A weakness of voice under which Sophocles laboured often prevented his appearing in his own tragedies; but this did not at all injure his fame, for he continued to write into extreme old age with uniformly increasing reputation. It is recorded that he composed one hundred and twenty tragedies, of which not more than seven are extant--namely, AJAX, ELECTRA, OEDIPUS THE TYRANT, ANTIGONE, THE TRACHINIÆ, PHILOCTETES, and OEDIPUS AT COLONOS. The last of those tragedies has been ever marked with particular regard on account of a most interesting circumstance that attended its production, and made it the apex of that great man’s fame and fortune. Like old Lear, Sophocles was cursed with ungrateful children. Shakspeare’s imagination went no further than TWO ungrateful daughters: Sophocles had in reality _four sons_, all as ungrateful as those monsters of Shakspeare’s brain. The extreme age and bodily infirmities of their venerable parent, having for sometime inflamed their anxiety to become masters of his possessions, they grew at last impatient and, weary of his living so long, formed a conspiracy against him, and accused him before the Areopagus, of being insane, a driveller incapable of governing his family, or managing his concerns--in short, a fool, a madman. He had fortunately, at that time, just finished his OEDIPUS AT COLONOS. When he heard the charge made against him by his ingrate sons, he offered no defence but this tragedy, which he read to the judges, and then with the boldness of conscious superiority demanded of them whether the author of that piece could be taxed with insanity. Heart-struck with the exquisite beauties and sublime sentiments of the piece, and astonished at the vigorous mind, the exalted truth, the profound moral wisdom, the accurate and solid judgment, and the almost divinely persuasive language that pervaded every act of it, they heaped honours along with their acquittal upon his head, dismissed him with a shout of praise, and sent his sons home covered with shame and confusion. If firm reliance can be placed on the authority of Lucian, the sons were, by the Areopagus, voted madmen for having accused their father. Like Æschylus, Sophocles was a high military character, and was ranked among the foremost defenders of his country. He commanded an army in the war which the Athenians (by the desire of the renowned Pericles, who so willed it at the instance of his mistress Aspasia) waged against the inhabitants of Samos; and he returned from it triumphant.