celebrated the naval victory of Salamis (480). At the age of twenty-eight he came to the front by entering into competition with Æschylus, his elder by thirty years, whose pre-eminence as a tragic poet had long been undisputed. The judges on this occasion, according to an oft-repeated tradition, were Cimon and his fellow-generals, just returned from Scyros. The younger poet was preferred; and his triumph had a decisive influence on the future of the tragic art. For not only are the mature works of Sophocles and those of Euripides, his younger brother in poetry, the fulfil ment of the promise then given, but the Orestean trilogy of Eschylus, in which Greek tragedy attained its highest limit, was brought out ten years after this, and bears unmistakable proofs of the impression which the art of Sophocles had made upon his elder and greater rival. Sophocles never forsook Athens as both Eschylus and Euri- | pides did, but he was repeatedly employed on embassies to other Grecian states, and in the Samian war of 440 he was appointed general in a joint command with Pericles. This choice is said to have been due to the success of the Antigone, one of the earliest of the poet's seven extant plays, as the Edipus Coloneus and Philoctetes are certainly the latest. The probable order is Ajax, Antigone, Electra, Edipus Tyrannus, Trachini, Edipus Coloneus, Philoctetes. Less than a tithe of the work of Sophocles remains to us; but of the seven plays each one has superlative excellences, and stands prominently forth amongst the master-works of the human spirit. The characteristics of Sophocles are a dramatic structure all but faultless, the combination of wonderful subtlety with intense fire, and of a noble ideal with truth and naturalness. His subjects were necessarily drawn from Hellenic legend. His motives in selecting them were mainly artistic, but to some extent also religious or patriotic. In his treatment of them he never loses sight of the main principles of tragic art. His method turns largely on pathetic contrasts (1) of situation, (2) of character. (1) The change of fortune which forms the crisis of each play is often rendered more impressive through the profound unconsciousness, at the beginning of the action, of the persons who are to be affected by it. The case of Edipus is the capital illustration of this remark; but it applies also to Creon in the Antigone, to Electra, Deianira, Philoctetes, and to the chorus in the Ajax and Edipus Coloneus. Sometimes the chief agent, Antigone for example, is fully conscious of the real position of things, but in every case appearance and reality are strongly opposed.

575

and turned his violence against the flocks and herds belonging to the army. On awaking from his delirium, finding his honour lost, he resolves on death. Agamemnon would have refused him burial; but Teucer vindicates him, and Odysseus, with becoming magnanimity, ends the strife. Tecmessa, the captive bride, who in her helplessness defies the Argives and protects the hero's child, is one of those female characters which Sophocles portrays with so much skill.

In the Antigone the claims of piety and natural affection are seemingly overborne by the exaggerated assertion of state-authority in the person of the ruler, but in the end it is the ruler who succumbs. The virgin martyr is vindicated. In the Electra, in place of the fiery Theban maiden, the poet represents the faithful endurance of the Argive princess, who in the Oresteia of Æschylus had played a subordinate part, but here rises to the height of female heroism.

The Edipus Tyrannus was regarded by Aristotle as the chef d'œuvre of tragedy, and nowhere else is there to be found an equal combination of constructive ingenuity with tragic power. The hero is represented as the most loyal and affectionate, but also the most passionate, and, partly for that reason, the most unfortunate of men. Doomed to misery in his very birth, he appears to himself and others at the opening of the play to be at the height of prosperity. A stranger, he has earned the affection of Thebes, and lightly he undertakes the quest imposed by the god. In the sequel he discovers that he is the forbidden child of the king -whom he has slain—and of the queen-whom he has married! The poignancy and pathetic interest which Sophocles extracts from this unnatural story is a triumph of poetic skill. In the construction of the piece the employment of the Theban slave, who had been charged with the exposure of the child, and had also witnessed the death of Laïus, is especially noteworthy.

