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A Roman bust.

Sophocles (c. 496 B.C.E. – 406 B.C.E.) (Ancient Greek: Σοφοκλης) was one of the three great ancient Greek tragedians, who together with Aeschylus and Euripides, defined the forms of drama and theater, establishing a literary tradition that influenced not only the drama of the ancient world, but continues to influence drama into the present day. Every major dramatist of the Western world, from Seneca to William Shakespeare, from Jean-Baptiste Moliere to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, has been influenced in some degree or another by Sophocles' conception of tragedy.

But Sophocles was not a modern dramatist. Based on the ancient, polytheistic tradition from which he emerged, Sophocles' plays proceed in a manner quite foreign to the modern conception of drama. In particular, Sophocles' plays emphasize the role of the fates and the gods in determining the destinies of the characters in the plot, largely to the exclusion of any character development. In this regard, Sophocles' plays may seem more wooden than those of the dramatists who succeeded him. They are very spare and severe, generally concentrating almost entirely on the action of the plot at the expense of nuance of character.

To criticize Sophocles for lacking psychological depth, however, is to misunderstand his era, his audience and his contribution to the theater. Furthermore, engaging his audience on the penetrating issues of "fatal flaws" moves human consciousness subtly toward an awareness of the human side of cause and effect in our lives and circumstances. We have no record of written drama prior to Sophocles, and as a result his works, however strange they might seem to a modern reader with modern sensibilities, represent the first achievement of their kind. Moreover, his works remain, despite their archaisms, some of the most powerfully moving tragedies in the literature.

His best known work, Oedipus Rex examines the "tragic flaw" that drives him to commit his horrific deeds. Oedipus' rage at discovering his abominable fate is palpable, and still causes us to quail even today. The plots which Sophocles devised have been adapted and re-envisioned countless times throughout history and across the Western world, from Grecian and Roman tragedians, to medieval and Renaissance playwrights, to adaptations of Sophocles which continue to be produced today. He is without a doubt one of the most influential writers of the Ancient Greek canon, and this is no small statement considering that this places Sophocles alongside his formidable fellow playrights, as well alongside some of the greatest poets of all time.

Life

What little is known of Sophocles' life can be gleaned from fragments of other ancient writers, whose works largely have been lost. According to the Suda Sophocles wrote 123 plays in the dramatic competitions of the Festival of Dionysus (where each submission by one playwright consisted of four plays; three tragedies and a satyr play, a sort of ancient Greek burlesque put on after a series of tragedies to relieve the audience of grief). Sophocles won more first prizes (around 20) than any other playwright, and placed second in all others he participated in (Lloyd-Jones 1994: 8). His first victory was in 468 B.C.E., although scholars are no longer certain that this was the first time that he competed (Scullion 2002).

Only seven of his tragedies have survived complete in the medieval manuscript tradition. The most famous are the three tragedies concerning Oedipus and Antigone: these are often known as the Theban plays or The Oedipus Cycle, although they do not make up a single trilogy. Discoveries of papyri from the late nineteenth century onwards, especially at Oxyrhynchus, have greatly added to our knowledge of Sophocles' works. The most substantial fragment which has so far appeared contains approximately half of a satyr play, The Tracking Satyrs.

Sophocles was born about a mile northwest of Athens in the rural deme (small community) of Colonus Hippius in Attica. His birth took place a few years before the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C.E.: the exact year is unclear, although 497/6 is perhaps most likely (Lloyd-Jones 1994: 7). The ancient life of Sophocles disputes claims that his father, Sophillus, was a carpenter, smith, or swordmaker, asserting rather that he owned slaves who pursued such occupations, though whether this is true or not is unverifiable. The Life goes on to say the young Sophocles won awards in wrestling and music, and was graceful and handsome. He led the chorus of boys (paean) at the Athenian celebration of the victory against the Persians at the Battle of Salamis in 480 B.C.E.

Sophocles enjoyed a public profile outside the theater. In 443/2 he served as one of the Hellenotamiai or treasurers of Athena. The Athenian people elected him as one of the ten generals for 441/0, during which he participated in crushing the revolt of Samos Island. There is some evidence that he was one of the commissioners appointed in 413 B.C.E. as a response to the catastrophic destruction of the Athenian expeditionary force in Sicily (Lloyd-Jones 1994: 12-13). Sophocles also served as a priest for a time.

