Sophocles

Sophocles of Colonus was one of the three tragic poets whose plays the Athenians kept and the later Greeks went on reading, along with Aeschylus and Euripides. He was an Athenian citizen of means who lived to a great age, wrote for the theater for about six decades, and also held public offices in the city. His working life ran from the generation after the Persian Wars to the last years of the Peloponnesian War. Ancient biographers credit him with well over a hundred plays. Seven tragedies survive complete: Antigone, Ajax, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. Most of the details of his life come from late sources, the ancient Life of Sophocles and the Byzantine lexicon called the Suda, and their numbers do not always agree.

Sophocles’ Life and Works

Life

The ancient sources do not agree on the year of Sophocles’ birth. The Suda places it in the 73rd Olympiad, which is 488–485 BC. The Parian Marble, an inscribed Greek chronicle, records that he won his first victory in 469/8 BC at the age of twenty-eight, which would put his birth about 497/6 BC. All the ancient accounts agree that he was born before the battle of Salamis and died very old. His birthplace was Colonus, a deme just north of the city walls of Athens, and he chose this setting for his last play, Oedipus at Colonus. His father was Sophillus, and the ancient Life says that the family was wealthy and that Sophillus owned slaves who worked as smiths or carpenters. The same Life says that the boy was well trained in wrestling and in music.

The best-known story of his youth is that, as a boy, he led the chorus that sang and danced around the trophy after the victory at Salamis in 480 BC, playing the lyre; it is told in the ancient Life and by Athenaeus (1.20e–f). His first victory in the tragic contests came, by the reckoning of the ancient chronicles, in 469/8 BC. Plutarch tells the story of that contest (Cimon 8.7–8): when Sophocles, still a young man, competed with his first plays, the archon Apsephion saw how strongly the audience was divided, and instead of choosing the judges by lot he asked Cimon and his fellow generals to judge. Sophocles won, and Plutarch adds that Aeschylus, distressed at the defeat, soon left Athens for Sicily.

His long career as a dramatist is the main fact of his life. The Suda credits him with 123 plays, and the ancient Life reports that Aristophanes of Byzantium counted 130, of which seventeen were thought spurious. The ancient totals of his victories also differ: Diodorus (13.103.4) gives eighteen, the Life twenty, and the Suda twenty-four, and the Life adds that he was often second and never third. Aristotle (Poetics 4) credits him with introducing the third actor and scene-painting, and he cites Oedipus Rex again and again in the Poetics as a model of plot. The Suda adds that he raised the number of the chorus from twelve to fifteen.

Alongside the theater he served the city. An Athenian inscription, the tribute list of 443/2 BC, names a Sophocles of Colonus among the Hellenotamiai, the treasurers of the allied funds. He was also one of the generals in the war against Samos in 441/0 BC: Strabo (14.1.18) says that the Athenians sent Pericles as general against the Samians and with him Sophocles the poet. The ancient introduction (hypothesis) to Antigone adds that he was thought worthy of this command because of the success of that play. After the disaster in Sicily in 413 BC the Athenians appointed a board of older men, the probouloi, to advise on the state of affairs (Thucydides 8.1.3). Aristotle (Rhetoric 3.18) tells how Pisander later asked Sophocles whether he, like the other probouloi, had approved the setting up of the Four Hundred in 411 BC; Sophocles said that he had, because there was nothing better to be done, though he thought it a bad thing.

Sophocles is also the subject of two famous anecdotes about old age. In the first book of Plato’s Republic (329b–c), Cephalus recalls that when someone asked the poet whether he was still able to make love to a woman, he answered: “Hush, man; I am very glad to be rid of it, like a slave who has escaped from a mad and savage master.” The second is the story that his son Iophon took him to court, claiming that he was no longer of sound mind. Lucian (Macrobii 24) tells it in this form: the old man read the jurors his Oedipus at Colonus, and they not only acquitted him but convicted the son of madness. Lucian also says that Sophocles died at the age of ninety-five by choking on a grape. Other ancient accounts give other ages (Diodorus 13.103.4 says ninety) and other causes of death.

The ancient tradition puts his death in 406/5 BC, shortly before the end of the Peloponnesian War. Aristophanes’ Frogs, produced in 405 BC according to its ancient hypothesis, treats him as recently dead. In the opening scene, Dionysus says he has come to bring back Euripides. Heracles asks why he does not fetch Sophocles first, and the god answers that he will not do so before he has got Iophon alone and tested what he writes without his father (lines 76–79). Of Sophocles himself, Dionysus says that he was “easygoing here, and easygoing there” (line 82). Later the news from the underworld is that Sophocles kissed Aeschylus and took his hand when he arrived, and that Aeschylus made way for him on the chair of honor, but that he did not claim it; he meant to wait in reserve, keeping his place if Aeschylus won, and otherwise to compete against Euripides himself (lines 787–794). When Aeschylus leaves at the end, he hands his chair to Sophocles to guard, judging him second in skill (lines 1515–1519). The scene is comedy and not biography, but it shows how readily the Athenians placed Sophocles among the great poets of the past within a year or so of his death.