The subject of the Trachinia is the death of Heracles, but the fatal act of Deianira in sending the poisoned robe (which she believes to be a charm for recovering the affection of her lord) forms the central motive. She is one of the most charming of poetic creations, the rival of Imogen in

purity, of Katharine of Aragon in her great patience, and of both in wifely spirit.'

He

The Ajax may be described as the tragedy of wounded honour. Ajax and Odysseus had recovered the dead body of Achilles, whose armour, the miraculous work of Hephaestus, was then awarded not to Ajax, the most valiant of the surviving Greeks, but to Odysseus, the wisest. Half-maddened by repulse, Ajax would have assassinated the generals; but, to defend Odysseus, Athena made the Telamonian warrior wholly mad,

The Philoctetes was produced in 409. It is a marvellous work for one in his eighty-seventh year to have composed. The characters are powerfully distinguished, and their mutual interaction is a new thing in dramatic poetry. Philoctetes, like the Edipus of the Coloneus, is rejected by man, but accepted by the gods. Ill-usage and solitary musing have fixed in him the resolution never to return. The policy of Odysseus and the affectionate pleading of Neoptolemus are alike in vain, until the hard knot is loosed by the apparition of Heracles (in Euripidean style), who had been the hero's master and patron in the world of men. The interest of the action, which would else be stationary for so long, is sustained by the conflict

in the soul of Neoptolemus, in whom ambition and public duty are struggling with pity for Philoctetes, and with the love of truth which the young chief inherits from his father Achilles. The victory of his better nature forms the culminating point in the action of the play.

Of other subjects known to have been treated by Sophocles those most suggestive of tragic interest are Alemæon, Atreus, Danaë, Hermione, Thamyras, Thyestes in Sicyon, Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, Creusa, Laocoon, Meleager, Niobe, Enomaüs, Peleus, Telephus, Tereus, Troilus, Phædra, Phineus. The remaining fragments of these and other plays are on the whole disappointing. Sophocles even less than other poets can be fairly represented by isolated passages.

Amidst much variety, the dramatic work of Sophocles presents some constant features. Each play has a preliminary scene in which the main situation is set forth. This is followed by the entrance of the chorus, consisting of persons who stand in some well-considered relation to the chief agent. Then fresh complications supervene, and the action rises in steady climax to the turning-point. The reverse of fortune is generally announced by a messenger, after whose speech the commos or interchange of lamentation between the stage and orchestra naturally comes in. Between the scenes choice odes or stasima are interposed. But the lyric

numbers are not confined to these. At suitable moments the chorus, and sometimes the actors themselves, break out into song, which on the part of the chorus is sometimes accompanied with dancing of a more or less animated description. This takes effect particularly in the hyporchema, or dancing-ode, which Sophocles is fond of employing at some conjuncture where the dramatis person have been deceived for the moment into a false and short-lived joy. This relieves the monotony of gloom while ultimately rather heightening tragic effect, by emphasising the contrast above noticed between appearance and reality.

Sophocles has not impressed the world with superhuman grandeur as Eschylus has done. Nor has he charmed mankind by the witchery of style in particular scenes and descriptive passages, as appears to have been the case with Euripides. But to some of the greatest critics-e.g. Lessing-his merits as a dramatic artist have appeared to be supreme. The purely human note in tragedy is dominant for the first time in him. Matthew Arnold in an early sonnet described him well :

Be his

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild;
Who saw life steadily and saw it whole;
The mellow glory of the Attic stage,
Singer of sweet Colonus and its child.

If not quite holding the first rank with Homer, Eschylus, Dante, and Shakespeare, Sophocles is at least one of the immortals.