Name

Like many Ancient Greek names, that of Sophocles (Σοφοκλης) has a meaning. A compound of σόφος (sophos) "wise" and κλέος (kleos) "glory," Sophocles' name translates to "famous for wisdom"; considering that his words continue to be studied some 2500 years after his death, his name has proven to be quite apt.

Surviving works

Of the seven surviving plays only two have securely dated first or second performances: Philoctetes (409 B.C.E.) and Oedipus at Colonus (401 B.C.E., staged after Sophocles' death by his grandson, also called Sophocles). Of the others, Electra shows stylistic similarities to these two plays, and so is probably late. Ajax, Antigone and The Trachiniae are generally thought to be early, again on grounds of style, with Oedipus the King coming in Sophocles' middle period (see e.g. Lloyd-Jones 1994: 8-9).

Oedipus the King

Oedipus the King (also known as Oedipus Rex and Oedipus Tyrannos, Oι̉δίπoυς τύραννoς in Greek) is often considered Sophocles masterpiece, written in 425 B.C.E. The play was the second of Sophocles' three Theban plays to be produced, but comes first in the internal chronology of the plays, followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone. The play was highly esteemed in its time, and has gone on to be even more popular today, in part due to the significance attached to the Oedipus myth by Sigmund Freud.

Sophocles' play treats the myth of Oedipus, son of King Laius of Thebes and Queen Jocasta, also known as Iocaste. Oedipus was a figure from Greek mythology who as an infant was sent to be exposed and left for dead with his ankles bound on a mountainside in an effort to circumvent the oracle's prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. However, he was found and saved by a shepherd and raised in the court of King Polybus of Corinth and his wife Merope. Hearing from an oracle that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, and believing Polybus and Merope to be his real parents, he left Corinth. Oedipus meets Laius by chance on a road, but does not recognize him; the two get into an argument which descends into a fight, and Oedipus accidentally kills him. Arriving in Thebes, he saves the city from the Sphinx by solving his riddle, "What uses four legs in the morning, two in the day, and three at night?" The answer, of course, is Man. For saving the city his reward is the kingdom of Thebes, including the hand of his mother, Queen Jocasta.

As the play begins, Sophocles joins the story in media res after Thebes has been struck with a plague by the gods in outrage over Oedipus' crimes, patricide and incest. The action of the play centers around Oedipus' investigation into the source of the plague, in which he curses and promises to exile those responsible. Although the blind prophet Tiresias explicitly tells Oedipus at the beginning of the play that he is the cause of the plague, Oedipus at first does not understand. Instead he accuses Tiresias of conspiring with Creon, Jocasta's brother, to overthrow him.

Oedipus then calls for a former servant of Laius, the only surviving witness of the murder, who fled the city when Oedipus became king. Soon a messenger from Corinth also arrives to inform Oedipus of the death of Polybus, whom Oedipus still believes is his real father, until the messenger informs him that he was in fact adopted. In the subsequent discussions between Oedipus, Jocasta, the servant, and the messenger, Jocasta discovers the truth and runs off-stage; Oedipus learns the truth more slowly, but later runs off-stage as well. The Greek chorus fills in the unseen details: Jocasta has hanged herself, and Oedipus, upon discovering her body, blinds himself with the brooches (long gold pins with a pointed end) of her dress. The play ends with Oedipus entrusting his children to Creon and going into exile, as he promised at the beginning.

The play depends very heavily on dramatic irony. The irony works at several different levels. First, unlike Oedipus, the audience is already aware of the facts before the play begins. While Oedipus is searching for the cause of the plague, the audience is already aware that he is searching for himself. On another level, every step that Oedipus takes to avoid his fate brings him one step closer to fulfilling it. Then, after having already fulfilled the prophecy, Oedipus and Jocasta discuss the oracle, dismissing it as its prophecies have apparently not come to pass. Sophocles' dramatic technique, using the difference between the audience's awareness of events and those of the characters, have been deployed to create suspense by modern playwrights like Shakespeare and filmmakers like Hitchcock.

