Literature · Playwrights

Sophocles

c. 496–406 BC · Athenian (Greek)

Classical Athenian tragedy

Sophocles was the second of the three great Athenian tragedians, between Aeschylus and Euripides. He wrote over 120 plays, of which seven tragedies survive complete, including Oedipus the King and Antigone. Aristotle credits him with introducing the third actor, and he was also active in Athenian public life, serving as a general alongside Pericles.

How to spot them

▸Oedipus solving the riddle of the Sphinx and blinding himself; Antigone burying her brother Polynices against Creon's decree
▸Seven surviving tragedies: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus
▸Born at Colonus near Athens; the middle figure between Aeschylus and Euripides
▸Introduced the third actor and scene-painting (according to Aristotle's Poetics)

Key works

Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex) (c. 429 BC)

Oedipus discovers that he has killed his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, and blinds himself

Antigone (c. 441 BC)

Antigone defies King Creon's edict by burying her brother Polynices and is walled up alive

Oedipus at Colonus (401 BC (posthumous))

The blind, exiled Oedipus, guided by Antigone, finds his resting place at Colonus near Athens

Electra (c. 410s BC)

Electra awaits her brother Orestes' return to avenge their father Agamemnon on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus

Ajax (c. 440s BC)

Shamed after the arms of Achilles are awarded to Odysseus, the hero Ajax kills himself

Philoctetes (409 BC)

Odysseus and Neoptolemus try to take the bow of Heracles from the abandoned Philoctetes on Lemnos

Women of Trachis (Trachiniae) (date uncertain)

Deianeira unwittingly kills her husband Heracles with a robe smeared in the centaur Nessus' blood

Key ideas

Aristotle's Poetics credits Sophocles with the third actor and with scene-painting (skenographia)
Aristotle reports his remark that he portrayed people as they ought to be, Euripides as they are
Antigone's clash between divine law and the law of the state has been endlessly reinterpreted, notably by Hegel and in Anouilh's 1944 version
Freud named the Oedipus complex after the hero of Oedipus the King

Quick-fire facts

•Won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 468 BC, defeating Aeschylus
•Is said to have written about 123 plays and to have won around 20 first prizes, reportedly never finishing last
•Served as one of the generals (strategoi) with Pericles during the Samian War of 441–440 BC
•Oedipus at Colonus was produced after his death by his grandson, also called Sophocles, in 401 BC
•A substantial fragment of his satyr play Ichneutae (The Trackers) was found on papyrus at Oxyrhynchus
•He died in about 406 BC, shortly after Euripides

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Sources

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Sophocles
Aristotle — Poetics