In

The editio princeps was printed at Venice in 1502. the long list of editors of the whole or part of the seven the most important names are Brunck, Gottfried Herrmann, Wunder, Dindorf, Schneidewin, Hauck, Bergk, Lobeck (Ajax), Böckh, Meineke, Elmsley, Buttmann, Linwood, Kennedy, Wolff, O. Jahn. The chief modern English annotated editions are those of F. H. M. Blaydes and F. A. Paley (2 vols. 1859-80), Prof. Lewis Campbell (2 vols. 1873-81), and Prof. Jebb (Cambridge Press, vols. i.-v., 1884-92)—a masterly edition, in which Sophocles is treated with admirable thoroughness and clearness. Of English translations may be named those of Francklin, Potter, Dean Plumptre, Sir G. Young, R. Whitelaw (1883), and Prof. Lewis Campbell (complete, 1883) in verse; and those given in Prof. Jebb's edition, in admirable prose.

There is an excellent Lexicon Sophocleum by F. Ellendt (2d ed. by H. Genthe, Berlin, 1867-72), supplemented by an Index Commentationum' (1874). See

SORBONNE

Hense, Studien zu Sophocles (1880); Patin, Etudes sur les Tragiques Grecs (vol. ii., new ed. 1877); Prof. Lewis Campbell, Sophocles in Green's Classical Writers' (1879), and A Guide to Greek Tragedy (1891); also Schlegel's Lectures, and Bishop Thirlwall's Remains for a famous essay on the Irony of Sophocles.

Soprano (Ital.), the highest species of voice. Its average range extends from C below the treble stave to A above it; but the greatest variety in compass and quality is found. The highest compass on record is that of Agujari, which on the testimony of Mozart reached to C in altissimo (three octaves). Music for this voice is now written with the G or treble clef; but in German full scores the old soprano clef, C on the first line, is still used. The mezzo-soprano has a somewhat lower range, usually from A beneath the treble stave to F on the fifth line. See VOICE.

Sora, a city of Italy, on the Garigliano, 55 miles E. by S. of Rome. Pop. 5411.

Sorata, a volcanic peak of the Bolivian Andes, to the east of Lake Titicaca, rising to 21,470 feet above the sea.

of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, has three castles (one Sorau, a town of Prussia, 60 miles by rail SSE. dating from 1207), some good churches, and manufactures of cloth, linen, cigars, &c. Pop. 13,665. Sorb. See SERVICE.

Sorbonne, the earliest, as it was by far the most famous, of all the colleges of the mediæval university of Paris. The system of colleges, of which the Sorbonne was the first example, dates only from the later part of the 13th century, more than a hundred years after the beginnings of the university itself. The system sprang out of the necessity for the adequate accommodation of the vast numbers of students who flocked to Paris from all the countries of Europe. Previous to the erection of colleges the students had mainly to content themselves with such lodging as they could find, and experience had shown that they had suffered both in their purse and their morals from this system.

The

It was the happy inspiration of Robert of Sorbon, in the diocese of Rheims, to conceive and carry out the idea of combining a place of residence and a place of study. With the consent of St Louis, to whom he acted as chaplain, Robert founded the college of the Sorbonne in 1253, though it was not formally opened till 1256. By a bull of Clement IV. (1268) the new institution received the indispensable sanction of the pope as the head of all the medieval universities. At the head of the college was the provisor, who was chosen by the whole university, though its business was mainly in the hands of the prior, elected every year from the members of the college itself. members were divided into two classes, Hospites and Socii. The Hospites received the full benefit of the educational provisions of the college, but On the they had no part in its administration. attainment of the doctorate in theology at the age of thirty-five their residence came to an end. The Socii, who were restricted to the number of thirty-six, had the entire management of the college in their hands, and all, whatever their age or academic rank, were on a footing of absolute equality. The life of the college was according to the strictest monastic rule, and its inmates with proud humility styled themselves 'the poor masters of the Sorbonne.'

