Sophocles

Greek playwright

• Born: c. 496 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Colonus, near Athens, Greece
• Died: 406 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Athens, Greece

One of the most important ancient Greek tragedians, Sophocles was an innovative and skilled master of character development and dramatic irony.

Early Life

The life of Sophocles (SAHF-uh-kleez) is known from a variety of ancient sources but especially from an Alexandrian biography included in the manuscript tradition of his plays. The playwright was born about 496 b.c.e. in Colonus, a suburb of Athens, which Sophocles commemorated in his last play, Oidipous epi Kolōnōi (401 b.c.e.; Oedipus at Colonus, 1729). His father, Sophilus, was a wealthy industrialist who owned many slaves and operated a prosperous weapons factory. The young Sophocles was given a good education. He won several prizes in school for music and wrestling, and his music teacher, Lamprus, was famous for a sobriety and restraint in composition that would later be noted in the style of his student.

The childhood of Sophocles parallels his city’s long conflict with Persia, which began shortly after his birth with Darius the Great’s invasion, continued with Darius’s defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490, and climaxed in 480 with Xerxes’ capture of Athens and defeat in the sea battle of Salamis. Sophocles was probably too young to have seen action at Salamis, but his family status—as well as his own personal talent and beauty—may account for his selection as a chorus leader in the public celebration that followed Athens’s unexpected defeat of the Persian fleet.

Record of Sophocles’ dramatic career begins in 468, when he entered an annual competition at Athens with a group of plays. It is not known if the young Sophocles was competing for the first time in this year, but his victory over the established playwright Aeschylus at this festival must have raised a sensation among the Athenians, especially if, as is recorded, the officiating public servant requested Cimon and nine other generals to replace the judges usually chosen by lot. Sophocles did not compete in the following year, but a papyrus fragment discovered in the twentieth century suggests that in 463 Sophocles was defeated by Aeschylus, who produced his Danaid trilogy.

Sophocles performed in many of his earlier plays, none of which survives. His appearance as the ball-playing heroine in one play and his lyre playing in another are recorded in his ancient biography. Later in his career, Sophocles abandoned such performances, perhaps because his voice was weakening or because the roles of actor and playwright became increasingly specialized in the second half of the fifth century.

Life’s Work

The second half of Sophocles’ life was dedicated to public service, both in the theater and in government. In general, the several civic offices held by the mature Sophocles are better documented than are the dates of Sophocles’ extant tragedies. The most difficult extant plays to put in a chronology are probably Aias (early 440’s b.c.e.; Ajax, 1729) and Trachinai (435-429 b.c.e.; The Women of Trachis, 1729), usually placed somewhere between 435 and 429.

In 443 or 442, Sophocles served as a Hellenotamias, one of the financial officials in the Delian League of the Athenian Empire. This appointment may have been the result of the great wealth of Sophocles’ family. It may also be attributable to the well-known patriotism of Sophocles, who did not follow the example of many contemporary artists, including Aeschylus and Euripides, in leaving Athens for the court of a foreign patron.

In 441 or 440, Sophocles was elected to serve as general along with the great Athenian leader Pericles during the rebellion of Athens’s ally Samos. As the ancient hypothesis, or introduction, to Antigonē (441 b.c.e.; Antigone, 1729) says that his election was encouraged by the success of this play, Sophocles’ military service is often considered to have been more honorary than practical, but it is almost certain that the playwright traveled with the fleet on the campaign.

In 438, Sophocles was back in Athens, where he defeated Euripides’ entry, including Alkēstis (438 b.c.e.; Alcestis, 1781), with an unrecorded group of plays. Sometime in this decade Sophocles may also have produced a group of plays, now lost, although it is doubtful that these plays were connected thematically in the same way that the plays of Aeschylus’s Oresteia (458 b.c.e.; English translation, 1777) were linked. When Euripides’ Mēdeia (Medea, 1781) was defeated in a competition of 431 by Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, Sophocles received second place with unknown plays.

Shortly after the beginning of Athens’s long conflict with Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War and following the Athenian plague recorded in the histories of Thucydides, Sophocles produced his most famous play, Oidipous tyrannos (c. 429 b.c.e.; Oedipus Tyrannus 1715) and was voted second place to Philocles, the nephew of Aeschylus. In the following year Sophocles made no production, and around 427 he was probably elected general again, this time with Nicias.

A combination of patriotism and piety may have again motivated Sophocles in 420 to help introduce to Athens the worship of Asclepius, the deified physician and son of Apollo. Sophocles is also known to have composed for Asclepius a paean, or hymn of praise, which survives in fragments. The playwright was also a priest of Halon, a hero connected ritually with Asclepius, and was honored after his death with Halon’s epithet, dexion, or “receiver.”

Based on comparison with Euripides’ Ēlektra (413 b.c.e.; Electra, 1782), Sophocles’ extant play of the same name is variously dated by scholars between 418 and 410, except for 415, when Sophocles made no entry in the dramatic competitions. In the same decade, the octogenarian Sophocles was once again called to public office. In 413 he was one of the ten probouloi elected to deal with the crisis caused by the disastrous defeat of the Athenian fleet in Sicily.

In the last years of his life, Sophocles continued to produce plays. The extant Philoktētēs (Philoctetes, 1729) is known to have won first prize in 409. Three years later, Sophocles apparently again entered the competition, where he displayed a chorus in mourning for the dead Euripides. Sophocles himself died within a few months. He was certainly dead by early 405, when Aristophanes produced Batrachoi (The Frogs, 1780), in which Sophocles’ death is mentioned.

