Sophocles
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Portrait of Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles

The master of Attic tragedy

c. 496 BC – 406 BC

Greek Classical Athens

Sophocles was born around 496 BC in Colonus, a prosperous deme just outside the walls of Athens, into a wealthy family. He lived for ninety years — almost the entire span of Athens's golden age — and embodied its ideals of civic virtue and artistic excellence. He served as a general, a treasurer of the Delian League, and a priest of the healing hero Halon. He won his first dramatic victory at the age of twenty-seven, defeating Aeschylus, and went on to win at least eighteen first prizes at the Great Dionysia, never finishing lower than second.

Of the 123 plays he is said to have written, seven tragedies survive complete. They are among the most performed and studied works in the history of theatre. The Oedipus Tyrannus — Oedipus the King — is Aristotle's model of the perfect tragedy and has been called the most influential single play in Western drama. The Antigone, with its conflict between divine law and human authority, has been a touchstone for political thought from Hegel to the French Resistance. The Electra, the Ajax, the Philoctetes, the Women of Trachis, and the late Oedipus at Colonus each explore, with unsparing honesty, what it means to be human in a world governed by forces beyond human control.

Sophocles's great innovation was the addition of a third actor, which transformed the dramatic possibilities of tragedy. His characters are fully realised individuals — not types or allegories — facing impossible choices. His plots are models of construction, building with inexorable logic toward catastrophe. His choral odes are among the finest lyric poetry in Greek. He represents, for many, the highest achievement of Athenian civilisation.

Works (8)

  • 1
    Ajax
    drama

    After the fall of Troy, Ajax is denied Achilles' armour. The greatest warrior in the Greek army goes mad with rage, slaughters a flock of sheep thinki...

    15 acts
    408 lines
  • 2
    Antigone
    drama

    Antigone buries her brother against the king's explicit order. Creon sentences her to death. Every warning goes unheard. By the end, three people are...

    16 acts
    1,257 lines
  • 3
    Electra
    drama

    Electra waits. Her father was murdered by her mother years ago. Her brother Orestes is in exile. She lives as a servant in her own house, sustained by...

    13 acts
    375 lines
  • 4
    Ichneutae
    drama

    A fragmentary satyr play. Silenus and the satyrs track the thief who stole Apollo's cattle — following the sound of a strange new instrument. The only...

    397 lines
  • 5
    Oedipus at Colonus
    drama

    Old, blind, and exiled, Oedipus arrives at Colonus near Athens. He has one thing left: the place where he dies will be blessed. Athens and Thebes both...

    17 acts
    1,809 lines
  • 6
    Oedipus Tyrannus
    drama

    A plague strikes Thebes. King Oedipus vows to find its cause. The investigation leads, step by inevitable step, to himself. The most perfectly constru...

    15 acts
    1,481 lines
  • 7
    Philoctetes
    drama

    Philoctetes was abandoned on a desert island ten years ago with an incurable wound and Heracles' magic bow. Now the Greeks need him to win the war. Od...

    13 acts
    1,465 lines
  • 8
    Trachiniae
    drama

    Deianira sends her husband Heracles a robe soaked in what she believes is a love charm. It is poison. She meant to win him back; she destroys him. A t...

    14 acts
    1,242 lines

Lost & Fragmentary Works

  • Lost Plays
    Tragedy

    Sophocles wrote 123 plays, of which 7 tragedies survive complete plus substantial fragments of a satyr play (Ichneutae). The remaining 115+ plays are known from titles, fragments, and references.

    Originally: 123 plays. Surviving: 7 complete tragedies; substantial fragments of Ichneutae; titles and fragments of the rest.

    Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. IV (Göttingen, 1977)

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