The Sorbonne was exclusively devoted to the study of theology, and no student could enter it till he had taken the diploma of Bachelor of Arts, and had sustained a thesis, known as the Sorbonica or Robertina, before all the members of the college. The discipline through which he had then to pass

SORBONNE

was the severest in all the Paris colleges. It was above all by the system of disputation that his progress was stimulated and his proficiency tested. By its rigorous methods of conducting these disputations the Sorbonne gained the reputation of being the first theological school in Europe; and its opinion on disputed points of doctrine was universally accepted as the weightiest that could be obtained. In affiliation with his larger college Robert of Sorbon in 1271 also founded a smaller college that of Calvi, or the Little Sorbonnewhere students were prepared in subjects preliminary to their study of theology. It was the distinctive feature of the Sorbonne, however, and one which greatly helped to win for it its predominance in the university, that its members were drawn from every country in Europe, and not confined to a particular 'nation.'

The history of the Sorbonne is a signal instance of a great institution admirably fulfilling its original intention, but incapable of making a new departure when such a departure was necessary for its continued vitality and efficiency. Till the close of the 15th century, when the scholastic theology was fast losing its hold on all the best minds, the Sorbonne filled a place of the first importance in the intellectual life of Europe. Throughout the middle ages the theological faculty of Paris was the main support on which the highest teaching had rested, claiming for itself the right, denied to the pope himself, of sovereign decree on the truth or falsity of all religious doctrine. But the Sorbonne virtually constituted the theological faculty, and in common speech was identified with it. Its voice therefore carried an authority that influenced the councils of the nation. Through its efforts France was saved from Peter's Pence and the Inquisition; and it was due to its encouragement that printing was introduced into Paris immediately subsequent to its invention.

From the beginning of the 16th century, when the new studies of the Revival of Learning found their way into France, the Sorbonne gradually ceased to represent the best thought of the country. To all reform alike in studies and religion it offered the most dogged resistance, and it was largely due to its action that Paris lost its place as the first school in Europe. Among the men of the new order the 'Sorbonnian bog' became a byword for bigotry and obscurantism. In the succeeding centuries the Sorbonne followed the same retrograde policy. In 1621 it actually obtained an edict, mainly directed against Descartes, forbidding all teaching that ran counter to accepted authorities. On the occasion of the erection of new buildings by Richelieu (1627), who was provisor of the college, a satirical Latin couplet declared that so long as its original home was in decay the Sorbonne was unassailable, but now that that home was renewed it would certainly go to ruin. The butt of the wits of successive generations, Boileau and Voltaire among the rest, the Sorbonne clung to its original traditions till at the Revolution (1792) its property was confiscated to other objects.

When in 1808 Napoleon reorganised the university of France, the Sorbonne was revived and became the seat of the Académie of Paris (see UNIVERSITIES) and of the three faculties of the ology, science, and literature. In 1884-93 new buildings were erected at a cost of £880,000, to take the place of the college erected by Richelieu; the largest theatre can seat 3000. By a curious fatality the Sorbonne is still associated in France with undue respect for tradition in matters of education.

See the various histories of the university of Paris by Du Boulay, Crevier, and Denifle; also Duvernat, Histoire de la Sorbonne (2 vols. Paris, 1790), and Franklin, La Sorbonne (Paris, 1875).

Sorcery. See MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT. Sordello. See BROWNING (ROBERT). Sorecidæ, a family of Mammalia, to which the Shrew (q.v.) belongs.

Sorel, a town of Quebec, seat of Richelieu county, on the St Lawrence, at the mouth of the Richelieu River, 45 miles (by rail 78) NE. of Montreal. It manufactures machinery, leather, and bricks, and was formerly the summer residence of the governors-general. Pop. (1891) 6669.

Sorel, AGNES, the mistress of the worthless dastard Charles VII. of France, was born in 1409 in the village of Fromenteau in Touraine, and came to court in 1431 in the train of the Duchess of Anjou. Her influence was beneficial as long as she lived, but she died suddenly in 1450.

Soresina, a town of Northern Italy, 16 miles by rail NW. of Cremona, with 6765 inhabitants. Sore Throat. See THROAT. Sorghum. See DURRA.