The ancient biographers were not content to accept Sophocles’ advanced age as sufficient cause of death. They recorded several more colorful versions, including choking on a grape, overexertion while reciting Antigone, and overexcitement after a dramatic victory. At the time of the dramatist’s death, Spartan garrisons were in control of the road to Decelea, where the family burial plot was located, and the family had to seek special permission from the Spartan general Lysander to complete the funeral.

Like many of his contemporaries, Sophocles appears to have had two families. He had one son, Iophon, by a lawful wife, Nicostrata, and another son, Ariston, by a Sicyonian hetaira, or mistress, named Theoris. Iophon followed his father into the theater, where he even competed with Sophocles at least once. In The Frogs, Aristophanes suggests that Iophon was often helped in his career by his more famous father, but that may be an example of comic exaggeration. Of Ariston, all that is known is that he produced a son named Sophocles, who was favored by his grandfather; Ariston produced his grandfather’s last play, Oedipus at Colonus, in 401 and won first prize.

Iophon brought a suit of senility against his elderly father, perhaps because of the attentions shown to a cherished, but illegitimate, grandson. At the trial, Sophocles is said to have told the jury, “If I am Sophocles, I am not insane; if I am insane, I am not Sophocles” and to have proven his sanity to the jury by reciting lines from his current work, perhaps Oedipus at Colonus.

In his long life Sophocles was associated with many of the great men of fifth century b.c.e. Athens. His political sentiments are difficult to verify because of strong links with both the pro-Spartan and aristocratic Cimon, who may have assured Sophocles his first dramatic victory in 468, and with the democratic champion Pericles, with whom Sophocles served as general in the early 440’s. Other members of Sophocles’ circle of friends included Polygnotus, an outstanding painter who produced a famous portrait of the dramatist holding a lyre; Archelaus of Miletus, the philosopher and teacher of Socrates; the dramatist Ion of Chios, whose home Sophocles is said to have visited during the Samian Revolt; and the historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus. With some of these men, Sophocles may have formed the thiasos, or religious guild in honor of the Muses, which is mentioned in his ancient biography.

Significance

To the ancients, Sophocles’ career as civil servant, as priest of Asclepius, and, especially, as dramatist at the festival in honor of the god Dionysus, proved he was a man of great patriotism and piety, although some modern scholars have tried to find a different, more questioning Sophocles in the extant plays. Certainly this man called by his ancient biographer philathenaiotatos, or “a very great lover of Athens,” exhibited throughout his life a high level of personal involvement in his beloved city.

During his career, Sophocles is known to have written more than 120 plays, always produced in groups of three tragedies plus one satyr play. Sophocles, therefore, competed dramatically at least thirty times, perhaps every other year during the course of his career. If his ancient biography is correct that he won first prize twenty times, second prize many times, and third prize never, then Sophocles may have won first prize in two-thirds of the competitions he entered—a great testimony to his contemporary popularity.

There is some evidence that Sophocles was interested in literary theory. Besides his book, now known as “On the Chorus,” which does not survive, Sophocles’ analysis of his own dramatic style is recorded in Plutarch’s Bioi paralleloi (c. 105-115 c.e.; Parallel Lives, 1579). Here Sophocles suggests that there were three stages in his work. The first was influenced by “the majesty and pomp of Aeschylus.” The second displayed an originality in the creation of painful effects. In the third he had characters speak in languages appropriate to their personalities. Because the date of this statement is unknown and because so few of Sophocles’ plays survive, it is not possible to follow these stages in Sophocles’ seven extant plays.

Traditionally, in addition to abandoning the practice of a playwright acting in his own plays, Sophocles may have introduced several important innovations to the theater. He is said to have increased the size of the tragic chorus from twelve to fifteen members and to have added a third actor, scenery, and other dramatic paraphernalia. Sophocles received particularly high commendation in Aristotle’s De poetica (c. 334-323 b.c.e.; Poetics, 1705), in which Oedipus Tyrannus was praised for displaying the Aristotelian ideal of tragic plot and character. In the modern world Sophocles has become known for his masterful and dramatic development of character and irony.

Bibliography

Edinger, Edwin F., and Sheila Dickman Zarrow, eds. The Psyche on Stage: Individuation Motifs in Shakespeare and Sophocles. Toronto: Inner City Books, 2001. The third and final section is titled “Oedipus Rex: Mythology and the Tragic Hero.” Includes bibliography and index.

Knox, Bernard MacGregor Walker. Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Greatest Hero and His Time. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. Looks at Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus in the context of Athens in the fifth century b.c.e. Includes preface and a list of suggested readings.

Lefkowitz, Mary. The Lives of the Greek Poets. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. A translation and discussion of the Alexandrian biography of Sophocles are included in this book, which also includes a bibliography.

Lesky, Albin. Greek Tragedy. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1965. A scholarly introduction to Aeschylus’s dramaturgy, with a brief summary of his life. A bibliography is included.

Lesky, Albin. A History of Greek Literature. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996. Sophocles’ place in the literature of ancient Greece can be traced in this standard history, which includes biographical evidence and a bibliography.

Scodel, Ruth. Sophocles. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984. A good introduction written for the general reader, this book includes a chronological chart and a select annotated bibliography.

Webster, T. B. L. An Introduction to Sophocles. London: Methuen, 1969. An excellent and carefully documented life of Sophocles can be found in the first chapter of this standard study.