Sophocles c.496-405BC
Athenian tragedian, one of the great figures of Greek drama

Sophocles was the son of Sophilus, a wealthy arms manufacturer of Colonus near Athens. In 480BC he led the chorus which sang the hymn celebrating the Greek naval victory over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis. He won his first dramatic victory at the Great Dionysia in 468, defeating Aeschylus apparently at his first attempt. He was twice elected strategos (general), once with Pericles in 440 (when they had to put down the revolt of Samos), and was appointed one of the commissioners to investigate the failure of the expedition to Sicily in 413. He was a personal friend of the historian Herodotus, and of the poet Ion of Chios; a conversation between Sophocles and Ion appears in Athenaeus (book 13, section 603). Unlike Aeschylus and Euripides, Sophocles is said to have declined invitations to live at royal courts. He left two sons, one by each of his two wives.

Aristotle regarded Sophocles as an innovator, for adding a third actor to the usual two, increasing the chorus from 12 to 15, and for giving each play in a trilogy its own theme and plot. The principal characteristics of his dramatic style concern the conflict of the individual and the state (most notably in Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus), the action of individuals as showing their heroic stature, and the relation between an individual's character and behaviour. A generally good person, like Oedipus, can have a tragic end because of a defect in character (in this case, pride). Use of dialogue and dramatic irony are important elements in Sophocles' art. The problem of burial is prominent in both Ajax and Antigone; in the first as an Olympian directive that hatred should not pursue a noble adversary beyond the grave; in the second as a clash between sisterly compassion for a dead brother and the obligations to the state demanded by Creon.

The play generally regarded as Sophocles' greatest is Oedipus Tyrannus, in which the apparently innocent Oedipus is gradually revealed as the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother, and suffers the fate imposed by his own sentence. Aristotle based his aesthetic theory of drama in the Poetica on this play, and from it Sigmund Freud derived the name and function of the 'Oedipus complex'. In contrast to Aeschylean tragedy, where the plot is essentially static and the hero is virtually doomed from the beginning, the plot in Sophocles develops.

Bibliography: Sophocles is said to have written 130 plays (of which seven were spurious), and won the dramatic prize on 24 occasions with 96 plays. Seven of the tragedies have survived: Ajax (date uncertain), Antigone (441), Oedipus Tyrannus (c.429), Trachiniai (c.429, 'Women of Trachis'), Electra (between 418 and 410), Philoctetes (409), Oedipus Coloneus (produced 401, after his death). In addition, a papyrus discovered in modern times contains a large fragment of a satyr-play Ichneutai ('Trackers'). See also R P Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles (1980); H D F Kitto, Sophocles: Dramatist and Philosopher (1958); C M Brown, Sophocles's Imagination (1944).