Sorrel (Rumex), a genus of plants of the natural order Polygonacea (q.v.), very closely allied to Polygonum and Fagopyrum (see BUCKWHEAT), but having the perianth divided into six segments, the three inner of which enlarge and cover the achenium. The genus is very naturally divided into two sections, the first of which is already noticed in the article Dock. The name Sorrel belongs only to the second, characterised by dioecious flowers and acidity of stems and leaves. Common Sorrel (R. acetosa) is a perennial found in meadows and pastures throughout the whole of Europe, and is very plentiful in Britain. Its stem is from a foot to two feet high, its leaves arrow-shaped.

It is an agreeable salad, and is used in soups

and sauces and as an addition to dishes of greens. It is therefore sometimes cultivated French in gardens. Sorrel, or Roman Sorrel (R. scutatus), a native of France and Italy, has broader and blunter leaves, and is more frequently cultivated than Common Sorrel, being

Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosa).

considered of finer flavour. Sheep's Sorrel (R. acetosella) is a very similar plant, but of much smaller size, and its roots run very much under ground, so that it is a very troublesome weed in gardens and fields of poor dry soil, in which it is very common in all parts of Britain. R. patientia and R. sanguinea are both regarded on the Continent as good spinach plants. For Wood-sorrel, a For the totally different plant, see OXALIDEÆ. Red Sorrel of the West Indies, see HIBISCUS.

Sorrel Tree (Oxydendron arboreum), a small tree of the natural order Ericaceae, which grows chiefly on the Alleghany Mountains. The leaves are acid, and are sometimes used for dyeing wool black.

Sorrento (Lat. Surrentum), a city of Italy, on the south-east side of the Bay of Naples, on the promontory which separates it from the Gulf of Salerno, 7 miles SW. of Castellamare. It is an archiepiscopal see, and possesses a cathedral. The

manufacture of silk and the making of parquetry are extensively carried on. It is celebrated for the mildness and general salubrity of its climate, for its beautiful situation in the midst of orange-groves and fruit-gardens, and for the picturesqueness of the adjacent coast; on these accounts it is much resorted to by summer visitors. In the time of Augustus it was noted for its fine buildings; but few traces of these now exist. Among the Romans the wine of Sorrento was held in high repute. Tasso was a native. Pop. 6089.

Sortes Virgilianæ, a favourite mode of divination among the ancients, in which an oracular answer was found in a doubtful juncture by opening Virgil's Eneid at random, and pricking a pin into the book, or taking the first passage on which the eye chanced to rest. Another method was to take a number of his verses, shake them together in an urn, and draw out one, from whose contents to infer good or evil. The ancient Sibylline oracles naturally afforded a subject, and the strange magical reputation early attached to Virgil helped to make his great poem the book most frequently used for this purpose. The medieval mind read Christianity into Virgil, and consequently found no difficulty in ascribing equal value to the Æneid and the Bible for purposes of divination. We are told that Severus fore-read his high destiny in the line, Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;' and Gordianus, who was to reign for but a few days, read his doom in the words, 'Ostendunt terris hunc tantum fata, nec ultra esse sinunt.' Gundulf, afterwards bishop of Rochester, and two other monks one day at Caen turned over the pages of a book of the gospels to read their future fortunes, and the Abbot Lanfranc foretold from Gundulf's passage that he should yet become a bishop. Rabelais found his license to escape from the bondage of the convent in the line, 'Heu! fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum;' and we may see all the weakness of this method in the perplexity of the answers it yielded in the great question of Panurge's marriage. Dr Welwood

tells us that Charles I. and Lord Falkland once made experiment of their future fortunes at the Bodleian in Oxford, and found passages equally ominous to each. The lines which the king read (Æn. iv. 615-620) from Dido's imprecation against Eneas plainly foretold rebellion, defeat, and a shameful death; Falkland opened at Evander's lamentation over the untimely death of his son Pallas (En. xi. 152-181). Unfortunately for this beautiful story, Aubrey in his Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme tells it of Prince Charles and the poet Cowley at Paris just before the trial of the king. At any rate Cowley himself tells us that he found some light from Virgil about the Scottish treaty, when employed as a secretary in affairs of state; and we read how the Lord Chamberlain used the passage in 2 Chron. xix. 5-8 during Charles I.'s miserable Sunday of hesitation about the execution of Strafford to convince the king that the responsibility really rested upon the judges. Sir Thomas Browne in his Vulgar Errors denounces the Sortes as an ancient fragment of pagan divination; and Dr Nathanael Home, in his Dæmonologie (1650), deplores the loss to the state and the sin to the church engendered through lots by sieves and books.