Other themes in the play include the ineluctability of fate and hubris. Oedipus' parents (and Oedipus himself) do everything in their power to avoid the prophecy of the oracle, only to have the very actions they take to avoid their destinies lead them to fulfill it. However, it is not just the capricious will of the gods that lead to Oedipus' downfall. He is done in by his own hubris, or overweaning pride.

The Theban plays (The Oedipus Cycle)

Antigone
Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannos) (second prize)
Oedipus at Colonus (first prize)

Other plays

Ajax
The Trachiniae
Electra
Philoctetes (first prize)

Fragmentary plays

The Tracking Satyrs
The Progeny
Aias Lokros (Ajax the Locrian)
Akhaiôn Syllogos (The Gathering of the Achaeans)
Hermione
Nauplios Katapleon (Nauplius' Arrival)
Nauplios Pyrkaeus (Nauplius' Fires)
Niobe
Oenomaus
Poimenes (The Shepherds)
Polyxene
Syndeipnoi (The Diners, or, The Banqueters)
Tereus
Troilus and Phaedra
Triptolemus
Tyro Keiromene (Tyro Shorn)
Tyro Anagnorizomene (Tyro Rediscovered)

Fragments of The Tracking Satyrs (Ichneutae) were discovered in Egypt in 1907. It is one of only two recovered satyr plays, the other being Euripides' Cyclops.

Fragments of The Progeny (Epigonoi) were discovered in April 2005 by classicists at Oxford University with the help of infrared technology previously used for satellite imaging. The tragedy tells the story of the siege of Thebes. The fragment translates to the following:

Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron.

Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle's songs, that wakes up those who are asleep.

Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot's rail. [1]

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Arnold, Matthew, Dover Beach. 1867
Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (ed.) Sophocles. Ajax. Electra. Oedipus Tyrannus, Harvard University Press, 1994.
Scott Scullion, Tragic dates, Classical Quarterly, new sequence 52 (2002) 81-101. [2]
Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, article on Sophocles, [3]

External links

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@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 But Sophocles was not a modern dramatist. Based on the ancient, [[polytheism|polytheistic]] tradition from which he emerged, Sophocles' plays proceed in a manner quite foreign to the modern conception of drama. In particular, Sophocles' plays emphasize the role of the fates and the gods in determining the destinies of the characters in the plot, largely to the exclusion of any character development. In this regard, Sophocles' plays may seem more wooden than those of the dramatists who succeeded him. They are very spare and severe, generally concentrating almost entirely on the action of the plot at the expense of nuance of character.
-To criticize Sophocles for lacking psychological depth, however, is to misunderstand his era, his audience and his contribution to the theater. We have no record of written drama prior to Sophocles, and as a result his works, however strange they might seem to a modern reader with modern sensibilities, represent the first achievement of their kind. Moreover, his works remain, despite their archaisms, some of the most powerfully moving tragedies in the literature.
+To criticize Sophocles for lacking psychological depth, however, is to misunderstand his era, his audience and his contribution to the theater. Furthermore, engaging his audience on the penetrating issues of "fatal flaws" moves human consciousness subtly toward an awareness of the human side of cause and effect in our lives and circumstances.  We have no record of written drama prior to Sophocles, and as a result his works, however strange they might seem to a modern reader with modern sensibilities, represent the first achievement of their kind. Moreover, his works remain, despite their archaisms, some of the most powerfully moving tragedies in the literature.
 His best known work, ''Oedipus Rex'' examines the "tragic flaw" that drives him to commit his horrific deeds. Oedipus' rage at discovering his abominable fate is palpable, and still causes us to quail even today. The plots which Sophocles devised have been adapted and re-envisioned countless times throughout history and across the Western world, from Grecian and Roman tragedians, to medieval and Renaissance playwrights, to adaptations of Sophocles which continue to be produced today. He is without a doubt one of the most influential writers of the Ancient Greek canon, and this is no small statement considering that this places Sophocles alongside his formidable fellow playrights, as well alongside some of the greatest poets of all time.