aphepsion in the life of Cimon. It is therefore probable, as Palmerius supposes, “Aphepsionem et Phædonem Archontas fuisse eponymos; scilicet, uno in magistratu mortuo, suffectus fuit alter.” (Exercit. p. 452.) This reminds me that Winkelmann, in his