The early Christian writers denounced divination by lots as magical, and therefore a form of idolatry. Still the practice continued to be common per sortes sanctorum,' by the first passage found in the psalter or gospel, the lectionary or sacramentary. St Augustine condemned this as an abuse of the divine oracles, yet preferred to see men turn in this way to the gospels rather than to demons.

SOUBISE

And we find that an unsought omen from a psalm ended the opposition to the choice of St Martin as bishop of Tours. The Sortes Apostolorum was a collection of pious sentences much employed for divination, a bread and water fast of three days being prescribed before using it. A similar use of the Bible long survived amongst Protestants, and indeed is not to this day extinct among people of simple faith in corners of England and Germany. A characteristic instance is told of his own experience by the great Cambridge evangelical leader, Charles Simeon, when downcast about the opposi tion to his ministry in his earlier years. I prayed that God would comfort me with some cordial from His word, and that, on opening the book, I might find some text which should sustain me. It was not for direction I was looking, for I am no friend to such superstitions as the Sortes Virgiliana, but only for support. The first text that caught my eye was Matt. xxvii. 32. . . . Simon was the same as Simeon. What a word of instruction was here, what a blessed hint for my encouragement!' The obstinate survival of this superstition depends upon the naturalness of the notion, where there is a strong conviction of the power and watchful care of an overruling Providence, and a belief in the Bible as the literally inspired hand-book of divine guidance to man. Bibliolatry makes the notion of such divination perfectly rational, and we may well believe that its disuse has been merely a consequence of the decaying respect for the mere letter of Scripture. See DIVINATION, and MAGIC. Sorus. See FERNS.

Soteriology, that part of theology which treats of salvation by a redeemer (Gr. Soter). See ATONEMENT, CHRIST, CHRISTIANITY, JESUS CHRIST.

Sothern, EDWARD ASKEW, comedian, was born in Liverpool, 1st April 1826, and, declining the church, medicine, or the bar, in 1849 joined company of players in Jersey, and soon afterwards passed into the stock company of the Theatre Royal, Birmingham. From 1852 he appeared in the United States, without much success, until in 1858 Our American Cousin, by Tom Taylor, was brought out in New York, with Sothern cast for the small part (forty-seven lines) of Lord Dundreary. The piece was a poor thing, and the character of the English peer as playgoers know it was Sothern's own creation, bit by bit. In November 1861 the play was produced in London, at the Haymarket, and ran for over 400 nights; and it was again and again revived in later years. Sothern essayed many other characters, but he is remembered chiefly as Dundreary; his other most memorable parts were David Garrick in Robertson's comedy, and perhaps Fitzaltamont in The Crushed Tragedian, the latter failed utterly in England, but was always popular in America, whither Sothern returned several times. He died in London, 21st January 1881. See the Memoir by T. E. Pemberton (1890).

Soto, FERNANDO DE. See DE SOTO.

Sotteville-les-Rouen, a town of France, dept. of Seine-Inférieure, 4 miles by rail S. of Rouen, with railway workshops and cotton industries. Pop. (1891) 15,608.

Sou, or SOL. See SOLIDUS.

Soubise, an ancient French family, whose property and title came in 1575 into the house of Rohan by the marriage of their heiress, Catherine de Parthenay, with the Vicomte René II. de Rohan. Memorable as champions of the Huguenot cause were both sons of this marriage, the elder, Henri, Duc de Rohan (q.v.), and the younger son, Benjamin de Rohan, to whom the seigneury of