Plays

Seven tragedies have come down to us whole, and each has its own page on this site: Ajax, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus. They are a small selection from a far larger body of work, and they cover only a few of the myths he dramatized. Two of them are dated by their ancient hypotheses: Philoctetes was produced in the archonship of Glaucippus (409 BC) and won first prize, and Oedipus at Colonus was staged after his death, in the archonship of Micon (402/1 BC), by his grandson, also called Sophocles, the son of Ariston. The hypothesis to Antigone connects that play with his generalship at Samos (441/0 BC). No ancient source gives the dates of the other four.

Papyri found in Egypt have added to this list. There are substantial fragments of two further tragedies, Eurypylus and Niobe, and of two satyr plays, Trackers (Ichneutae) and Inachus. The Trackers, in which satyrs search for the cattle stolen by the infant Hermes, is the best-preserved satyr drama after Euripides’ Cyclops, which is the only complete example of the genre. The other titles are known only from quotations and brief notices in later authors.

On the question of victories, the ancient figures differ, as noted above: eighteen in Diodorus, twenty in the Life, twenty-four in the Suda. The exact figure cannot be settled from the surviving evidence, but all the sources agree that he was a leading competitor for decades and was seldom beaten. The ancient hypotheses record some of his results: first place in 438 BC, when Euripides was second with Alcestis (hypothesis to Alcestis); second place in 431 BC, behind Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, and ahead of Euripides with Medea (hypothesis to Medea); and first place with Philoctetes in 409 BC.

Legacy

The ancient Life says that Sophocles had so much charm of character that he was loved everywhere and by everyone, and that after his death the Athenians voted him yearly sacrifices, as to a hero. A late lexicon, the Etymologicum Magnum, adds that they honored him under the name Dexion, “the Receiver”, because he had received the god Asclepius into his house when the cult was brought to Athens. These reports are late, but they show how warmly the city remembered him.

As a dramatist he was read as the most balanced of the three. Aristotle repeatedly used his plays as models, Oedipus Rex above all. Dio Chrysostom, in his Discourse 52, compared the three poets’ plays on Philoctetes, of which only Sophocles’ survives, and found that Sophocles stood between the other two: his poetry had neither the ruggedness and simplicity of Aeschylus nor the precision and shrewdness of Euripides, but was dignified and grand, tragic and pleasing to the ear. This was the common view of later readers, and it is much of the reason these plays were copied and taught.

The ancient names for him follow the same line. The Suda says that he was called “the Bee” for the sweetness of his language. The biographical tradition also preserves an epitaph that calls him first in the art of tragedy. The comic poet Phrynichus, in his Muses, staged soon after the poet’s death, called Sophocles fortunate: a man who died after a long life, having written many fine tragedies and having met with no evil. That line sums up what the Greeks felt about him: long life, honor in the city, and a record of success at the festivals.

Chronology of Sophocles’ Life

• c. 497/6 – birth at Colonus, near Athens, the setting of his final play (implied by the Parian Marble; the Suda gives the 73rd Olympiad, 488–485)
• 480 – leads the chorus that celebrates the victory at Salamis (ancient Life; Athenaeus 1.20e–f)
• 469/8 – first victory, over Aeschylus, with Cimon and the generals as judges (Plutarch, Cimon 8.7–8; Parian Marble)
• 460s – an ancient production notice on papyrus records Aeschylus first with the Danaid trilogy, of which The Suppliants was part, and Sophocles second
• 443/2 – one of the Hellenotamiai, the treasurers of the allied funds (Athenian tribute list)
• 441/0 – general with Pericles in the Samian War (Strabo 14.1.18; hypothesis to Antigone)
• 438 – first prize, with Euripides second (hypothesis to Alcestis)
• 431 – second prize, behind Euphorion, Aeschylus’ son, and ahead of Euripides (hypothesis to Medea)
• 411 – as one of the probouloi, approves the setting up of the Four Hundred (Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.18)
• 409 – first prize with a group that included Philoctetes (hypothesis to Philoctetes)
• 406/5 – death at Athens; Frogs (405 BC) treats him as dead
• 402/1 – Oedipus at Colonus produced after his death by his grandson Sophocles (hypothesis to Oedipus at Colonus)

Sophocles Sources

The ancient Life of Sophocles and the entry on him in the Suda (sigma 815) are the two main biographical sources, and both are late. Older evidence comes from the Parian Marble, the Athenian tribute list of 443/2 BC, and the ancient hypotheses to Antigone, Alcestis, Medea, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus and Frogs. Plato, Republic 1.329b–c, gives the anecdote about old age (Republic 1.329). Plutarch, Cimon 8.7–8, tells of his first victory; Strabo 14.1.18 of his command at Samos; Thucydides 8.1.3 and Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.18, of the probouloi; Diodorus 13.103.4 and Lucian, Macrobii 24, of his death; Athenaeus 1.20e–f of the Salamis chorus. Aristophanes, Frogs 76–82, 787–794 and 1515–1519, is the nearest contemporary comment on him. Aristotle’s Poetics and Dio Chrysostom’s Discourse 52 are the main ancient judgments of his work. The plays themselves are the primary evidence for his art, and each is summarized on its own page.

See Also: Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Philoctetes, Electra