And it is said of Sophocles, that, to avoid being condemned of dotage at the instance of his children, he repeated the entrance song of the Chorus in his tragedy of Oedipus in Colonus, which begins thus: Welcome, stranger, come in time To the best place of this clime, White Colonus, which abounds With brave horses. In these grounds, Spread with Nature’s choicest green, Philomel is often seen. Here she her hearers charms with sweetest lays, Whilst with shrill throat And warbling note She moans the sad misfortunes of her former days:[32] and that, this song appearing admirable, he was dismissed from the court, as from the theatre, with the applause and acclamations of all that were present. And this short verse is acknowledged to be written of him: When Sophocles framed for Herodotus This ode, his years were fifty-five. Philemon also the comedian and Alexis were snatched away by death, whilst they were acting on the stage and crowned with garlands. And as for Polus the tragedian, Eratosthenes and Philochorus related of him that, being seventy years of age, he a little before his death acted in four days eight tragedies. 4. Is it not then a shame, that those who have grown old in councils and courts of judicature should appear less generous than such as have spent their years on the stage, and forsaking those exercises which are really sacred, cast off the person of the statesman, to put on instead of it I know not what other? For to descend from the state of a prince to that of a ploughman is all over base and mean. For since Demosthenes says that the Paralus, being a sacred galley, was unworthily used in being employed to carry timber, pales, and cattle to Midias; would not a man who should, after his having quitted the office of superintendent at the public solemnities, governor of Boeotia, or president in the council of the Amphictyons, be seen measuring of corn, weighing of raisins, and bargaining about fleeces and wool-fells,—would not such a one, I say, wholly seem to have brought on himself, as the proverb has it, the old age of a horse, without any one’s necessitating him to it? For to set one’s self to mechanical employments and trafficking, after one has borne office in the state, is the same as if one should strip a well-bred virtuous gentlewoman out of her matron-like attire, and thrust her with an apron tied about her into a public victualling-house. For the dignity and greatness of political virtue is overthrown, when it is debased to such mean administrations and traffics for gain. But if (which is the only thing remaining) they shall, by giving effeminacies and voluptuousness the name of living at quiet and enjoying one’s self, exhort a statesman leisurely to waste away and grow old in them, I know not to which of the two shameful pictures his life will seem to have the greater resemblance,—whether to